Viktor Orban is Hungary's hard-right prime minister. He first served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002 and returned to power in 2010, leading his Fidesz party. In 2015, during Angela Merkel's open-door migration policy, Orban helpfully put on buses to ferry migrants northward to Germany. On June 9th 2025 Orban called Europe's migration policy "an organised exchange of populations to replace the cultural base".
Since returning to power, Fidesz has largely taken over the courts and the media; cronies of the prime minister have become fabulously wealthy. Violations of the rule of law have led the European Union to suspend billions of euros in aid. In its most recent ranking Transparency International named Hungary the most corrupt in the EU for the third year running. Last March a government audit found huge irregularities at foundations linked to the country's central bank, with over $1bn unaccounted for.
The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) in Budapest is a pillar of Orban's rule. It was endowed with over $1bn in assets in 2020, including lucrative stakes in Hungary's national oil company, and is chaired by a close aide of Orban. It serves as a think-tank for national-conservative ideas and an elite training ground for Fidesz. Its Brussels offshoot, MCC Brussels, is among the best-funded think-tanks in the Belgian capital.
Orban has spent over a decade refining Hungary's electoral system to favour Fidesz. Under the old system parliament had 386 seats, with 176 elected in single-member constituencies and the rest by proportional representation. In 2011 Fidesz pushed through a law reducing the number of seats to 199, with 106 representing single-member districts. As the biggest party Fidesz has tended to sweep most single-member districts, exaggerating its majorities, and it has gerrymandered many districts to increase its advantage. Eurasia Group, a consultancy, thinks Tisza needs to beat Fidesz by four to five percentage points to win a majority in parliament.
His formula of bashing gays, migrants and the European Union appeared to be losing its potency by mid-2025, with polls putting Fidesz well behind Respect and Freedom (Tisza), a conservative party led by Peter Magyar, a charismatic former Fidesz member. A general election is scheduled for April 12th 2026. For the first time in 15 years, Orban is the underdog. He is distributing gifts: a lifetime exemption from income tax for mothers of three or more children has been extended to mothers of two; pensioners received a bonus 13th-month payment in January 2026 and will receive a 14th month in February.
Since 2010 Fidesz has doled out hundreds of millions of euros for schools, pensions and cultural centres and offered more than 1m passports to Hungarians in Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. More than 90% of votes cast abroad in the 2022 elections went to Fidesz. Of the roughly 120,000 Hungarians who lived in Transcarpathia (western Ukraine) before the war, less than half remain; many moved across the border when Russia invaded and never returned.
In March 2026 Hungary's foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, accused Ukraine of targeting ethnic Hungarians for conscription. Days later he travelled to Moscow, where Vladimir Putin allowed him to return with two ethnic-Hungarian soldiers who had fought for Ukraine and were captured by Russia. One later appeared at a Fidesz rally and called for the death of Volodymyr Zelensky.
Orban has repeatedly blocked EU aid to Ukraine, often as a bargaining chip to get the bloc to release funding frozen over rule-of-law violations. He is also vetoing Ukraine's EU accession. He is trying to recruit Czech Republic and Slovakia as part of an anti-Ukrainian alliance among the Visegrad Four, writing on X that "we cannot allow Hungarians' money to be sent to Ukraine," citing The Economist's estimate of $400bn over four years. On November 7th 2025 he met Donald Trump in Washington and secured a waiver from Trump for Hungary to keep buying Russian oil. He launched a nationwide "anti-war tour" on November 15th to counter huge opposition rallies. In June 2025 over 100,000 people marched in Budapest's Pride parade, defying a government ban.
Orban withdrew Hungary from the ICC's founding treaty rather than honour its arrest warrant for Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister.
In January 2026 the Ukrainian segment of the Druzhba pipeline was damaged. Orban used the spat to block the EU's €90bn aid package to Ukraine, linking it to Ukrainian co-operation on pipeline repairs. He had carved out an exemption from EU sanctions to keep importing cheap Russian crude.
Janez Jansa, Slovenia's right-wing populist and three-time former prime minister, modelled his governing style on Orban's. A Jansa victory in Slovenia's March 2026 election would give Orban a second EU ally alongside Slovakia's Robert Fico.
Orban is MAGA's favourite foreign leader. Steve Bannon has called him "one of the great moral leaders in this world". J.D. Vance flew to Budapest only days before the election and proclaimed that a vote for Orban was "a vote for Western civilisation". Trump's endorsement does not seem to be helping Orban: the world's most famous right-wing populist is increasingly associated with war, pricey petrol and corruption. His tactics were the model for "Project 2025", the blueprint Donald Trump used to reshape America's government.. Political scientists describe his system, where elections are held but the government tilts the scales in its favour, as "competitive authoritarianism". Lucan Way of the University of Toronto, who helped coin the term, calls Hungary the prototype.
Orban's father, a former agricultural engineer, owns an 18th-century palace in the countryside; over 4m Hungarians watched "The Dynasty", a Direkt36 documentary detailing the family's lavish lifestyle. Orban's corruption and the weak economy are increasingly seen as related: in 2025 some 71% of single-bid government contracts went to allies, up from 39% in 2022.
Orban launched a nationwide tour to counter Peter Magyar's rallies, though he manages at best one big rally a day. Reports emerged that Peter Szijjarto, Hungary's foreign minister, routinely shares details of EU meetings with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart. Russian intelligence services are also said to have put their disinformation skills at Orban's disposal—though that may have hurt more than it helped.
Orban lost the April 12th 2026 election decisively. Tisza beat Fidesz by roughly 52% to 40%, winning a two-thirds supermajority (137 of 199 seats). Rural regions in the east and south deserted Fidesz, fed up with corroding social services and stagnation. Donald Trump had promised to back Hungary with America's "full economic might" if Orban won; J.D. Vance flew to Budapest to stump for him. Other European populists may conclude that Trump is now a hindrance rather than a help.
Orban can stay in office until May 12th. His governing machine began cracking immediately: the state broadcaster, which had refused to cover Magyar during the campaign except in hostile clips, transmitted his entire three-hour press conference. Magyar demanded resignations from Fidesz-installed officials including the president, court heads and the chief prosecutor, and plans a two-term limit for prime ministers—which would block Orban from running again. Should loyalists lose confidence in Orban's return, they may reveal details of corruption under his rule.
I don't want to live on in my work, I want to live on in my apartment.