EUobserver monitors Hungary’s 2026 elections, analyzing Viktor Orbán, Fidesz, and the opposition landscape. Our reporting covers rule of law challenges, EU funding disputes, and the impact of Hungarian politics on European Union stability.
By slashing the powers of Fidesz’s regional barons and kicking out a fifth of Russia’s embassy staff, Péter Magyar is trying to recast Hungary’s role in both its own hinterland and the wider European security game.
Homophobic and hateful content on Facebook was a contributing driver of psychological distress for the LGBTQI community in Hungary, who were already the target of former prime minister Viktor Orbán’s gender-war policies.
Internal accounts of dud Covid ventilators, a taxpayer-funded African military mission run by Viktor Orbán’s son, and billions parked in politically-controlled foundations expose how far the previous regime’s “wish lists” strayed from the public good.
Hungarian state money has spent years financing media acquisitions across Europe. A fund with a long record in that trade has just taken Serbia’s last independent broadcasters. It has done so in an unusual rush, weeks before a Serbian election. Gaps in the public record and undisclosed funding make these, when taken together, difficult to ignore.
The probe into Hungary’s wildly-overpriced ventilator deals risks becoming a litmus test for whether the new Tisza government is truly ready to confront the Orbán-era system that siphoned off billions — and to face the geopolitical fallout of challenging a former foreign minister.
Not even the energy crisis or the extreme heat could slow down Hungarian prime minister Péter Magyar and his party’s, Tisza’s, transformation of the political system. Although not without missteps, the new prime minister followed through on the campaign he launched in April to replace the president of the republic, completing it by mid-August.
Behind closed doors, Tisza ditched high‑profile names before settling on Baka, the quiet jurist whose earlier ousting became a European human-rights scandal.
As Hungary struggles through an energy crisis, prime minister Péter Magyar is fighting off Fidesz attacks, recovering billions from an Orbán-linked era, and facing controversy over who really controls the country’s public media.
With the river too shallow for freight, a nuclear plant almost offline and big firms ordered to curb power use, Hungary’s heatwave is rippling straight into citizens’ jobs, bills and fears of blackouts.
With turbines winding down at Paks, bridges in darkness and freight trains halted at peak hours, Hungarians are suddenly feeling how a shrinking Danube can upend daily life and the wider economy.
A newly created office with sweeping powers could soon test whether Hungary’s change of government means real accountability for the oligarchs who grew rich under Orbán.
By shutting down M1’s news and dismantling the state media conglomerate that powered Orbán across 16 years, Magyar is testing how far a new Hungarian government can go in rewriting the rules of information and how loudly the old guard in Budapest and Brussels will protest.
We are told every day that we are in a mighty struggle between liberal democrats and illiberal populists. We are told that ‘we’, the former have to defend our freedoms against ‘them’, the latter.
This framing is wrong and it is a gift for semi-authoritarian parties, warns Michael Meyer-Resende.
Prematurely announcing Hungarian chess grandmaster would be the next president – despite promising an open contest, then backtracking, has proved Péter Magyar first major blunder since taking office.
The announcement on Friday follows the publication of reports that attempt to decrypt rule-of-law issues in each of the 27 member states. It will include a boost to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The Tisza government is poised to topple Orbán-era power brokers but a messy battle over Hungary’s presidency now risks dragging the Constitutional Court into a full-blown legitimacy crisis.
From Trojan Horse in Brussels to executive for China’s BYD – Hungary’s Szijjártó makes classic ‘revolving doors’ moveWith Chinese electric car giant BYD already under fire over allegations of forced labour and huge state subsidy that is destroying Europe’s domestic car industry, Hungarian former foreign minister Péter Szijjártó’s latest move exposes just how easily powerful insiders can cross the line between public office and private corporate interests.
Extending the EU’s recovery and resilience funds (RRF) would add flexibility to the 2028–2034 EU budget negotiations, raise the chances of agreement before year’s end, and preserve EU leverage over reforms in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania at a sensitive moment.
As Brussels welcomes Magyar’s moves on Ukraine aid and frozen EU funds, the real battle is shifting to whether he can lock in rule-of-law reforms before entrenched Orbán loyalists regroup. Is the new prime minister delivering on his promises?
A sudden blackout of Hungary’s main state TV channel, mass sackings of loyalist editors and an emergency legal overhaul reveal how fast Viktor Orbán’s propaganda and power network is being dismantled.
