Léna Zentai and Oliver Reschreiter, Jagiellonian University
It all began on 11 February 2024 with Péter Magyar’s interview on Partizán, an independent Hungarian media outlet. What at first looked like the bitter complaints of a Fidesz insider “after three beers at a bar” soon became the starting point of a political earthquake. Within two years, this moment helped propel his party, Tisza, to a landslide constitutional supermajority, backed by nearly 80% voter turnout, the highest since Hungary’s first free election in 1990.
While major international outlets such as Politico framed the election as the culmination of an irreversible democratic and societal crisis marked by media bias and manipulated polls, the result suggests a more complex picture. This illiberal democracy, however distorted, remained just democratic enough to be reshaped through elections. Orbán’s swift acceptance of defeat and lack of contestation only reinforced that point. The outcome also revealed a central paradox of 16 years of Fidesz rule. The increasingly centralised, ministerial style of governance that sustained the regime also helped erode it. Focused on international positioning and backed by two major global powers, the government increasingly neglected domestic grievances, creating space for alternative voices to gain traction. Election day, therefore, reflected not only political change but also renewed voter engagement with domestic concerns.
As Magyar prepares to govern, the question is whether that electoral shift will now produce a broader reordering of Hungary’s political priorities. The issue is no longer simply whether power has changed hands, but what kind of governing project Tisza intends to build from its victory. Will it turn inward toward domestic repair and regional recalibration, or will Hungary remain defined by an outsized external political role? That question will be answered first not in Brussels or Kyiv, but in Hungary’s domestic politics.
In the aftermath of its remarkable victory, it is important to remember that while Tisza remains broadly conservative, it won through a catch-all campaign that reached far beyond its ideological core. The election, therefore, functioned as much as a referendum on continued Fidesz rule as an endorsement of a clearly defined alternative. Although Tisza has a detailed political program, in some respects recalling Fidesz in 2010, it remains pragmatic and ambiguous on concrete policy choices. Tisza also inherits the two-thirds system built under Fidesz, where a supermajority is required not only for constitutional and institutional change, but also for major policy areas such as taxation, pensions, and immigration. Whether it chooses to dismantle that framework or govern through it will offer one of the clearest early signals of its political direction. If it opts for the latter, its first uses of that majority will also reveal where it stands on the left-right and populist spectrum of domestic politics.
A second major question concerns the transition of power at the top of the state and the competence of Tisza’s incoming political class. In his victory speech, Magyar called for the resignation of the president, the heads of the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court, and several other key officeholders once he assumes office. As of writing, no senior resignations have occurred so far, in part because Fidesz remains in power for another month and may still use that time to bind the hands of the incoming government. This highlights the difficulty of dismantling a deeply clientelistic institutional order after 16 years of uninterrupted rule. It is further complicated by the fact that many of Tisza’s incoming ministers and MPs come not from career politics but from various professions, including policy experts, doctors, and entrepreneurs, suggesting a more technocratic style of governance, but also limited governing experience.
Another dilemma for the new government concerns how to manage the expectations of those voters who benefited from Fidesz’s extensive system of state-subsidised programs, including utility price cuts, reduced mortgages, subsidies for families with children, and personal income tax exemptions. Given Tisza’s focus on building a functioning social security system and reforming the underdeveloped education and healthcare sectors, it is unlikely that all of these benefits will be preserved. The challenge will be to balance immediately visible, voter-friendly support with the longer-term goal of structural social reform. Those reforms will inevitably involve trade-offs, potentially creating new social divisions while also giving Fidesz political ammunition in opposition.
Finally, the most immediate domestic shift is already underway in the media sphere. With the change in government, previously constrained outlets are likely to gain greater access to officials and more room to revisit stories that went unexplored under Fidesz. In the coming weeks and months, this could bring a wave of new reporting on a decade of unanswered questions, while Fidesz officials and allied public figures attempt to contain reputational damage. More broadly, the election may trigger a wider restructuring of the media landscape, especially in the relationship between the state and the press. Some politically sustained outlets may struggle to survive, while previously independent, civil-society-funded media may gradually move into a role closer to that of a conventional public-service press.
These domestic shifts will also signal a broader reordering of Hungary’s foreign-policy priorities. A Tisza-led government is unlikely to place Hungary at the centre of European politics in the same manner as his predecessor, but it will still reshape the country’s position in the EU and beyond. The clearest shift will be in Brussels, where relations are likely to be recast through a series of bargains. This will likely entail Rule-of-law reforms, a compromise on the EU’s €90 billion loan to Ukraine, and a less obstructive posture in exchange for frozen EU funding. Still, this should not be mistaken for a full conversion to pro-EU policies, given the still broadly national conservative nature of Tisza.
Warmer ties with Donald Tusk’s Poland and a renewed emphasis on Visegrád cooperation can be expected, with Magyar signalling this priority by stating that Warsaw will be his first foreign visit. On Ukraine, he has indicated more cordial relations and fewer vetoes at the EU level, but not a full U-turn on material or political support. Magyar has opposed a fast-tracked accession process and said the issue should instead be decided by a national referendum. The election also addresses the long-standing depiction of Hungary as Russia’s Trojan horse within the EU. While that label was perhaps often overstated, Moscow nonetheless loses one of its most dependable allies inside EU decision-making. Magyar’s recent clash with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role in the region further suggests that the political intimacy long associated with Orbán’s eastern ties is no longer intact, even if Hungary’s reliance on Russian energy is likely to remain in place for pragmatic reasons.
If relations with Brussels, Warsaw, and Kyiv point to recalibration, the US dimension remains far less defined. On US President Donald Trump, Magyar has so far said little about the future of US–Hungarian relations. Instead, his emphasis has been on repairing ties with Hungary’s neighbours, which may itself signal where a Tisza government places its immediate foreign-policy priorities. Whether Orbán’s special relationship with the American populist right survives under Magyar, therefore, remains an open question for the moment.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the real significance of Hungary’s external repositioning will be decided at home. The focus in post-election Tisza Hungary should therefore remain above all on its domestic political decisions, which will shape the country’s future place in Europe and beyond. The dismantling of a 16-year political system will not be achieved overnight, and with Orbán still at the helm of Fidesz, Hungary may be entering a politically fragile period in which old structures endure, and the past is never entirely past.
For the moment, however, this remains a moment of triumph for Hungary’s opposition electorate, which defied pessimistic expectations and, against the odds, mobilised in remarkable numbers to bring about a change many had long written off as impossible.
