Theresa Seybold

 

On 12 April 2026, Hungary’s Fidesz party lost power for the first time in sixteen years. Péter Magyar’s TISZA party won a two-thirds constitutional supermajority (141 of 199 seats) in an election with the highest turnout since 1989, ending Viktor Orbán’s rule and installing Magyar as prime minister on 9 May 2016 (Al Jazeera, 2026). The scale of the mandate is historically unusual. As constitutional scholar Renáta Uitz notes, TISZA secured a constitution-making majority that neither Joe Biden after Trump’s first tern, nor Lula after Bolsonaro, nor Donald Tusk after PiS in Poland ever possessed (Uitz, 2026).

Orbán resigned his parliamentary seat, ending thirty-six years of continuous service, but was re-elected unopposed as Fidesz party leader in June 2026, receiving 729 of 737 delegate votes (Bloomberg, 2026; CNN, 2026). The party is nonetheless described by insiders as facing an “existential crisis”, with support collapsing to roughly 17-20 percent against TISZA’s 55-70 percent in successive polls and internal discussions reportedly extending to rebranding or outright dissolution (Euronews, 2026a).

The government’s most consequential early move targeted President Tamás Sulyok, a former Constitutional Court chief nominated by Fidesz in 2024. Magyar declared Sulyok “unworthy to embody the unity of the Hungarian nation,” and after Sulyok declined to resign, parliament passed the seventeenth amendment to the Fundamental Law on 13 July 2026 by 139 votes to 6, ending his term the following day (Euronews, 2026b). Amnesty International has criticized the procedure, arguing that Sulyok’s removal bypassed the fair process guarantees a sitting head of state should be entitled to, while Human Rights Watch has separately warned that the pace of constitutional change is itself corrosive to the rule of law, regardless of its stated aims (as cited in Chronicles Magazine, 2026).

Beyond the presidency, TISZA’s legislative package has targeted core elements of Orbán’s constitutional order, including repeal of the Sovereignty Protection Office and introduction of an eighty-year term limit on the premiership (Uitz, ConstitutionNet, 26 May 2026). A related amendment restricting eligibility for the premiership, widely read as aimed at barring Orbán from returning to office, drew objection even from within the reform process itself on grounds of retroactivity, before TISZA revised the wording after backlash (Daily News Hungary, 26 May 2026).

Assessments diverge sharply. Freedom House-convened experts frame the victory as a genuine opportunity for democratic revitalization, while cautioning that “Orbán used a similar mandate to entrench autocracy,” so the new government “must offer a fundamentally different model of governance” (Kovács, in Freedom House, 28 April 2026). Political theorist framings invoking Bruce Ackerman’s concept of a “constitutional moment” describe the outcome more optimistically as a possible model for reversing backsliding elsewhere (Dissent, 4 May 2026). By contrast, Human Rights Watch has warned that the government’s “rushed constitutional changes undermine the rule of law” (cited in Chronicles, 21 July 2026) and Fidesz-aligned MEPs have accused the European Commission of inconsistency for withholding the criticism it once directed at Orbán despite comparable concerns over “retroactive constitutional changes” and “restrictions on political competition” (Hungary Today, 15 July 2026). More polemical commentary has gone further, characterizing the amendments as a “constitutional coup” (European Conservative, July 2026), a framing that should be read as an explicitly partisan assessment rather than a consensus scholarly judgement, but one that nonetheless signals genuine unease about the precedent a supermajority-enabled removal of a sitting sets, regardless of who wields it.

Hungary’s post 2026 trajectory therefore poses an open end empirical and normative question for democratization research whether a government elected to reverse backsliding can dismantle an illiberal order without reproducing the same majoritarian shortcuts that built it.

 

Sources:

Al Jazeera. (2026, May 9). Peter Magyar sworn in as Hungary’s PM, ending Orban’s 16 years in power. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/9/peter-magyar-sworn-in-as-hungarys-pm-ending-orbans-16-years-in-power.

Bloomberg. (2026, June 13). Orban retains Fidesz leadership despite historic election loss. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-13/orban-retains-fidesz-leadership-despite-historic-election-loss.

Chronicles Magazine. (2026, July 21). Democratic backslide in Hungary. https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/democratic-backslide-in-hungary/.

CNN. (2026, June 13). Viktor Orbán re-elected as Fidesz party leader in Hungary despite election loss. https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/13/europe/hungary-viktor-orban-fidesz-reelection-intl.

Daily News Hungary. (2026, May 26). Tisza backtracks on constitutional amendment after Fidesz backlash over ‘Christian culture’ clause. https://dailynewshungary.com/tisza-constitutional-amendment-fidesz/.

Dissent Magazine. (2026, May 4). A constitutional moment in Hungary? https://dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/hungary-orban-magyar-constitution-tisza/.

Euronews. (2026a, August 27). Fidesz weighs a future without Orbán and even dissolution after historic defeat. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/27/fidesz-weighs-a-future-without-orban-and-even-dissolution-after-historic-defeat.

Euronews. (2026b, July 13). Hungarian parliament removes President Tamás Sulyok from office. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/07/13/hungarian-parliament-removes-president-tamas-sulyok-from-office.

European Conservative. (2026, July). The constitutional coup and the building of an authoritarian regime in Hungary. https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/hungary-constitutional-coup-building-of-authoritarian-regime-magyar-tisza/.

Freedom House. (2026, April 28). After the election: Revitalizing Hungarian democracy, and lessons from the opposition victory. https://freedomhouse.org/article/after-election-revitalizing-hungarian-democracy-and-lessons-opposition-victory.

Hungary Today. (2026, July 15). MEPs accuse European Commission of silence over TISZA government measures. https://hungarytoday.hu/meps-accuse-european-commission-of-silence-over-tisza-government-measures/.

Uitz, R. (2026, May 26). Out of illiberal Christian democracy: Hungary’s prospects for constitutional resettlement. ConstitutionNet. https://constitutionnet.org/news/voices/out-illiberal-christian-democracy-hungarys-prospects-constitutional-resettlement.