Who is Viktor Orbán, the politician who angers Europe

Most opinion polls ahead of the April 12 parliamentary elections give an advantage to his opponent, former associate Peter Magar.

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Viktor Orban, Photo: AFP via Getty Images

Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

06.04.2026. 21:19h

No current leader in the European Union has led a country for as long as Viktor Orban.

But after 16 years, he faces his toughest challenge yet.

Most public opinion polls ahead of the parliamentary elections on April 12th give an advantage to his opponent, former associate Peter Magar.

Since 2010, Orban has transformed Hungary into what the European Parliament has condemned as a "hybrid regime of electoral autocracy."

He himself seems unsure how to describe his own creation, defining it as "illiberal democracy" and "Christian freedom."

His allies in US President Donald Trump's MAGA movement (Make America Great Again - Make America Great Again) they call it "national conservatism".

Orban has repeatedly clashed with European Union colleagues over the war in Ukraine, blocking vital funding for Kiev, which he accuses of trying to push Hungary into war with Russia.

Yet it has powerful international allies.

He is considered Vladimir Putin's strongest partner in the EU, and was supported by US President Donald Trump in his candidacy for a fifth consecutive term.

His closest allies within the EU come from the radical and extreme right.

The prime minister's antagonism towards Brussels continues to play into the hands of many Hungarians, but Orban has become an increasingly lonely figure among EU leaders seeking European unity in response to the war in Ukraine.

His foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, recently admitted that he shared details of EU meetings with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, but called the talks “everyday diplomacy.”

"Orban and his foreign minister left Europe a long time ago," noted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Orban's charisma has undoubtedly been an ingredient in his success, but polls show that many supporters of his Fidesz party have grown tired of him and the corruption allegations that have been circulating around his party.

Orban appeared agitated when he was booed during a campaign speech in March in the northwestern city of Győr.

It was a very different Orban from the man whose former football coach once praised his ability to “think on the ball.”

"Man of Chaos," is how András Kossa titled his biography of Viktor Orbán, suggesting that he has a way of presenting himself as the only solution to the chaos created by others.

Orban was the leader who rolled up his sleeves and stacked sandbags alongside firefighters and volunteers when toxic red sludge from a bauxite mine engulfed a Hungarian valley and threatened the banks of the Danube in 2010.

Orban, now 62, first came to attention as a law student in Budapest in the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union began to collapse.

Orban founded the political movement Fidesz, or the Alliance of Young Democrats.

"If we believe in our own power, we are capable of ending the communist dictatorship," he told about a quarter of a million Hungarians during a bold seven-minute speech.

They gathered in the city's Heroes' Square for the reburial of Imre Nagy, the man behind the failed uprising in Hungary in 1956.

Looking back on those words 10 years later, he said that they had "uncovered everyone's silent desire for free elections and an independent and democratic Hungary."

The democracy that replaced authoritarian Soviet rule has changed dramatically under Orbán, who, in the words of Hungarian-born journalist Paul Lendvai, has gone “from one of the most promising defenders of Hungarian democracy to the main author of its downfall.”

Professor András Bozoky, a former minister of culture, describes Hungary since 2010 as “the only former consolidated liberal democracy in the EU that has reached the level of an undemocratic system as a hybrid regime.”

Football - a childhood love

Viktor Orbán was born in 1963 in Székesfehérvár, an hour's drive west of Budapest.

He is the eldest of three sons whose father was an agricultural engineer and member of the Communist Party, and whose mother was a teacher.

They had no running water in the family home in Felchut, a village of fewer than 2.000 people where he still has a house.

In an interview from 1989, he recalled that his father, Gjozo, beat him twice a year and described him as a violent man.

"When he beat me, he would scream. I remember it all as a very bad experience."

Nothing about his childhood suggested that he would go on to challenge the communist regime.

He attended high school and was involved in the League of Communists.

His main interest was football, playing for the local club - FK Felčut.

The love from his childhood has remained with him to this day.

There, in 2014, he opened the controversial new stadium 'Pančo Arena', where the Puškas Academy team plays in front of several hundred spectators.

Months before he went to college, he served his military service, where, he says, he refused an offer from the communist secret services to become an informant.

He was 23 years old when he married his colleague Aniko Levai, whom he met at university.

They have five children, four daughters and a son, Gaspar, who was trained by the British Army at Sandhurst and serves as an officer in the Hungarian army in Chad.

The official biography, published on Prime Minister Orban's website, states that he is the founder of the Federation of Young Democrats, which would later, under his leadership, become the Hungarian Civic Alliance (FIDES), the ruling party in Hungary.

He was elected Prime Minister in 1990, beginning Hungary's transition to multi-party democracy.

At 35, he became the youngest prime minister in Europe.

After speaking in 1989 to a crowd at Heroes' Square, he went on to briefly study liberal political philosophy at Oxford.

His scholarship was funded by Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, against whom Orban would turn years later.

After a few months, he left his studies to campaign in the 1990 elections, when Fidesz won 22 seats.

Viktor Orban was at the top of the party list.

Friends from his student days became key members of Fidesz, and his college principal, Istvan Stumpf, took on the role of his chief of staff during Orbán's first term as prime minister from 1998 to 2002.

