Who is Péter Magyar, who defeated Viktor Orbán?

Péter Magyar. Photo: AP Photo / Darko Bandic

Shortly after the closing of polling stations in Hungary's parliamentary elections, it became clear that Magyar's Tisza party was significantly ahead of Orbán's Fidesz. Orbán himself conceded defeat and congratulated his opponent just two hours after voting ended.

BBC provides a detailed account of Péter Magyar.

Elite Childhood

Péter Magyar — incidentally, his surname indeed means "Hungarian" in Hungarian — was born on March 16, 1981, in Budapest into a family that could confidently be called the elite of Hungarian society.

Magyar's grandfather was Pál Eörsi — a Supreme Court judge in Hungary and a prominent media figure in the country during the 1970s and 80s. Pál was a TV star, hosting the popular show "Legal Affairs," which aired for years on state television. Eörsi's analysis of real court cases became part of the mass culture of the time; he was recognized on the streets and considered one of the country's most influential lawyers.

Péter Magyar's godfather was his grandmother's brother, Ferenc Mádl, a professor of law at one of Budapest's universities. He would later join the Fidesz party and serve as President of Hungary from 2000 to 2005.

Magyar's parents were also lawyers. It's therefore not surprising that Péter himself went on to study law at university.

But before that, Magyar graduated from the elite Piarist Catholic School in central Budapest. It was there, as Magyar would much later recount in an interview with BBC correspondent Nick Thorpe, that he first crossed paths with Viktor Orbán.

Either in 1996 or 1997, the leader of the rising Fidesz party visited Magyar's school and spoke to its students. Péter himself even managed to ask Orbán a question: why was he, who until recently had been known as a liberal politician, visibly "shifting to the right"? Orbán then replied with Churchill's words, suggesting that it's normal to have left-wing political views in youth and become a conservative in adulthood. Orbán's answer convinced the young Magyar.

While still a student at Péter Pázmány Catholic University, Magyar, along with his then-friend György Gulyás, were so upset by Orbán's defeat in the 2002 parliamentary elections that they joined his Fidesz party in solidarity.

Today, György Gulyás serves as Viktor Orbán's Chief of Staff and is considered one of the most powerful people in the country. He and Magyar do not communicate.

And in 2005, it was at a party organized by the young lecturer Gulyás that Péter Magyar met 25-year-old Judit Varga, a law graduate from the University of Miskolc, who was interning at a Budapest firm.

They married the following year, and in 2009, the couple moved to Brussels: Varga was appointed as an assistant to Hungarian MEP János Áder. In 2012, Áder was elected President of Hungary, but Varga remained in Brussels, working in the offices of other Hungarian MEPs.

During this time, Magyar was initially on paternity leave and then worked in minor positions within the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its representation to the EU.

Péter and Judit

Magyar observed the astonishing changes in Hungarian politics — Viktor Orbán's return to power in 2010, his constitutional changes in 2011, the beginning of the curtailment of democracy — from Brussels. He later recounted that he initially viewed the centralization of power and Orbán's "tightening of the screws" quite positively: after eight years of rule by a left-liberal coalition and the severe blow to the Hungarian economy from the 2008 crisis, the country needed a firm hand. The realization that Orbán was essentially taking the country under his personal control came to him much later.

Péter Magyar and his family — by then he and Judit Varga had three sons — returned to Budapest in 2018, when Varga was offered the position of State Secretary for European Union Affairs in Viktor Orbán's administration.

The following year, Magyar's wife was promoted: she was appointed Minister of Justice, with her competencies continuing to include Hungary's relations with the EU. Some observers suggested that Varga was part of a narrow circle of Fidesz top officials who could be considered possible successors to Viktor Orbán.

During this time, Péter Magyar held important positions in various state and state-affiliated institutions: he headed the EU Law Directorate at a state bank and was CEO of the Student Loan Center.

Magyar repeatedly tried to secure higher positions in power, but without success, Politico reports.

"He was always rejected because he was too ambitious and independent," the publication quotes Miklós Sukösd, a political scientist from the University of Copenhagen who researched Magyar's phenomenon. "His ambitions were unfulfilled, and this imbalance created frustration."

In March 2023, Péter Magyar and Judit Varga announced their divorce. "Our marriage was tense on both sides," he would later say in an interview with The Guardian.

The Landmark Interview

Around the same time, in April 2023, President Katalin Novák signed a pardon for Endre Konya, a former deputy director of an orphanage in Bicske. Two years earlier, he and his boss had been sentenced to imprisonment: the director of the orphanage for pedophilia, and Konya for attempting to cover up crimes and pressuring the victims.

