When Viktor Orbán moved to ban Budapest Pride, it wasn’t the prime minister’s most prominent challenger who pushed back — it was the capital’s mayor, 50-year-old Gergely Karácsony.
Péter Magyar, the rising opposition star aiming to unseat the increasingly authoritarian Hungarian prime minister, stayed silent, wary of alienating conservative voters. Karácsony took the opposite approach. He declared that Budapest would host the march as a municipal event, using a legal workaround to sidestep the government’s attempt to shut it down. The gambit paid off: More than 300,000 people filled the city center in the largest Pride parade in Hungarian history — a public rebuke that left Orbán’s government momentarily muted and forced senior officials to concede the fight was lost.
The victory came with a cost. The government turned its fire on Budapest, imposing extra taxes on the city council. Karácsony is now hoping that if Magyar succeeds in toppling Orbán in an election expected to be held early next year, he will have a friendlier face in the prime minister’s office. Whatever the outcome, Karácsony has already positioned himself as his country’s foremost defender of liberal values — and signaled he intends to stay in the fight.
Check out the full 10 to Watch list, the POLITICO 28: Class of 2026, and read the Letter from the Editors for an explanation of the thinking behind the ranking.
