Hungarians turned out in record numbers to vote Prime Minister Viktor Orbán out of office Sunday, delivering the defeat of a key European ally of President Donald Trump and ending his consecutive 16 years in power.
Orbán, 62, conceded the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary election to his former ally-turned-opponent Péter Magyar, 45, telling his supporters, “In any case, we will serve our homeland even in opposition,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. Magyar’s party, Tisza, which formed in 2020 and was virtually dormant until 2024, is projected to win about two-thirds of the Hungarian National Assembly’s seats, according to Reuters.
“Today we won because the Hungarian people didn’t ask what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country,” Magyar said in his victory speech, appearing to echo a famous quote by President John F. Kennedy. The Prime Minister-designate went on to rail against various policies of Orbán’s government and compared the longtime leader’s ousting to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which briefly deposed Soviet Union-imposed communism, the BBC reported.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has officially conceded defeat following a major loss in the parliamentary elections, marking his first time out of power since 2010. The ruling Fidesz–KDNP suffered a significant setback, losing roughly 135 of the 199 seats to the opposition… https://t.co/VD0uVNqru0 pic.twitter.com/BQgybFUhHj
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) April 12, 2026
Close to eight in 10 eligible voters cast ballots, marking one of the highest turnouts of a recent Hungarian election, WSJ reported. If the projections of a two-thirds Tisza majority hold, Magyar would have the power to roll back the sweeping changes Orbán made when he himself had a two-thirds majority, according to NPR.
Among the things Orbán changed during his four straight terms in office was forcing hundreds of judges into retirement and stacking Hungary’s courts with loyalists, as well as gerrymandering the country’s electoral districts, Reuters reported.
Orbán has served a combined 20 years as Hungary’s head of government, leading the Central European country for the majority of the time since it ended communist rule in 1989. He headed into the election with the distinction of being the longest-serving European leader presently in power. Orbán’s critics have widely accused him of engaging in democratic backsliding and he himself had referred to his government as an “illiberal democracy.”
Trump had endorsed Orbán’s bid to win a fifth consecutive term, writing in a Friday post to Truth Social, “We are excited to invest in the future Prosperity that will be generated by Orbán’s continued Leadership! [sic]”
Days before the election, Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary, where he spoke in support of its long-serving prime minister. While delivering his remarks, Vance called Trump and put the president on speakerphone to address the event’s attendees.
“Viktor, I’ll tell you, he’s a fantastic man, we’ve had a tremendous relationship, and he does the job,” Trump told the crowd during Vance’s April 7 visit. “Remember this, he didn’t allow people to storm your country and invade your country like other people have.”
Both Orbán and Magyar are on the political right and widely considered nationalists and populists who share a hard-line anti-immigration stance.
Magyar arguably campaigned to the right of Orbán on the issue promising to cease the country’s guest worker program if elected. He notably made headlines in February when he accused Filipino guest workers in the country of capturing and eating ducks and goldfish from the Budapest Zoo — comments seemingly similar to remarks Trump made about Haitian migrants in Ohio in 2024.
The two men, however, differ on foreign policy, with Magyar being a supporter of the European Union (EU), while Orbán is widely regarded to have the friendliest relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin among all Western and Central European leaders, with the dictator even endorsing Orbán’s reelection bid. Although Orbán has frequently employed anti-EU rhetoric, Hungary has continued to be a member state of the bloc throughout his 16 consecutive years in office.
Despite not sharing Orbán’s relatively warm views on Putin, 45-year-old Hungarian Prime Minister-designate however, is far from being a staunch supporter of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Politico reported. Magyar opposes fast-tracking the potential EU membership of Ukraine, with which Hungary shares an 85-mile-long border.
“No one wants a pro-Ukrainian government,” Magyar said March 28, according to the outlet.
Magyar, a lawyer and member of the European Parliament since 2024, was a longtime member of Orbán’s party, Fidesz, before leaving in 2024 to join Tisza. He had been a “powerful insider” in the ruling party, the BBC reported in 2024.
His ex-wife, Judit Varga, continues to be a Fidesz member, having served as the Justice Minister in Orbán’s government from 2019 to 2023. She endorsed Orbán in the election over her ex-husband.
One year after Varga both resigned from her role and divorced Magyar, it became known that she had signed off on then-Hungarian President Katalin Novák’s pardon of a state orphanage deputy director who was put in jail after he compelled children sexually abused by his boss to not testify. Novák is also a Fidesz member and Orbán ally.
Magyar issued a scathing statement at the time the scandal broke, stating, “I do not want to be part of a system for a minute longer where the real culprits hide behind women’s skirts.”
“For a long time, I believed in an ideal, in a national, sovereign, civic Hungary. However, over the past few years and especially today, I have come to realise all this is indeed just a political product, a sugary coating that serves only two purposes: to conceal the operation of the power factory and to acquire enormous wealth,” he added, the BBC reported in February 2024.
Orbán first became prime minister of Hungary in 1998 at the age of 35. His Fidesz-led coalition defeated the incumbent Hungarian Socialist Party, the successor to the communist Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which ruled the country during the Cold War. Although Orbán’s party won the most seats in the 2002 election, the Socialists regained power by forming a coalition with a centrist third party.
After eight years out of power, Orbán returned to office in 2010, defeating in a massive landslide the Socialists, who have since faded into obscurity. The Hungarian Socialist Party decided to not actively contest the 2026 election in order to avoid splitting the anti-Orbán vote.
WATCH: Crowd erupts as JD Vance gets Trump on speakerphone in Hungary
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