Information about the pardon came to light in early February 2024 and shocked not only Orbán's opponents but also many supporters of his Fidesz party — a right-wing, conservative force advocating for traditional values.

Initially, the authorities tried to hush up the scandal, but after a series of critical publications in the media and a protest outside the presidential palace, Katalin Novák announced her resignation live on television.

Judit Varga immediately announced her departure from politics: in 2023, she had countersigned the presidential pardon for Konya, making her formally implicated in the decision.

Less than an hour and a half after Novák's resignation announcement, a post appeared on Péter Magyar's Facebook page, which had been updated quite rarely until then, stating his resignation from positions in state-owned companies for "non-professional reasons."

"I do not want to be part of a system for a single minute where the real leaders hide behind women's skirts… I long believed in the idea of a national, sovereign, civic Hungary […], but today I had to finally realize that all this is in fact only a beautiful shell that serves two purposes: to hide the work of the power machine and to ensure the accumulation of colossal wealth," the post read.

The next day, Péter Magyar appeared on the independent YouTube channel Partizan.

An almost two-hour interview transformed him from a politician not even of the second, but of the third tier within the Fidesz party, into a national hero, embodying Hungarian society's search for new leaders who would differ from the "old oppositionists" suffering from a deep ideological crisis.

"To work for the benefit of the country"

The number of views for this video quickly reached two million — a fantastic result for a ten-million-strong Hungary.

In this interview, no specific accusations were made: Magyar spoke more about the viciousness and corruptness of the Hungarian power system itself. But this was already a sensation for a country where the sins of the system were spoken of by ardent oppositionists or, at best, independent media.

Magyar, however, sounded not like a revolutionary, but like a disillusioned insider — a man who knows how the Hungarian power system works, how politics intertwines with special services and business, and who can no longer live in this incorrect system of coordinates.

In short, the interview caused a furore.

"The first two weeks [after this interview] were horrible because I lost everything, I just stopped everything in my life… It was a very negative period. But it only lasted two weeks. Then another story began," Magyar recalled later.

A kind of "trial run" for Magyar was March 15 of the same year, when Hungary celebrated Freedom Day. Magyar called on his compatriots to gather for a rally on one of Budapest's central avenues that day.

"According to estimates, the number of those gathered was 30,000 people – more than any opposition party had managed to gather in one place in recent years," the independent publication Telex described the scale of the event, which was unexpected even for Magyar himself.

At this rally, Magyar announced that he intended to create his own political party, which "all Hungarians of good will who wish to work for the benefit of their country" could join.

Accusations of Violence

But even before fulfilling his promise, in late March 2024, Péter Magyar published a recording from January 2023, two months before his divorce from Judit Varga, of a kitchen conversation with his wife.

In the conversation, Varga, who was not warned that she was being recorded, tells her husband about the prosecution "cleaning up" some sensitive documents in an important corruption case. The then-acting Minister of Justice openly admitted that the Hungarian government had turned into a mafia-like system from which it was impossible to simply exit.

In a documentary filmed much later, Magyar stated that in 2023 he made this recording as an insurance policy in case he and Varga fell out of favor with the regime, Politico wrote.

The recording gave Orbán's opponents additional arguments for the assertion of the fundamental depravity of the state power system he had built: serious abuses were known at its very top, but nothing was done about them, or nothing could be done.

Immediately after the recording's publication, Judit Varga stated that her ex-husband had been blackmailing her with the disclosure of their conversation for a year.

"Now he used [the recording] to achieve his political goals. Such a person deserves no trust… This was done by a man to whom I bore three sons… to whom I lovingly and hopefully gave countless chances to start over during terrible years of violent relations," she wrote on Facebook.

Varga's accusations of physical abuse by her ex-husband were picked up by the pro-government press. Orbán's main propaganda mouthpiece, the newspaper Magyar Nemzet, dedicated a lengthy article to Magyar under the headline "Snot-nosed," calling him, among other things, a "zero" who achieved everything in life thanks to his wife, who ultimately left him.

Three days after the scandal began, Péter Magyar responded to Varga's accusations.

In a Facebook post, he did not deny that their 18-year relationship had its ups and downs, but, he wrote, "I never raised a hand against the mother of my children, while she did against me — many times, with fists and feet, sometimes with witnesses, sometimes behind closed doors." Magyar also separately declared a smear campaign launched against him by the authorities.

In any case, this whole situation gave the authorities an opportunity to reduce the information hype around Magyar to tabloid news.

