Baron Bálint Balassi de Kékkő et Gyarmat (Slovak: Valentín Balaša; 20 October 1554 - 30 May 1594) was a multilingual HungarianRenaissance lyric poet, who wrote mostly in Hungarian. Beside his native Hungarian, he was proficient in eight languages : Latin, Italian, German, Polish, Turkish, Slovak, Croatian and Romanian. He is the founder of modern Hungarian lyric poetry and the first author of Hungarian erotic poetry.

Balassi was born at Zólyom in the Kingdom of Hungary (today Zvolen, Slovakia). He was educated by the reformer Péter Bornemissza and by his mother, the highly gifted Protestant zealot, Anna Sulyok.

His first work was a translation of Michael Bock's Wurlzgertlein für die krancken Seelen, (published in Kraków), to comfort his father while in Polish exile. On his father's rehabilitation, Bálint accompanied him to court, and was also present at the coronation diet in Pressburg (today's Bratislava), capital of Royal Hungary in 1572. He then joined the army and fought the Turks as an officer in the fortress of Eger in North-Eastern Hungary. Here he fell violently in love with Anna Losonczi, the daughter of the captain of Temesvár, and evidently, from his verses, his love was not unrequited. But after the death of her first husband she gave her hand to Krisztóf Ungnád.