Magyar’s Tisza party has led the polls for months with a widening margin over Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party. However, Tisza has systematically avoided the ban on Budapest Pride, as it has the wider topic of LGBTQ+ rights and identity politics, as it works to build a broad majority to snatch power from Orbán in the upcoming April 2026 election.
“We refuse to walk into Orbán’s trap. We will not be used in a culture-war provocation designed to divide society and distract from the collapse of public services and the soaring cost of living. A Tisza-led government, of course, would not undermine the freedom of assembly,” Magyar’s right-hand man, MEP Zoltán Tarr, told POLITICO.
“We want our fellow MEPs to understand that the only way to minimize the benefit to Orbán and maximize the benefit for Hungary is to avoid falling into his trap. He wants a moral outrage show so he can say: ‘Brussels is attacking Hungary again.’ But this isn’t about values in the abstract, it’s about very concrete harm to Hungarian citizens,” he added.
Culture war
With a far-right surge sweeping the continent, accompanied by wider backtracking on sexual and gender self-identification rights, the organizers see the parade as a chance to show the world there is more to Hungary than Orbán’s illiberal government.
“Symbolically, it’s so good, I think, that we can show that Budapest is free and Hungarians are not equal to the government of Hungary,” said Richárd Barabás, co-chair of Mayor Karácsony’s Green Party Párbeszéd. The Pride parade “will be a common stand-up against the oppressive regime of Viktor Orbán … Far beyond Pride itself or the curtailing of the rights of the LGBTQI community, I think it’s about Europe, it’s about the rule of law, and it’s about our core values as Europeans.”
Hungary, with its far-right government led by Fidesz, has led the charge against the continent’s liberal approach to civil rights and sexual and gender freedoms. In recent years, Orbán has adopted rhetoric styled after the conservative MAGA movement in the U.S., becoming the European firebrand of a global charge against “gender ideology” and “woke culture.”