What's behind Péter Magyar's ascent from a government insider to Orbán’s top challenger

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar spent most of his professional life moving comfortably within the political world built by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Now, with pivotal elections approaching Sunday and Orbán trailing in most polls, Magyar could become the former insider who brings that system down.

The 45-year-old lawyer and leader of the opposition Tisza party has charted a meteoric political rise since bursting into public view in early 2024. In just two years, he has galvanized large numbers of voters across Hungary who see him as the most credible challenger yet to Orbán’s 16-year grip on power.

Before emerging as the prime minister’s most prominent and effective critic, Magyar spent years inside the governing elite. A member of Orbán’s nationalist-populist Fidesz party since 2002, he moved easily within its political ecosystem, holding senior posts at state-run institutions and rubbing elbows with figures at the center of power.

With two days until the vote, most polls place Tisza with a double-digit lead over Fidesz — a feat no opposition force has achieved since Orbán returned to power in 2010. While some of Magyar’s supporters are wary of his former ties to the ruling party, others believe only someone who has seen Orbán’s system from the inside can bring it down.

The insider

Born in 1981, Magyar has described himself as drawn to politics from an early age. As a child growing up during the final years of communist rule, he admired Orbán and his circle of young liberal democrats who were challenging Soviet domination at the end of the Cold War.

Magyar has said he watched parliamentary debates on television while still in grade school and attended political demonstrations with his parents. Immersed in conservative politics, Magyar joined Fidesz in 2002 at the age of 21, and formed friendships with other rising figures in the party including Gergely Gulyás, who would later become Orbán’s chief of staff.

After graduating with a law degree from a Catholic university in 2003, Magyar began working as a lawyer. In 2006, while Fidesz was in opposition, he provided pro bono legal representation to anti-government demonstrators arrested during violent protests against the then-Socialist government.

That same year, he married fellow lawyer Judit Varga, who would later become one of Orbán’s most prominent ministers. The couple moved to Brussels in 2009, where Varga worked advising a Hungarian member of the European Parliament.

During their years abroad, alongside a stint as a stay-at-home father for their three children, Magyar worked for Hungary's Foreign Ministry and as a diplomat with its permanent representation to the European Union.

After returning to Hungary with his family in 2018, Magyar moved into leadership roles at several state-affiliated institutions. Meanwhile, Varga’s star was rising within Fidesz, and she was appointed justice minister in 2019. Alongside Katalin Novák, an Orbán ally who in 2022 became Hungary’s youngest president and the first woman to hold the office, Varga was widely seen as a possible successor to Orbán.

But a political scandal in 2024 was soon to change Magyar’s personal and political trajectory, and fundamentally transform Hungarian politics.

Pardon scandal

After returning from Brussels, Magyar's relationship with Varga deteriorated, and the couple divorced in 2023.

The following year, Varga was implicated in a scandal that rocked Hungary when it emerged that President Novák had granted a pardon to a convicted accomplice in a child sexual abuse case. The decision shocked the country and led to Novák's resignation, while Varga, who had endorsed the pardon, also stepped down.

The next day, Magyar gave a lengthy interview to the popular Hungarian YouTube channel Partizán in which he publicly broke with Fidesz, accusing Orbán’s government of systemic corruption and operating in the interests of a small circle of political and economic elites.

The interview quickly went viral, drawing more than 2 million views in a country of fewer than 10 million, and transformed Magyar from a relatively obscure insider into a national political figure overnight.

In the weeks that followed, he intensified his criticism of the government and began organizing public events. On March 15, Hungary’s national holiday, he addressed thousands of supporters in Budapest and announced plans to launch a new political movement that would later become the Tisza party.

In June that year, Tisza won 30% of the vote in European Parliament elections, and Magyar became an EU lawmaker.

Not long after his break with the government, Varga accused Magyar of abusive behavior during their marriage. Magyar has denied the allegations, saying they were part of a political campaign to discredit him after he turned against the ruling party.

Tisza's rise

In interviews since entering politics, Magyar has portrayed himself as someone who often voiced dissent even while working within the Fidesz system, saying he regularly expressed criticism and pushed for internal debate.

His rise has energized a broad segment of Hungarian society that, disenchanted with previous generations of fragmented and ineffectual opposition parties, has long sought a viable alternative to Orbán.

Further, while Orbán has campaigned on a myriad external threats facing Hungary, like the war in neighboring Ukraine, Magyar has focused on bread-and-butter issues that affect ordinary Hungarians: inflation, low wages, the deterioration of public health care and transportation, and endemic corruption.

While Magyar has succeeded in mobilizing Orbán critics from across the political spectrum, support for him is not always rooted in ideological alignment. Some liberal voters remain wary of his combative style and conservative views.

Hoping to avoid mistakes by previous opposition leaders who gave Fidesz ammunition for attacks, Magyar has carefully avoided taking firm positions on a number of divisive issues like Orbán's anti-LGBTQ+ policies and whether Hungary should extend more support to Ukraine.

Beyond the substance of his criticism of Orbán’s rule, Magyar has developed a level of political celebrity that, outside Orbán, is rarely seen in Hungarian politics. After his rallies, crowds often surge toward the stage to take selfies with him, waiting patiently as he poses for photos with supporters one by one.

His rapid ascent has become the subject of a documentary film released in Hungarian cinemas this year. “Spring Wind — The Awakening,” which has topped the box offices, follows Magyar’s journey from a relatively unknown inside to the political star now taking on Orbán's regime.