Péter Magyar has been elected prime minister of Hungary in a dramatic landslide victory to unsettle Viktor Orbán after 16 years in charge.
With 98 per cent of the votes counted, Mr Magyar’s Tisza party was on course for a massive 138 of 199 seats in parliament, with Orbán’s Fidesz party on 55 and the far-right Our Homeland party on six.
"We have done it. Tisza and Hungary have won this election," Magyar told tens of thousands of supporters who danced and cheered alongside the Danube River embankment in central Budapest.
The two-thirds majority will be crucial as Mr Magyar looks to wind back years of authoritarian drift under Fidesz, a commitment he promises will help unlock billions of euros in frozen EU funding.
A Tisza government is also expected to be more cooperative with Europe on Ukraine, avoiding brazen vetoes of support for Kyiv while keeping alive “pragmatic” relations with Russia.
Who is Péter Magyar?
Péter Magyar, 45, is the star of Hungary’s Respect and Freedom Party (Tisza). The party was founded in 2020, but only came to prominence when Magyar defected from Mr Orbán’s Fidesz party in the middle of 2024, after calling out rife corruption in the country.
Analysts say that only an insider could have risen to overcome Mr Orbán’s regime in the way Mr Magyar did. Indeed, as a child he taped a photo of Mr Orbán - then an anti-communist firebrand - on his bedroom wall.
In a sign of the times, Mr Orbán - then a young lawyer - had become a hero of the country’s pro-democracy movement when he publicly called for Soviet troops to leave Hungary in 1989.
Mr Magyar, whose family name literally means "Hungarian", was only nine years old when communism collapsed, and watched eagerly as the country held its first democratic elections in 1990.
“There was a surge of energy around the regime change that swept me up as a child,” Magyar told the Fokuszcsoport podcast last year.
Mr Magyar followed in the footsteps of Mr Orbán, studying law before moving into politics. It was while studying at university that he joined the Fidesz party, before marrying one of its rising talents, Judit Varga, in 2006. The couple divorced in March 2023.
His rise to prominence
Mr Maygar first joined the Fidesz party while he was still in college. He also eventually became closely tied to the party’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyás.
Mr Magyar, whose family name literally means "Hungarian", rose to prominence after his ex-wife, Ms Varga, resigned from all political roles after a sex-abuse case pardon that caused public uproar.
The Fidesz insider quickly distanced himself from the governing party and accused it of corruption and spreading propaganda, saying he had become disillusioned with the party. He shared a voice recording of his ex-wife allegedly revealing corruption in the government.
Mr Magyar successfully tapped into widespread discontent with corruption and a stagnant economy. In 2024, he broke with Fidesz and joined the little-known Tisza party to contest the European Parliament elections and won 29 per cent of the vote last June.
The party was considered the best shot at unsettling Mr Orban’s long grip on power, running on the slogan “Now or never”. Supporters came to shorten that to just “Now”, stressing the urgency with around a fifth of Hungarian voters falling in an undecided grey zone until the day of the election.
Magyar’s political stances
Mr Magyar is widely seen as an “insider” turned dissident of the Fidesz party and has leant into this narrative, telling the BBC in 2024, "After a while, I became more and more critical, openly and just among friends. I can tell you that the Fidesz we see today is very, very different from the one I joined in 2002."
"I was always told by the politicians it's necessary to keep power - I accepted it for a time. But of course, the turning point was in 2024."
He has promised to tackle corruption, improve the economy, and sought to gain support from Hungary's disadvantaged Roma community.
The Tizsa leader has also pledged to unlock billions of euros in EU funds to fund massive investment into healthcare, housebuilding and modernisation - part of something he calls a ‘Hungarian New Deal’.
Magyar said today that anti-corruption measures will be among the first steps his government will take. He plans to amend the constitution to limit prime ministers to just two terms.
Landlocked Hungary is largely dependent on Russian oil and gas, making it a valuable access point for the Kremlin to try to influence support for Ukraine in Europe. Magyar said on Monday he would maintain ‘pragmatic’ relations with Russia - in line with previous comments - but also support a major loan for Ukraine.
Dr Jonathan Eyal, associate director at the Royal United Services Institute, told The Independent that Magyar is likely to remain “suspicious” of Ukraine, citing pre-war disagreements. But he will aim to be “unobstructive” in Europe, crucially allowing a €90bn loan for Ukraine to pass.
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