In response to a question about his attitude towards Magyar at the time, Viktor Orbán quipped: "I am engaged in governing the state, not soap operas."

And generally, back then, in the spring of 2024, it seemed that the Hungarian authorities had made a strategic decision to simply ignore this "upstart," banking on his popularity fading as quickly as he had unexpectedly risen to fame.

"One longtime Fidesz insider described Magyar's time in the public spotlight as a 'three-day affair'," The Guardian wrote then.

The Origins of "Tisza"

Meanwhile, Péter Magyar, as promised, acquired his own party. Observers in Budapest mention that he initially considered creating a political force from scratch. But timing played against such a scenario: elections to the European Parliament were due to take place in early June 2024. Magyar, who was rapidly gaining popularity, intended to participate, but he physically didn't have enough time to create a full-fledged party by then.

Therefore, in early April 2024, Péter Magyar announced that he and his supporters would run for parliament under the "Respect and Freedom" party (Hungarian abbreviation — TISZA), a marginal political force registered four years earlier, which Hungarian media called "the party of two people."

It was indeed founded by elderly friends from the resort town of Eger, and Tisza's entire activity before Magyar joined its ranks consisted of its leaders driving around the country in a van painted with Hungarian flags and posting amateur videos of their travels on YouTube.

Magyar told journalists that he had been negotiating with several parties, and a significant factor in Tisza's favor was its name, which, according to him, "has a positive and joyful connotation in Hungarian culture and history."

For Hungarians, the Tisza is not just a river; it is a systemic waterway of their state, an element of national identity, much like the Dnieper for Ukrainians or the Vistula for Poles. In light of the fact that after 1920, part of the formerly Hungarian lands through which the Tisza flows ended up outside the modern state, this river has, to some extent, become a symbol of memory, of nostalgia for a lost past.

In any case, a few days after joining Tisza's leadership, Magyar announced the start of team recruitment and a major pre-election tour across the country.

The First Elections

When Budapest observers speak of the main factor in Magyar's success, they, of course, mention the simple fatigue of Hungarian society from Viktor Orbán's long years in power. But even a few years ago, Orbán was, by European standards, a veteran of state governance, yet the opposition then could not challenge him.

Magyar, Hungarian experts say, is distinguished by his diligence and persistence. The main "feature" of his election campaign, both for the current parliamentary elections and for the European Parliament elections in 2024, is an extensive tour of cities and villages, during which Magyar could hold four, five, or even six meetings with voters daily.

In Magyar's case, it wasn't just about demonstrating closeness to ordinary people. Viktor Orbán was considered the political master of the hearts of the absolute majority of residents in the Hungarian provinces, and Magyar and his associates were initially not even sure whether people in small towns and villages would come to meet a man who called himself an opponent of the incumbent prime minister.

"And so we go to Gyula (a city with a population of about 30,000 people). This was supposed to be the first speech of our tour, and then a comrade calls me: you won't believe it, about a thousand people have gathered near the castle. It was a good feeling, I tell you," Magyar later recounted to BBC journalist Nick Thorpe.

Inseparable attributes of these rallies were Magyar's speech, answers to spontaneous questions from the audience, obligatory photos with volunteers. "I think I am the person captured in the most selfies in Hungarian history," the politician said in the same interview. And the indispensable "Spring Wind," which he performed together with hundreds of supporters at every rally.

The campaign of an absolutely marginal party, which just two months ago was practically led single-handedly by a politician unknown until a few months ago, ended in incredible success. In the June elections, Tisza received almost 30% of the votes and sent seven of its representatives to the European Parliament, led by Péter Magyar himself.

It was already clear then that Tisza's "next stop" would be the 2026 parliamentary elections, and Magyar's goal would be the position of prime minister of the country.

New Campaign

The Tisza leader started his new election tour last year. He held several meetings a day in the exact same manner – sometimes in such remote places where not even MEPs, let alone local council deputies, always visited.

And again, Magyar's trump card was clearly structured speeches – maximum attention to economic, social, and infrastructural problems, areas where Viktor Orbán cannot boast of particular successes.

Special attention is paid to the fight against corruption, especially since recent journalistic investigations provide Magyar with a great playing field against the incumbent prime minister. Broad strokes are used for foreign policy, on which Viktor Orbán built his campaign.

Tisza's views on the future structure of the country are collected in an impressively sized — 240 pages — election program titled "Foundations of a Functional and Humane Hungary." Magyar's supporters call it a comprehensive strategy that provides answers to practically any question regarding the policy of the future government, while opponents joke that such a voluminous and verbose document could only have come "from the pen" of artificial intelligence.

