BUDAPEST, Hungary — Péter Magyar’s Tisza party won 138 of Hungary’s 199 parliamentary seats, toppling Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and ending Fidesz’s 16-year hold on power, according to official seat results. The two-thirds majority gives Tisza room to rewrite laws, confront entrenched Orbán loyalists and try to repair Hungary’s ties with the European Union, April 12.
In an election-night profile of Magyar, Reuters described a campaign that turned public anger over corruption, stagnant living standards and exhausted opposition politics into the first decisive defeat of Orbán’s era. Orbán conceded after turnout climbed to about 80%, transforming what had been billed as his toughest test into a clear transfer of power.
Hungary election result gives Tisza room to govern
The supermajority matters because earlier opposition surges in Hungary never secured the numbers needed to unwind Orbán-era legal and institutional changes. Tisza now has the parliamentary strength to move faster than past challengers, though that does not guarantee frictionless change in courts, regulators and other parts of the state shaped during years of Fidesz rule.
In remarks reported by The Associated Press, Magyar said he wants parliament convened quickly and hopes to take office as prime minister as early as May 5. He also promised to restore the rule of law, create ministries for health, education and the environment, and rebuild state institutions so they can operate more independently.
How the Hungary election became winnable
The scale of Sunday’s result makes more sense in a longer timeline. In April 2022, Orbán won a fourth straight landslide and another two-thirds majority. But that sense of permanence began to crack after the pardon scandal that forced President Katalin Novák to resign in February 2024. By June 2024, Tisza had surged to 30% in the European Parliament vote, a sign that opposition energy was concentrating behind a single challenger rather than splintering again.
That sequence matters because Sunday’s upset did not appear from nowhere. It grew out of a year in which Fidesz lost some of its aura of invulnerability, Magyar used his insider credentials to attack the system from inside Orbán’s former camp, and frustrated voters began treating Tisza as a governing alternative rather than a protest vehicle.
What comes next after the Hungary election
As Reuters reported in its first assessment of the economic and diplomatic fallout, the new government faces immediate pressure to pass anti-corruption and judicial reforms if it wants to unlock frozen EU money and steady a weak economy. That is likely to become the first real test of whether campaign promises can turn into administrative change.
Even with a commanding mandate, Orbán’s defeat does not automatically dissolve the political architecture he built over 16 years. But the question in Hungary has changed: it is no longer whether Orbán could be beaten, but how far a Tisza government can go in dismantling the system he leaves behind.