As a young MP, Orban and his party joined the global Liberal International movement in 1992.

Political scientist Zoltan Lackner believes he changed his ideology during the second half of the 1990s.

Since Hungary was ruled by a liberal-socialist coalition, he realized that "to achieve political success it was necessary to turn his back on liberalism and transform the party into a nationalist, anti-liberal political force."

Perhaps the seeds of his turnaround had already been sown in Oxford.

During the few months he spent at Pembroke College, he became friends with the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton.

Or maybe it was more about political opportunism.

Orban became leader of Fidesz in 1993 and was already pushing it towards the center-right when the conservative MDF lost power in 1994.

Fidesz filled the void left by the weakened conservatives.

Peter Rona, an Oxford economist and former candidate for president of Hungary, describes a meeting in the early 1990s where Orban said he wanted to create a “modern conservative party.”

When Peter Rona warned him that previous politicians who tried the same thing quickly abandoned “modernity” when circumstances demanded it, Orban replied: “So be it.”

Orban was elected leader of Fidesz in 1993 and changed its ideological orientation to the right.

After the 1998 elections, he became prime minister at the head of a center-right coalition government.

That same government led Hungary into NATO and managed to reduce inflation in the country, while maintaining economic growth.

His reputation was tarnished by corruption scandals and his image as a "destructive factor", so after his first term he ended up in the opposition, where he would spend the next eight years.

After two electoral defeats (in 2002 and 2006), the Fidesz leader learned his lesson.

The defeat in 2002 particularly changed him.

"A nation cannot be defeated," he told supporters, as he tried to digest the results of the vote that went against him.

After 2002, Viktor Orbán befriended Arpad Haboni, a martial arts instructor and businessman, whom he considered a personal guru.

Haboni has remained Orbán's trusted ally and a component in the business empire that supports Fidesz, but is rarely seen in public.

In a turbulent period of economic crisis, Orban returned to power in 2010 and has not lost since.

Over the past 16 years, he has transformed Hungary through a series of changes to its laws and constitution, winning four consecutive elections - all four times convincingly, with two-thirds of the members of parliament.

In an attempt to secure Orbán's political legacy, more than 40 laws have been passed, reshaping state institutions, the economy, electoral laws, and the media.

The economy has been stabilized, public finances have been secured, and EU funds have arrived.

However, expensive state projects have been placed in the hands of Orban's inner circle, which includes his childhood friend and son-in-law.

Fidesz and its supporters have gradually taken control of Hungary's media landscape, replacing foreign investors, Hungarian media monitor Mertek reported.

Almost all “Orban-friendly media” transferred ownership rights to a foundation called Kesma in 2018, whose board included a Fidesz MP and the head of a Fidesz-friendly think tank, Mertek claims.

For several years, the organization Transparency International (Transparency International) designates Hungary as the most corrupt country in the EU.

The European Parliament, in both 2018 and 2025, warned of ongoing threats to the rule of law.

Billions of euros in EU funds for Hungary have since been frozen.

The EU has been one of Orban's several targets in recent years.

His latest clash with EU leaders came after a Hungarian veto blocked 90 billion euros from the European bloc's fund for Ukraine.

Sandor Cintalan, a former ally and critic of Orban, spoke of a “constant need to radicalize,” which distinguishes him from other European conservatives.

Ukraine has become another key issue for the long-time Hungarian leader, whose previous targets included George Soros and migrants.

Political consultants George Birnbaum and Arthur Finkelstein gave Orban the idea in 2013 to make an enemy of Soros.

"Soros was a good target," Birnbaum explained, "because enough people in Hungary didn't like the idea that this billionaire... like the 'Wizard of Oz,' was controlling politics and justice, behind the curtain."

Orban accused civil society groups funded by Soros of "trying to influence Hungarian politics secretly and with foreign money."

A poster campaign condemned by critics as anti-Semitic It was aimed at the philanthropist, although Orban managed to point to his support for Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dismiss the accusations.

The Central European University, founded by Soros in 1991, when Hungary embraced democracy, was forced to move most of its activities to Vienna in 2019.

In July 2015, as refugees and illegal migrants were entering the EU in increasing numbers across Hungary's borders, Orbán drew "a clear link between illegal immigrants coming to Europe and the spread of terrorism."

The solution is clear, he said.

"We want to preserve Europe for Europeans and preserve Hungary for Hungarians," he said.

A fence has been erected on the border with Serbia and new laws have been introduced that criminalize migrants.

The 2018 “Stop Soros” law criminalized those who aided illegal migrants, and the EU’s Supreme Court ruled that Budapest had failed to meet its obligations under EU law.

Ahead of the April 12 vote, Ukraine has become a focus of Orbán's campaign, accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of blocking Hungary's oil supplies and his opponents of wanting to hand over Hungarian money to Kiev.

While he could rely on Trump and Putin for political support, his claim to be protecting Hungary from war-making leaders is becoming increasingly shaky.

Orban has not suffered an electoral defeat since 2006.

Despite the support of both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, he now faces the biggest test of his political career.

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