Nevertheless, it is somewhat paradoxical that the greatest chances of defeating Orbán – a conservative, nationalist, ideological ally of Donald Trump – were given not to an ideological opponent of the current Hungarian leader, but to a product of his own party, a supporter of decidedly right-wing political views.

Magyar advocates a strict migration policy, expresses himself very cautiously regarding the rights of the LGBT community; in short, ideologically, he positions himself as a bearer of the values of the true "Fidesz" he joined in 2002, not the party Viktor Orbán transformed it into.

For the current elections, Magyar presented a team largely composed of people from big business – these individuals are intended to form the core of Hungary's future technocratic government.

In conditions of total dominance of propaganda media in the field of "traditional" media, Magyar and his supporters challenged the authorities in social networks – and, according to Budapest sources of the BBC, won this battle against Orbán's team.

But, of course, the main factor in Magyar's success is the hope for change that hundreds of thousands of his compatriots harbor. Hence, the unification around his figure of supporters of various ideologies and beliefs, who sometimes only agree that to further develop Hungary, it is vitally necessary to change its leader, and then, they say, we'll sort it out. Hence, the unprecedented network in the country's political history of "Tisza islands" – local volunteer cells that sustain Magyar's campaign in the regions.

Of course, a separate question is how realistic it is to implement the fundamental changes in all spheres of the country's life promised by Magyar.

Viktor Orbán, in 16 years of governance, has literally cemented Hungary's political system.

Similarly, by the way, it remains an open question whether Kyiv's hopes that Ukrainian-Hungarian relations will emerge from their current deep crisis after Péter Magyar comes to power will be realized.

On the one hand, Budapest experts interviewed say that in the realm of foreign policy, Prime Minister Magyar will focus on improving Budapest's badly damaged relations with Brussels and returning Hungary to the European political mainstream, which currently involves maximum support for Ukraine.

Also important here is the fact that Magyar visited Ukraine in 2024 shortly after the Russian attack on the Okhmatdyt children's hospital and even met its director, visited Bucha, and the memorial to fallen defenders of Ukraine.

On the other hand, Hungarian society is currently overly agitated by anti-Ukrainian propaganda, which Viktor Orbán made the basis of his campaign, and Péter Magyar will inevitably have to take this into account.

"Asked if a Magyar-led Hungary would drop its veto on a €90 billion EU credit (for Ukraine), a source familiar with Tisza’s position said it would ultimately depend on public opinion," Politico wrote the other day.

"We are not to christen children with him"

Finally, another trait of Péter Magyar that observers from Budapest and beyond Hungary point out is his "Teflon" quality. None of the numerous accusations produced by the authorities, no potentially scandalous situation into which he is forced or falls by his own will, affects his ratings or harms him politically.

"The authorities call him a traitor to his family, his party, his homeland. It has no effect on him," says one of our interlocutors.

The authorities even tried to open a criminal case against him. In June 2024, shortly after his triumphant European Parliament elections, in a Budapest nightclub, Magyar — likely intoxicated — snatched a phone from a person trying to film him dancing and threw it into the Danube.

The Prosecutor General of Hungary then initiated proceedings to prosecute Magyar, while the politician himself stated that law enforcement agencies should rather investigate corruption cases involving government officials with such promptness and persistence.

As a result, the European Parliament refused to strip Magyar of his parliamentary immunity, and the potential case against him came to nothing.

Apparently, even after this, the authorities' attempts to "get to" Magyar did not stop. In February of this year, he warned his supporters that the authorities were preparing a "Russian-style smear operation" against him – the publication of an "intimate moment" of Magyar with his ex-girlfriend. "Yes, I am a 45-year-old man, I have a sex life," he wrote then on social media X. However, the "announced" video by Magyar was never published.

However, there are plenty of reproaches against Magyar, and not only from Orbán's camp. One of Magyar's former employees calls him stubborn. Péter Márki-Zay, the mayor of Hódmezővásárhely, who unsuccessfully led the united opposition in the 2022 parliamentary elections, describes him as arrogant and egoistic.

Entrepreneur Dezső Farkas, a former associate of Magyar who began building the Tisza party with him but later stepped aside, complained to Politico that the startup culture with which his team began was turning into a toxic atmosphere that increasingly resembled the Fidesz from which Magyar emerged.

Finally, observers already note that Magyar communicates very selectively with the media, forbidding all members of his team from giving interviews – only some of them are allowed to give concise comments to journalists.

On the other hand, "we are not to marry him," Péter Márki-Zay tells Politico.

"We just need someone who will leave Orbán in the past," he concludes.

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