“Tisza is flooding.” The slogan adopted by Péter Magyar’s party ahead of Hungary’s parliamentary elections—a play on the party’s rising polls and shared name with Hungary’s second-longest river—came true on Sunday with an electoral tsunami that swept out Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party after sixteen years in power. With his frequent antagonism toward the European Union (EU) and its support for Ukraine, as well as his increasingly authoritarian rule at home, Orbán had become a guiding star of far-right politics across Europe and beyond. Now that Tisza’s political wave has arrived, our experts wade through the results and what they mean for Hungary, Europe, and the transatlantic alliance.
Click to jump to an expert analysis:
Daniel Fried: A tale of how to overcome authoritarian nationalism
Jörn Fleck: Hungary will remain conservative but will be more constructive in the EU
Emerson T. Brooking: Europe has dodged a bullet
Andras Simonyi: How Magyar did it
A tale of how to overcome authoritarian nationalism
Orbán’s defeat resulted from his poor performance at home. His posturing, which had been successful for many years, could not overcome voters’ objections to Hungary’s weak economy and blatant corruption. Hungarian society has repudiated Orbán and his authoritarianism, which included control of major media outlets and intimidation of the judiciary and state institutions.
The opposition Tisza party that has defeated Orbán’s Fidesz and obtained a two-thirds majority in parliament is led by the conservative, charismatic Péter Magyar, who left Fidesz only in 2024. Although a social conservative, Magyar put together a broad coalition including Hungarian liberals, a sort of pro-democracy coalition that carried the day.
Other than Orbán and his Fidesz party, losers in this election include the Kremlin, whose overt and covert support for Orbán—rightly regarded as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s best friend in Europe—has failed. This is not the first time that Kremlin election interference has failed in Central and Eastern Europe: It did so recently in Moldova and Romania, where pro-Western candidates overcame extensive Russian efforts to put Moscow’s thumb on the electoral scales.
The Trump administration and MAGA movement are also losers: In a break from the usual practice of avoiding overt favoritism in democratic elections, both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance visited Budapest during the election campaign, with Vance campaigning with Orbán. President Donald J. Trump even called in during one of those events. Orbán and his political allies had spent years and a lot of money cultivating support from perceived ideological allies in the United States, who seemed to regard Orbán and Fidesz as harbingers of a nationalist upsurge in Europe. That investment didn’t save Fidesz from an electoral debacle.
The biggest winners of the election are Hungarians, whose new government may be able to improve the economy, reverse corruption, and restore democratic institutions and the rule of law. Hungarian democrats right, left, and center have turned back an authoritarian cycle that many thought unstoppable.
Ukraine is another winner. Orbán had acted as a major break on European support for Ukraine, halting a major EU loan to Kyiv intended to compensate for US termination of most assistance to Ukraine.
The victory of Hungary’s pro-democracy coalition also counts as a victory for the free world. The resilience of Hungary’s democracy in the face of authoritarian governance will hearten democracy activists around the world. Hungary, once seen as a herald of authoritarian nationalism, seems now a tale of how to overcome it.
—Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and former US assistant secretary of state for Europe.
Hungary will remain conservative but will be more constructive in the EU
The decisive defeat of populist, pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party signals significant new openings not just for Hungary but for Europe as a whole. A Magyar-led government is widely expected to cast off its outcast role at the EU table. Most importantly, it will remove the Hungarian veto on the EU’s ninety-billion euro support package for Ukraine. Even if Hungary remains a conservative voice on issues from migration to enlargement, Budapest will return to a more constructive stance on other European issues. Hungarians widely rejected Orbán’s weaponization of relations with Brussels in the election campaign, hoping to become a normal member of the union. On election night, Magyar confirmed that he will heed that message as a member of the mainstream center-right political family at the EU level.
Moscow, the Trump administration, and Europe’s far-right populists have lost a Manchurian ally inside the EU with this election outcome. The lack of any significant impact of Vance’s and Rubio’s visits to boost Orbán’s electoral fortunes underlines that, even for Europe’s far right, support from the Trump movement may now be a burden rather than a benefit. It will be interesting to see how European populists adjust to the loss of Orbán as their ideological patron and ally. The Kremlin has lost more than just a useful disruptor and obstructionist in Europe, if recent leaks of the Orbán regime passing on internal information about EU deliberations and offering direct intervention in Moscow’s interests are true. What’s more, a Magyar-led government is unlikely to continue Budapest’s meddling role from Ukraine to the Western Balkans that often aligned with Russian interests.
Still, as for Magyar, the hard work only starts now for European leaders. The EU will have to exercise strategic restraint when embracing a Magyar-led government in Budapest. A release of eighteen billion euros in frozen EU funds that is too swift and lenient, without meaningful reforms in Hungary, could fuel a populist backlash across the bloc. Nor should the new government or Brussels underestimate the resistance of the Orbán system and its entrenched allies across government institutions. Magyar’s two-thirds majority for the new government should go some way toward alleviating these challenges.
