Making sense of the Hungarian elections, and the road ahead…

Hungary wrote history more than once in its 1000-year-long journey through good and bad times. It rebelled for democracy in 1848, and won. In 1956, it stood up against the Soviet Union, and lost. But it didn't give up. In 1989, the people of Hungary jumped on the bandwagon of change for the better with the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, and took back their democracy. You'd think that once democratic, a country will stay democratic, but unfortunately Hungarian politics has shown since 1989 that it can erode and descend into textbook electoral autocracy. In fact, there was no independent body out there that didn't call Hungary a "competitive authoritarian illiberal democracy". Hungary, between 2010 and 2026 became famous for all the wrong things, and I called for a desperately needed change a year ago. That changed has happened. The Orbán regime lost like never before. Sixteen years of gonzo politics are over.

Hungary's history is long and fraught. I said it's 1000 years of good and bad, but if you listen to its national anthem, it's far more bad than good. That leaves a mark on a nation. It challenges its identity, its place in the world. To this day, you'll often hear poet Petőfi Sandor's famous lines: "By the God of the Hungarians, we vow, we vow, that we won't be slaves any longer" as a metaphorical call to arms. Unfortunately for Hungary though, in its search for identity and freedom after the falling of the Iron Curtain, it walked into another kind of trap; one set up from within, by the very people tasked to fix it.

The Hungary that was

You see, Orbán Viktor, the Prime Minister who just lost the elections, wasn't in power for just 16 years. Many forget — to the point that I had to correct the mega TV network Deutsche Welle and ask for a correction in their reporting — that Orbán Viktor was also Prime Minister between 1998 and 2002. His job was pretty straightforward: fix the country broken by his predecessor Horn Gyula, who basically led the rebranded communist party in the "democratic era". Suffice to say that Orbán didn't fix anything, in fact, made things worse. He went from a youthful reformer to a polarising leader, and left the country in a state people weren't happy with. It already foreshadowed what was to come, but those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

By 2010 the country was in shambles and the ruling party essentially imploded, which gave Orbán and his FIDESZ party another opportunity to rule. The fact that he won had very little to do with his abilities, and a lot more with the alternative being a huge disappointment. If that rings a bell, you're familiar enough with American politics, too. God may work in mysterious ways, but evil doesn't care about such things. The recipe for success is always the same: swoop into power when you have a fractured society, a disillusioned people and leadership without credibility.

The 2010 Orbán government enabled me my Hungarian citizenship, but it's the Hungarian people who granted it to me.

You've got to hand it to the man, Orbán learned enough from his 1998 term to play the long game this time. Getting a 2/3 majority in Parliament, he gets Hungarians from the diaspora fast-tracked citizenship. I remember the process back in 2011. It was insanely simple and straightforward. No wonder within a couple of months I was rocking a Hungarian passport — and I am, to this day. I had my reasons, Orbán had his own. He thought everyone would later vote — the voting right was introduced a year later — for his party and this would keep him in power indefinitely. With 5 million Hungarians living outside Hungary, his maths was actually pretty spot on. A cunning strategy, but just as ingenious.

With 9.6 million Hungarians in the country and 5 million potential voters outside — all of whom would hopefully feel indebted to the FIDESZ party for getting their Hungarian citizenship with little to no effort — he could take losses quite comfortably at home, and rely on diaspora votes. I, on the other hand, just wanted a more powerful passport than the Romanian I already owned. The joke was on Orbán. Eventually. But it took another 14 years for that to become obvious.

When being a good citizen boils down to siding with one party over another, you are governed by distorted values.

His strategy worked until it didn't. Don't get me wrong, to this day if you go around Transylvania, you will find plenty who support Orbán's totalitarian regime. Not because they understand politics. Not because they care about Hungarians and Hungary. No. They connected their citizenship to Orbán himself, assuming that if Orbán is gone, so is their Hungarian citizenship.

Those who care less about a Hungarian passport, care more about money. In fairness to the outgoing government, countries with a strong Hungarian minority community have received over the years nearly 2 billion Euros, which is no small feat. Hungarian kids, for instance, get various education related grants in Transylvania every year, funded by the Hungarian government. That alone is still enough to sway people into voting for Orbán, and across the Eastern diaspora of those who voted, many did. The vast majority, however, did not, and the consensus leans far more towards letting the Hungarian nation decide its own future — which, if you ask me, is the right attitude.

The Hungary that will be

Translated to English, FIDESZ stands for "young democrats' alliance". After 5 mandates, that feels at least a tad long in the tooth, but it was called that for a reason. Magyar Péter, the new Prime Minister at the age of 45 isn't by far the youngest at the helm of the country. That record belongs to Orbán, who took office first at just 35. So do many other records such as his many years in power, his ability to steal billions — hence the kleptocrat label — his unwillingness to work with the West, pardoning child molesters, entrenching an oligarchic society, actively promoting disinformation and making up facts, destroying infrastructure and having his and the FIDESZ party's name tied to hundreds of corruption scandals over the last 16 years.

When asked after their historic loss, FIDESZ party members could not answer what exactly went so wrong that their supermajority was replaced by TISZA's supermajority.

Everyone else however is more than happy to answer that question. Generational pushback. That's what happened. No more weak spots in Hungarian politics. That's what happened. If you looked at the crowds on Budapest's streets, you saw my generation and you saw the next generation. Some FIDESZ voters were appalled by the fact that 18–25-year-olds helped decide the country's future. They called them drunks and drug addicts. That's a very disturbing view of the very people who are starting their independent lives across the country, trying to make sense and make the most of what was left for them to work with. And let me tell you, not much was left.

Magyar Peter's government with a supermajority in Parliament will have an easier time than otherwise, but still a far-cry from an easy job. It's more along the lines of having an objective chance at righting the wrongs of constitution, of getting justice and making lasting changes and relationships within Europe and outside. But supermajority does not mean there's no more FIDESZ. Kim Lane Scheppele of Princeton University does an excellent job explaining the uphill battle the Hungarians are facing for the next four years. And let's be frank from day one:

Neither TISZA nor Magyar Péter will change everything. One cannot fix in four years what has been destroyed in nearly two decades. But it's the first step away from the precipice of a truly totalitarian regime.

That is what happened in Hungary on the 12th of April 2026. One step in the right direction, one step towards cooperation with Europe and our neighbours. One step towards functional democracy. It's a good step. But the long walk is still ahead of the Hungarian people. And it's no walk in the park, either.

Hungary looks at this win as a regime change. And I like that. Just like in 1989, the country wanted fundamental change to take place. It did. To some extent, but not enough. A few good years won't make up for 30 bad ones, 20 of which are thanks to Orbán and his gang of thieves.

This wasn't "just another election". This was Hungarian people remembering what they really asked for in 1989, a truly democratic country. Not kleptocracy. Not autocracy. And certainly not "competitive authoritarian illiberal democracy". Real democracy. That's what TISZA's and Magyar Péter's real mandate is. Showing the Hungarian people what that looks like. It's not even about sticking around for another mandate, another four years. It's about getting every Hungarian at home and elsewhere the environment where informed, intelligent discourse wins, where political parties aren't buying votes with gift cards and by promising the very things every human being should have a right to — a decent life, food on the table, a roof over one's head, a working healthcare and education that helps a nation grow its strength and identity.

A year ago, I asked Hungary to change. A year later, it has. Let's hope it remains a beacon of light and proof that small nations can also shine bright and bring about change.

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes, blogs and books. Author. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility! For my less regular readers, I also write about random bits and writing.