Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban conceded defeat Sunday night after a crushing election loss, ending 16 years in power for one of the most prominent allies of President Donald Trump in the Western world.
Opposition leader Peter Magyar’s center-right Tisza party was leading with more than 52% of the vote to Orban’s Fidesz party at 38%, with 60% of ballots counted as of Sunday evening. Voter turnout hit 77%, a record in any Hungarian election since the fall of communism.
“I congratulated the victorious party,” Orban told supporters gathered in Budapest. “We are going to serve the Hungarian nation and our homeland from opposition as well.”
Magyar told a crowd of thousands celebrating along the banks of the Danube: “Thank you, Hungary!”
The result landed like a political earthquake. Orban, 62, had dominated Hungarian politics since 2010 and become a symbol of nationalist, Christian democratic governance in Europe. Trump and key figures in the MAGA movement repeatedly praised his model of sovereignty-first politics and border enforcement.
Magyar, 45, a former Fidesz insider who broke with the party in 2024, campaigned on corruption, the collapse of Hungary’s public health system and what he called government-enabled looting of public funds. He also accused Orban’s government of leaking sensitive European Union deliberations to Moscow, a charge that gained traction in the final stretch of the campaign.
Orban built his coalition on opposition to mass migration, skepticism toward EU mandates and close economic ties with Russia, including continued reliance on Russian energy. Critics inside Hungary and across Europe accused him of systematically dismantling independent institutions, gerrymandering electoral districts and turning state media into a party organ.
His defeat leaves a gap in the global populist right that will be difficult to fill. No other European leader had cultivated as close a personal and ideological alignment with Trump.
