For more than a decade, Hungary has been held up as a case study in democratic backsliding under Viktor Orbán – a system often described as an ‘informational autocracy’, where elections remain but the media and public sphere are tightly controlled.
Now, after a historic electoral defeat for Orbán’s Fidesz earlier this month, the mood is shifting. But whether this moment marks a clean break, a fragile opening, or something more complicated is still an open question – especially for those who have spent years organising under pressure.
At openDemocracy, we are also trying something slightly different. Rather than covering movements only through moments of visibility or ‘wins’, this series is an attempt to document what organisers are actually doing, learning and grappling with in real time – the strategies, tensions and trade-offs that rarely make it into traditional reporting, but are often the most useful for others organising elsewhere.
We spoke to Bernadett Sebály, a political scientist at the Central European University, about what changed, what made this moment possible, and what others can learn from Hungary’s long fight.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Does this moment feel like a real win or a meaningful shift from where you are? What is the mood among organisers right now, and why?
The Tisza Party scored a historic victory over the Fidesz government. Péter Magyar’s party secured a two-thirds majority in parliament with a voter turnout of 77.8% – the highest in the history of Hungarian elections. This gives them a genuine mandate to dismantle the Orbán system, so this victory could truly mark the end of the past 16 years rather than result in a lame-duck government.
The last two years were also a meaningful shift in political culture. Magyar was constantly on the road, talking to people. He visited 700 of the 3,155 Hungarian settlements (villages, towns, cities), several of which he visited more than once. At many of these visits, Magyar gave a long speech, followed by hours of Q&A with the audience, each time live-streamed. It was the Hungarian people being unfiltered on YouTube, sharing their anger, pain and suffering with a relatable politician who gave genuine answers.
There is a term in organising called a ‘listening campaign’ – a method where organisers hold hundreds of one-to-one conversations to understand what matters to people and how they see the world. In a way, Magyar did that in turbo mode. And of course, this was key to his political success. Hungary was an informational autocracy: Orbán used media buyouts by government-connected businessmen, which has given his party an estimated 80% control of the Hungarian media market. By talking to people directly, Magyar broke through the propaganda.
It was incredible to be on the streets of Budapest on the evening of 12 April after the election had been called. People were swimming in joy, and thousands of young people flooded the streets to celebrate.
There are people who feel tremendous joy, particularly over Tisza’s victory. And there are people who feel an overwhelming sense of happiness about the regime change, but are sceptical about Tisza. Some longtime organisers perhaps feel some envy or resentment that they were the ones who had been resisting the Orbán regime for years, while Péter Magyar was receiving perks in the orbit of Fidesz.
But the most important thing is that all ‘camps’ feel some kind of ownership over this historic act of defeating the regime. One of the most popular chants on the streets of Budapest among young people on the night of the election was, “We’ve done it.” Another was, “We stay in Hungary”, meaning they will not leave for another country.
This generation grew up under the Orbán regime, and this victory means a brand new future for them. I have never been at a protest event surrounded by so many Hungarian flags as that night. For my generation, the flag is a symbol of excessive nationalism, one that was appropriated by Orbán. But for these young people, the Hungarian flag is apparently the symbol of healthy patriotism. They reoccupy it, use it, and fill it with a new meaning.
Looking back, what were the most important forms of organising that helped sustain resistance in Hungary over the past years – especially under pressure and constraint?
It is worth drawing a line in 2024 and dividing the last 16 years into two periods: 2010 to 2024 and 2024 to 2026. In 2024, Magyar and Tisza not only reset people’s expectations about politics but also reconfigured the structure of participation in Hungary.
Before 2024, the main vehicle of dissatisfaction was issue-based protests, resulting in a fragmented voice of dissenting constituencies – teachers, healthcare workers, students, civil society organisations, etc – who rarely connected their struggles and kept a distance from the increasingly impotent opposition parties.
When Magyar entered the scene in 2024, he convinced people there was a real opportunity for change. This galvanised his followers into grassroots activism. Tens of thousands formed the so-called Tisza Islands across the country – rapidly growing autonomous cells of locally active people. Soon, the number reportedly exceeded 2,000, and the party was eventually able to draw on 50,000 volunteers.
So, after 2024, the main vehicle of social change was a large-scale, unified network of organised groups, closely aligned with a political party, giving representation to various constituencies, including Roma people (as there are several so-called Roma Tisza Islands). Roma refers to Europe’s largest ethnic minority, who have historically faced discrimination across the continent.
This people’s vehicle played a crucial role in defeating the cemented Orbán regime. Unlike 1989 – when regime change followed the collapse of the Soviet Union – this time, regime change was won by a mass-based social and political movement.
