Millions across Hungary are celebrating after the country's long-serving prime minister, Viktor Orbán, conceded his party's defeat in Sunday's parliamentary election. While votes were still being tallied on Sunday evening, it became clear that his far-right Fidesz party had lost its majority and fallen to second place.
In a stunning political shift, the newly prominent Tisza party, led by former Fidesz insider Péter Magyar, surged from obscurity to claim first place. The result delivers a significant blow not only to Orbán's 14-year tenure but also to his international allies, including Donald Trump in the United States and figures like Nigel Farage in Britain and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. It disrupts the far-right project to cement an authoritarian system in Hungary, a campaign that had drawn support from prominent US Republicans such as JD Vance and Marco Rubio, who visited to back Orbán.
Orbán's rule since 2010 has been characterised by authoritarian measures, state-endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories, harsh anti-migrant rhetoric, and legislation targeting LGBT+ people and women's rights. His government's neoliberal policies exacerbated inequality for the working class, while corruption became endemic at all levels of society.
The Fidesz party, once a traditional conservative force, radicalised dramatically following the 2007-08 global financial crisis. Securing successive two-thirds parliamentary majorities, it rewrote the constitution to centralise power, placing party loyalists in key institutions. This framework, dubbed the "System of National Cooperation," fostered deep ties between Fidesz, the state, and private capital, under which corruption thrived.
A prime example is the national energy firm MOL, 10 percent of which is owned by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium Foundation. This Fidesz-aligned "academic institution" is controlled by the prime minister's political director, Balázs Orbán. Péter Magyar, who was a loyal Fidesz member throughout this period, has now sought to reinvent himself as a more liberal political alternative following his departure from the party.
