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Tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out for rival rallies by Viktor Orbán’s ruling party and his main opponent as they kick off campaigning for elections next year in a highly polarised political climate.
The anniversary on Thursday of Hungary’s thwarted 1956 uprising against Soviet rule holds a central place in the ideology of the populist far-right Fidesz party, which was once firmly anti-Soviet but has grown closer to Russia under Orbán.
Fidesz, which has been in power since 2010, has said it expected a record turnout at this year’s commemoration in Budapest and that Orbán would address his supporters at the parliament. Hailed by the party as a peace march, the rally was dealt a blow this week when it emerged that a Budapest meeting that had been mooted between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin – and touted as a personal triumph by Orbán – would not be taking place.
As it snakes its way through the capital, the ruling party’s rally will have to bypass another demonstration, that of Péter Magyar, a former Fidesz insider who has risen to become Orbán’s main competitor on the back of widespread dissatisfaction over record inflation and political scandals.
Six months before the general elections in April, his party, Tisza, is neck-and-neck with Fidesz in the polls. Independent institutions put the opposition in the lead while government-friendly thinktanks predict the opposite outcome.
“If the elections were held this Sunday, Fidesz would receive 27% of the vote, and Tisza would get 37%,” said Balázs Böcskei, a political scientist and the director of the independent IDEA Institute, citing its latest poll. Its monthly surveys show Tisza’s lead apparently to be holding steady, he said.
One significant factor is that one in four Hungarians are still undecided or unwilling to express their political affiliation, Böcskei said. Such voters are thought to have swung the last election for Orbán in 2022 despite polls predicting a win for the joint opposition.
Fidesz and Tisza will compete on Thursday to see which party can draw the larger crowd, with Orbán hoping his rally will reinvigorate his base and pull in some voters who have yet to make up their minds.
Magyar, 43, a former lawyer who broke publicly with the governing party in February 2024, has alleged that Fidesz is committing “a string of crimes” and is using state funds to ship its voters to the capital, promising free food and vouchers for those who attend.
His party has also claimed that the government has threatened bus companies to dissuade them from renting vehicles to the opposition. “We must show that we will not give in to blackmail, lies and threats,” Magyar told his followers on Facebook.
Fidesz’s communications director, Tamás Menczer, denied this, describing the claims about threats to bus companies as “fake news”.
Orbán in turn has called Magyar’s event a “Brussels war march”. Fidesz, which controls a significant proportion of the media, has claimed, without providing evidence, that Magyar, an MEP, is a puppet of the EU or a Ukrainian agent who wants to push Hungary into war.
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Orbán, who has maintained far-right populist rule for 15 years and, critics say, has chipped away at the rule of law and democracy in the process, is campaigning on nationalist ideas, promising to keep migrants out of the country and the country out of the war in neighbouring Ukraine.
Magyar is positioning himself as the anti-corruption candidate, arguing that under its current leadership Hungary has become the EU’s poorest and most corrupt country.
Orbán has become Russia’s closest EU ally, while Magyar has expressed solidarity with Ukraine and pledged to reduce Hungary’s dependence on Russian oil and gas, signalling a move to distance the country from the Kremlin’s influence.
Magyar has been leading an 80-day tour around the country in which he says he has visited 158 cities and villages, an apparent effort to build support in rural Hungarian heartlands where Fidesz has traditionally proved strong.
Péter Krekó, a political analyst and director of the Budapest-based thinktank Political Capital, said he expected April’s election to be similar in nature to the previous two. “The past two elections have been free, but unfair,” he said, pointing to the financial disparity between the government and the opposition.
“A bit of trickery and a lot of campaigning” could still shift the polls, he said. “I think this is an open race, and Tisza’s lead is not unchangeable.”