What’s more, Orbán’s obstructionism on several important EU policies, from the loan to Ukraine and EU enlargement to Russia sanctions and energy security, merely highlighted more structural deficits in the union’s decision-making processes, especially on foreign and security policy. Whether an EU of twenty-seven member states can address these deficits is far from guaranteed. Ironically, those pushing for more qualified majority-based voting at the EU level may have just lost the single-biggest driver of such controversial reforms, namely Orbán himself.
—Jörn Fleck is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
Magyar will tend first to economic and political reforms—not rebuilding damaged foreign ties
After more than a year ahead of Orbán’s Fidesz in the polls, Magyar’s Tisza party will assume power in Hungary, ending the rule of Europe’s longest-serving leader. While Magyar’s victory marks an undoubtable inflection point in Hungary’s increasingly anti-EU, pro-Russia direction, it remains to be seen how quickly he will be able to right Hungary’s numerous ailments. Among his many challenges ahead, Magyar principally won on the basis of a stagnating economy and an overwhelming politicization of the state, which will be top of mind as Tisza enters office. Recent polling highlighted the government itself as Hungarians’ top concern, making it one of eleven such countries in 138 polled by Gallup.
With its supermajority, Tisza will have the power to amend the constitution, providing it the ability to unravel Orbán’s empire step by step. Hungarians’ second priority—the economy—will also require Magyar’s focus, especially to release roughly eighteen billion euros in frozen EU funds. With these monumental tasks ahead of him, rebuilding damaged relationships abroad—especially in Brussels and Kyiv—may not be top of mind for the incoming prime minister. While Magyar will undoubtedly prove to be more pro-EU than Orbán, his tempered position on Ukraine may disappoint Ukrainians hoping to shake one of their most significant blockages in the EU. Looking further, in light of Vance’s last-minute trip to Budapest in an attempt to bolster Orbán, Magyar will be redefining Hungary’s relationship with Washington at a moment where Trump holds a less-than-rosy view of Brussels and Europe more broadly.
Hungary’s new era may be bright, but with difficult relationships abroad in desperate need of repair on top of long-standing domestic issues, how dramatically and how quickly Magyar’s victory changes Hungary remains unclear.
—Emma Nix is an assistant director with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
Europe has dodged a bullet
The most surprising part of Orbán’s defeat was the speed of it. A strongman who for sixteen years had hollowed out the Hungarian state and oppressed every corner of Hungarian civil society—who had literally rebuilt the electoral system to favor his ruling Fidesz party—acknowledged his loss with just 45 percent of votes tallied.
Europe has dodged a bullet. Russian intelligence interfered extensively on behalf of Orbán, using the tried and true tactics of astroturfing and social media manipulation with even less subtlety than usual. Even when news of this interference became public, the Orbán-controlled election commission refused to act. Meanwhile, the Trump administration and the Trump family were relentless in their defense of Orbán during the campaign, casting Hungary’s election as a civilizational battle for the heart of Europe. The stage was set, in the event of an uncertain outcome or fragile Tisza victory, for months of political chaos, orchestrated by both Russian propagandists and far-right American provocateurs.
The strength of Tisza’s electoral success, bolstered by an unprecedented 77 percent turnout, has helped Hungary avoid this potential crisis. But everyone should be clear-eyed about the challenges ahead. Moscow committed significant intelligence resources to keeping Orbán in power, and these efforts failed only because the election was a blowout. A sixteen-year-old regime will take time to dislodge. In this time, the forces that gathered to throw Hungary into chaos are very likely to try again.
—Emerson T. Brooking is director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) of the Atlantic Council Technology Programs.
How Magyar did it
BUDAPEST—Waiting for Magyar’s victory speech Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. in Hungary’s capital, tens of thousands gathered on the banks of the Danube, while people chanted “Ruszkik haza,” or “Russians, go home”—the slogan of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
A majority for Tisza was expected; the super-majority in parliament was not. However, the mood changed in the last couple days after the revelations—tapped phone calls—about the close and cozy relationships between Orbán and Putin and between Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Those revelations probably turned the vote in Magyar’s favor.
Magyar was able to appeal to both city and countryside, relentlessly campaigning. Orbán’s anti-Ukrainian, anti-Volodymyr Zelenskyy war-mongering strategy was a mistake. Vance’s campaign visit on April 7 did not move the needle.
The two-thirds super majority will end not just Orbán’s rule but also the Orbán system. Perhaps the most important immediate step will be restoring the independent media and the independence of the courts.
Magyar’s first overseas visits will likely be to Warsaw, Vienna, and Brussels. He will join the European Public Prosecutors Office. He has already spoken to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and French President Emmanuel Macron—which signals his European and transatlantic credentials.
—András Simonyi is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and a former Hungarian ambassador to the United States and NATO.