Péter Magyar’s centre-right Tisza party has won Hungary’s parliamentary election in a historic landslide, ending 16 years of Viktor Orbán’s rule and securing a constitutional supermajority — backed by the highest voter turnout since the fall of communism.
With 98.28% of votes processed, according to the Hungarian National Election Office, Tisza has secured 136 seats in the 199-seat National Assembly — 68.34% of all parliamentary mandates and well above the two-thirds threshold required to amend Hungary’s constitution. Orbán’s Fidesz–KDNP alliance was left with 57 seats, while the far-right, pro-Kremlin Mi Hazánk (“Our Homeland”) party won 6. In party-list voting, Tisza received 52.44% against Fidesz’s 39.15% and Mi Hazánk’s 5.77%, per the same official source.
The outcome means Magyar’s party holds a constitutional supermajority — the power to rewrite the fundamental law that Orbán himself reshaped to entrench Fidesz’s grip on Hungary’s institutions. Final seat allocations may shift marginally, as postal and overseas votes are being counted through Saturday, April 18. A recount is also underway in Zala county’s second constituency. Both processes are unlikely to change the overall picture, though they could decide individual close-contested districts where Fidesz currently holds leads of fewer than 500 votes.
Hungarians Make Their Choice
The 2026 election broke every turnout record in Hungary’s democratic history. The National Election Office registered 77.8% voter participation — surpassing the previous record of 70.5% set in 2002 and marking the highest figure since free elections began in 1990. Nearly 6 million Hungarians cast ballots. Queues formed outside polling stations early in the morning, with turnout already exceeding 37% by 11:00 a.m. — nearly double the rate recorded at the same time in 2022. Participation at Hungarian diplomatic missions abroad reached 93.41%, per NVI data.
Magyar called the scale of the vote historic. “In the history of democratic Hungary, this many people have never voted before, and no single party has ever received such a strong mandate as Tisza,” he told tens of thousands of supporters gathered along the Danube in Budapest.
Voters described the election in unambiguous terms. “This election represented a clash of civilisations,” 22-year-old Mark Szekeres told CBC News, waving an EU flag at Tisza’s election night event. “Either you belong in a Western-type democracy or an Eastern-type dictatorship.” Crowds at the venue repeatedly chanted, “Russian, go away.”
Orbán Concedes
Less than three hours after polls closed, Orbán appeared before supporters at Fidesz headquarters and conceded defeat. “The election results, though not yet final, are clear and understandable; for us, they are painful but unambiguous,” he said, as reported by PBS NewsHour, citing AP. “The responsibility and possibility of governing were not given to us. I congratulated the winning party.” Magyar confirmed on Facebook that Orbán had called him personally to concede: “Prime Minister Viktor Orbán just congratulated me on the phone on our victory.”
The speed of Orbán’s concession surprised many observers, who had anticipated potential disputes over the result. NPR noted that “concerns about whether the outgoing premier would concede dissipated when Orbán congratulated his challenger surprisingly early on election night.”
The Scandal That Reshaped the Campaign
The scale of Tisza’s victory was shaped in part by a series of intelligence leaks published in the final days before the vote. A consortium of European investigative outlets — VSquare, Frontstory, Delfi Estonia, The Insider, and the Investigative Centre of Ján Kuciak — released audio recordings and transcripts of calls between Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, covering conversations from 2023 to 2025.
The recordings, as Euronews reported, showed Szijjártó briefing Lavrov on internal EU deliberations during a critical December 2023 summit on Ukraine’s accession and offering to pass a confidential EU framework document directly to Moscow. In another call, Szijjártó coordinated with Lavrov to arrange Orbán’s July 2024 meeting with Putin – while Hungary held the rotating EU Council presidency – without informing EU or NATO partners. In a 2025 conversation, Szijjártó described the European Commission’s plans to phase out Russian energy as a “stupid idiot proposal” and sought Moscow’s help maintaining gas payment channels.
Szijjártó dismissed the recordings as “an unusually crude and open secret service intervention” carried out “in the interest of Ukraine,” according to Euronews. The leaks, combined with a separate Bloomberg report revealing a phone call between Orbán and Putin from October 2025, in which Orbán assured the Russian leader of his friendship, dominated the final stretch of the campaign and handed Magyar’s party a powerful closing argument.
Europe Responds
European leaders greeted the results with open relief. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted on X: “Hungary has chosen Europe. Europe has always chosen Hungary. A country reclaims its European path. The Union grows stronger.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz offered“heartfelt congratulations” and called on Magyar to “join forces for a strong, secure and, above all, united Europe.” French President Emmanuel Macron said he spoke with Magyar after the result and hailed it as “a victory for democratic turnout” and the Hungarian people’s attachment to EU values.
In his victory speech, Magyar pledged to restore Hungary’s role as a committed EU and NATO member, rebuild the country’s system of checks and balances, and hold accountable those he described as “Orbán’s puppets”. The incoming prime minister will govern with the broadest parliamentary mandate in Hungary’s post-communist history — and the constitutional power to undo much of what Orbán built over 16 years.
