Kristof Barati was born in Budapest in 1979, into a family of musicians. He spent a large part of his childhood in Venezuela and at the age of 8 performed with the Maracaibo Symphony Orchestra. In 1996, Professor Eduard Wulfson, director of the Stradivarius Society, discovered Barati at the Jacques Thibaud Competition. Since then he became his music advisor and coach.

Barati has participated as guest professor, alongside Ida Haendel, Vadim Repin and Natalia Gutman, at the master-classes organized by Eduard Wulfson, initially at the "Chateau de Champs-sur-Marne" and at the Sorbonne University in Paris. In addition to performing with major orchestras worldwide, Barati is a regular with the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Ivan Fischer and with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zoltan Kocsis.