Péter Magyar’s revolt: The insider challenging Hungary’s Viktor Orbán

Even among his supporters, the opposition leader is a polarizing figure.

By MAX GRIERA
in BUDAPEST

Illustration by Natália Delgado/ POLITICO

Few outside Hungary’s tight political circles had heard of Péter Magyar — until he unleashed a blistering critique of the government, complete with a secret audio recording of his wife, then Justice Minister Judit Varga.

The 2023 recording — made without Varga’s knowledge — captured her describing alleged government interference in a corruption case. It helped fuel an explosive scandal that propelled Magyar from a mid-level civil servant into a political force, setting him up to mount the most serious challenge yet to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power.

As Magyar rides a commanding lead in the polls ahead of the April 12 parliamentary election, he has galvanized disillusioned voters across the political spectrum, turning his upstart Tisza movement into a vehicle for those seeking to end Orbán’s rule.

A Tisza victory would not only break Fidesz’s 16-year hold on power, but could also reshape Hungary’s role in Europe — easing Budapest’s clashes with Brussels over the rule of law, reducing its alignment with Moscow and restoring the country as a more predictable partner inside the EU and NATO.

Yet even among those backing his bid to topple a regime he calls corrupt and authoritarian, Magyar remains a deeply polarizing figure, according to interviews with more than 15 of the opposition leader’s allies, rivals, supporters and critics.

While he has drawn support across the political spectrum by promising to tackle corruption and restore democratic norms, his abrasive style and past inside the Fidesz system — including positions aligned with Orbán on migration and Ukraine — have left parts of the opposition uneasy.

Péter Márki-Zay, the opposition’s 2022 candidate, called him “arrogant,” “self-centered” and “mean” — before adding that such traits may be exactly what’s needed to withstand the pressure from Orbán’s machine.

“We are not going to marry him,” Márki-Zay said. “It’s just, you know, we need somebody to put Orbán behind us.”

Family affair

Magyar grew up listening to discussions about Hungarian politics at the dinner table. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a senior Supreme Court official. His extended family included Ferenc Mádl, who served as president from 2000 to 2005, and his grandfather, Pál Eross, a television commentator dispensing legal advice from screens across the country.

From an early age he was immersed in the country’s post-communist, Christian-democratic intellectual establishment, a background that shaped his ambition for public life, said Miklós Sükösd, a political scientist and media researcher at the University of Copenhagen who has written about Magyar’s political rise.

As he matured, Magyar joined Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party and became a well-connected insider within it, forging close ties with senior figures including Gergely Gulyás during their student years in Germany. Gulyás is now the prime minister’s chief of staff.

“We lived in Hamburg together … so we had a very strong connection,” Magyar told POLITICO in a 2024 interview. He did not respond to a request for an interview for this article in time for publication.

Tisza Party candidate for Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar during an election rally, In Ivancsa, Hungary on March 12, 2026. | Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

He met Varga in 2005 at a party organized by Gulyás. They married a year later.

As Varga rose through the ranks of Fidesz — from a European Parliament lawmaker’s assistant to justice minister in 2019 — Magyar remained on the periphery, first as a stay-at-home father in Brussels and later in mid-level roles in Hungary’s EU representation and other state institutions.

Magyar repeatedly sought higher positions in the government without success. “The ministers always said no, because he was too ambitious and independent,” said Sükösd. “So his ambition was put down, and it boiled.”

The imbalance bred frustration, Sükösd added. “He was somewhat resentful for many years that Varga was hand-picked.”

During the 2024 interview, Magyar offered a glimpse of how he viewed the relationship.

“You were married to Miss Varga, and that’s what kick-started the whole process,” the interviewer began, only to be interrupted by Magyar: “She was married to me.”

The couple divorced in March 2023, in what Magyar has described as a break partly driven by political differences. Varga has accused him of physical and verbal abuse, including locking her in a room. Magyar dismisses her claims as “propaganda” orchestrated by Orbán’s entourage. A court has not issued a ruling on the matter.

Pardon scandal

Magyar had long been seen within the party as sharp-tongued. During his time at the EU representation he earned a reputation for challenging visitors from Budapest.

“He has a very stubborn character,” said one person who used to work with Magyar, comparing the opposition leader to his former boss at the Hungarian EU representation, Oliver Váthelyi, who reportedly screamed and swore at staffers.

As his relations with Varga deteriorated, the criticism blossomed into rupture.

In January 2023, two months before the divorce, Magyar secretly recorded Varga describing how government officials had interfered in a corruption case. In a documentary movie filmed later, he said he had been seeking insurance in case he and Varga fell out with the regime.

For months Magyar stayed silent, wary of the impact on their three children. He went on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Two pilgrims resting and taking photos in Plaza del Obradoiro, admiring the cathedral as the final destination of the Camino de Santiago, seen on September 24, 2025, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. | Xurxo Lobato/Getty Images

Then came the opening. In February 2024, a pardon scandal forced Varga and President Katalin Novák to resign over the granting of clemency to a pedophile’s accomplice. Varga, until then Fidesz’s lead candidate for the European Parliament election later that year, declared she was ending her candidacy.

Accusing Fidesz officials of “hiding behind women’s skirts,” Magyar went public, denouncing the government in a blistering Facebook post in February 2024.

Magyar’s credibility came from his profile: a Fidesz insider publicly accusing the system of corruption.

He quickly moved from social media to independent outlets, becoming the first prominent defector from Orbán’s camp to attack the regime from within and drawing tens of thousands of frustrated voters amid high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis.

After a protest in March drew roughly 50,000 people, he began building a team of business people and public figures to launch a movement.