At the same time, the resistance until 2024 enabled the following two years of Tisza’s organising and mobilising. Those who openly protested before 2024 – civic organisations, journalists, people from various professions, parents, youth, Roma, LGBTQ+ people – ensured that the public arena in Hungary remained ‘open’ for expressing dissent and communicating clear demands.
Thanks to this work, Hungarians had continuous access to professional analysis and journalism, local communities received support in standing up for change, and activists were given training and legal protection. They did not simply maintain a status quo – they introduced democratic innovations such as civic-led primaries in 2021–2022, created democratic enclaves such as municipalities defying authoritarian dynamics and delivering policy change, and carried out projects to protect legal or economic victims of the regime.
At the same time, there is a huge difference between resistance and fundamental change.
Was there a moment when things almost fell apart – and what helped movements hold together or recover?
This is, in a way, subjective. In my view, we lived through the feeling that things were falling apart after every election until 2026. There were high hopes that never came true. But let me highlight two peak moments.
The first was the period from 2012 to 2014. After Orbán’s landslide victory in 2010, there were many demonstrations, spearheaded by trade unions for workers’ rights on the one hand and by left-liberal intellectuals worried about freedom of the press on the other. It seemed that opposition parties could provide political representation for the dissatisfied.
The big theory was that multiple opposition parties should make an electoral alliance so that otherwise fragmented votes add up against Fidesz. This followed the playbook of late-democratising countries in eastern Europe after 1998 (such as Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine), where alliances backed by civic mobilisation could defeat competitive authoritarian regimes.
The problem was that the perceived opportunity was appropriated by old left-liberal political elites who had been defeated in previous elections. They divided a new progressive political party, Politics Can Be Different (LMP), and held out the promise that unity would defeat Fidesz.
The consequences were fatal, leading to the decline of LMP, which could have served as an authentic political vehicle. At the same time, progressive civil society did not understand how deep-seated the Hungarian people’s grievances were or how unpopular the old opposition was. As a result, these elites remained dominant until 2024 and did not win; instead, they subdued new politicians.
It was not clear to us that defeating this regime is not a sprint but a marathon – and that it is not only about ousting Orbán but also about replacing the old political elites.
The other moment was February 2024, when the so-called paedophile scandal erupted after it was revealed that the president of Hungary had granted clemency to a person jailed for assisting a paedophile by forcing a victim to withdraw testimony. The crime took place in a residential childcare facility.
The scandal triggered a large anti-government demonstration organised by social media influencers, drawing between 130,000 and 150,000 people. It was obvious there was a political opportunity. However, no opposition parties had enough credibility or skill to translate protest energy into political capital.
A few days later, Péter Magyar stepped into the vacuum. He gave his first interview to an opposition outlet, sharing insider accounts of how Fidesz operates – and the story of Tisza began.
What helped movements hold together? To borrow from Albert O. Hirschman’s idea of “exit, voice and loyalty” – a framework describing how people respond to decline by leaving, speaking out or staying loyal – many people chose to stay and raise their voice rather than leave the country or accept the regime.
One important factor was the power of social networks: strong ties between friends and family, colleagues and comrades, neighbours and communities.
For people organising in other countries facing similar pressures – what lessons from Hungary feel most important to share, and what doesn’t easily translate?
This depends on who you are speaking to, as lessons translate differently across contexts. I shared five lessons in an article written a year ago, and I would highlight three here.
- It may not be enough to stand up for democracy without challenging the failures of the previous regime that indirectly brought your autocrat to power. Explain how your vision of democracy differs from the one people have already rejected.
- Don’t underestimate people’s deep-seated grievances and the unpopularity of certain political elites within the pro-democracy bloc.
- Don’t miss the opportunity to win over constituencies from the autocrat’s weakening coalition. There are always groups who are not receiving what they were promised but remain due to a lack of alternatives or information. Do the relational work with and between these constituencies.
These are lessons from the resistance between 2010 and 2024. Regarding the present, Tisza built a catch-all party, a broad coalition uniting an ideologically, geographically and ethnically diverse set of constituencies. It also involved hundreds of policy experts, including Roma experts, in building its platform.
Tisza ran on a pro-European Union and pro-NATO platform – NATO being a military alliance between European and North American states – combining social inclusion with centre-right politics, and commitments to press freedom, judicial independence and academia, alongside tackling corruption and expanding access to services such as education, healthcare and housing.
The platform explicitly fosters equality for Roma people and women, stays largely silent on LGBTQ+ rights, and takes a conservative stance on migration in line with recent European trends.
If Hungary is to re-democratise, this kind of politics may open space for progressive parties and movements to advance a leftist agenda. That space has been missing, partly because new left forces were subdued by older elites.
This is both a constraint and an opportunity. The lesson is that if you cannot build a credible opposition, others will – and they may come from a different part of the political spectrum. So accept the failure, learn from it, and look forward with clarity.