Dezső Farkas, an entrepreneur who was among the first invited to join, said the group saw a rare opening. “That was the first meeting and we decided — let’s start the party,” he told POLITICO. Within weeks they were preparing to contest the June European Parliament election.

The birth of Tisza

At first Magyar struggled to recruit allies. “Péter couldn’t invite any of his friends, because everyone was from Fidesz,” Farkas said.

Six people quit after the initial meeting. “Everyone was so scared” of potential retaliation, Farkas said. “Some of them had big companies” and feared that Orbán’s government would come down hard on them, he added.

While Magyar served as the face of the movement, Farkas coordinated operations behind the scenes. He described the party as a “startup,” with theater director Mark Radnai shaping media strategy and actor-influencer Ervin Nagy mobilizing crowds.

They quickly built the infrastructure to compete — setting up a donation network and an IT system to reach supporters and recruiting thousands of volunteers. “We got 100,000 emails in February-March,” Farkas said, describing an organization struggling to keep up with surging demand.

To run in the 2024 European Parliament election, the group took over a small, little-known party, rapidly building out its digital presence and local networks. The result was a breakthrough: Tisza won 29.6 percent of the vote, while Fidesz dropped to 44.82 percent — its lowest total ever.

Magyar’s supporters see him “as an insider who used to know these people … who was sitting in the first row of Orban’s system,” said Katalin Cseh, an unaffiliated member of the Hungarian parliament.

Katalin Cseh speaks during a press conference when she was an MEP in Strasbourg, February 2022. | Julien Warnand/EPA

His appeal, she added, is that he is viewed “as somebody who understands the system and is capable of beating it.”

Magyar, meanwhile, doubled down on campaigning. To break through the tight control Fidesz maintains on much of the country’s media, he began touring the country. In May 2025 he walked 250 kilometers from Budapest to Oradea in northwest Romania to win the support of ethnic Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries, who mostly vote Fidesz.

Meanwhile, he used Facebook to respond rapidly to events and reach voters directly. The party set up grassroots networks known as “Tisza Islands” to amplify his message even within Fidesz strongholds.

“He [Magyar] has something that’s very rare in politics today,” Tisza’s EU affairs chief and MP candidate Marton Hajdu told POLITICO. “He speaks the language of the algorithm, but he builds trust in person. And he can keep up with the speed of the news cycle without losing strategic clarity.”

Ahead of the April 12 election, Magyar continues to tour up to six cities a day.

“There’s no doubt there is a significant social support behind Tisza,” said András Cser-Palkovics, the mayor of Székesfehérvár in central Hungary and a member of Fidesz who is considered one of the party’s few independent voices. “I think that this match is going to be a very tight one.”

‘Difficult’ personality

But as Tisza has grown, so too have the questions about the man at its center.

Farkas, one of the party’s founders, quit after the 2024 European election as the early “startup” ethos gave way to internal jockeying for power. He briefly returned, only to leave again, describing the internal culture as increasingly “toxic” and reminiscent of the Fidesz system Magyar once served.

“The culture inside the party got something similar — loyalty-based, not performance-based,” Farkas told POLITICO.

Magyar runs Tisza from the top down. In the 2024 interview with POLITICO he described his party as a “one-man show.” He is the only party member permitted to give interviews, although a select few are allowed to provide brief comments to the media. Tisza’s press team asked journalists not to conduct interviews with attendees at a March 15 protest, and volunteers who spoke to POLITICO said they had been asked not to by their superiors.

Supporters argue the discipline is necessary: A tightly controlled message, they say, is the only way to avoid giving pro-government media ammunition and to keep the party focused on its singular goal of removing Orbán. Observers also praise Magyar’s sharp rhetoric, his seemingly limitless energy on the campaign trail, and his uncanny ability to preempt Orban’s attacks.

“There have been no real scandals that burned on him,” said Péter Krekó, director at independent political consultancy Political Capital. “Maybe it’s because he has warned his voter base in advance all the time.”

Magyar has also tried to improve his credibility by surrounding himself with top business executives and professionals, casting himself as a competent alternative to Fidesz’ political class.

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar delivers a speech standing in front of a banner reading ‘MOST… VAGY SOHA!’ (Now or Never!) at an election campaign rally in Eger, Hungary, on March 3, 2026. | STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images

And yet he has been betrayed by his own impulsive streak, from public outbursts at journalists to reports of an aggressive confrontation at a nightclub. He leans into the image, styling himself as a tough, masculine leader, posing for example in a Facebook post wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the phrase “The Man.”

It’s part of a personality he has folded into his brand as a fighter ready to take on Orbán. Asked in a documentary how he would describe himself, Magyar replied: “A difficult one,” adding that he is “trying” to improve.

For his many supporters, those flaws are beside the point. Magyar has come to represent something larger than himself: the first plausible chance in years to remove Orbán from power.

“We are not voting for Tisza, we are voting against Fidesz,” said Timea Szabó, a member of the Hungarian parliament from the Green Party who stepped down to clear the way for a Tisza candidate. “That’s the whole point. Hungarians would vote for a goat at this point if it was running against Orban.”

Péter Márki-Zay, the 2022 united opposition leader who failed at toppling Orbán and who is also a conservative, said Magyar will have to prove he can deliver if he’s to maintain his support should he win the election.

“There is so much pressure behind him,” he said. “But these waves are also ready to crush him if he doesn’t fulfil his promises,” which include putting Orbán behind bars and restoring democracy and the rule of law.

“If he does not do that, we will definitely not tolerate him anymore,” he said.