Orban re-elected to lead Fidesz after Hungary election defeat

Viktor Orban kept his grip on Fidesz on Saturday, winning another year as party leader in a near-unanimous show of loyalty that underscored how little has changed inside the party he built. At the Budapest congress, 729 of 737 delegates backed him, eight did not submit a vote, and no challenger emerged to contest the leadership.

The result came less than two months after Fidesz lost the April 12 election to the center-right Tisza party led by Peter Magyar. Tisza’s win gave it 138 seats in Hungary’s 199-member parliament, a two-thirds majority with the power to amend the constitution and potentially reverse major parts of the Orban era. That shift has already changed the balance in Budapest, where Fidesz is now operating from the opposition benches for the first time in years.

Orban, who is 62 and has been in power since 2010, told delegates that he accepted full responsibility for the defeat. Yet his re-election showed that the party still revolves around him, even after some former loyalists began voicing criticism more openly than at any point since he took office. The congress also approved four deputy chairs, reinforcing the sense that Fidesz is being managed as a tightly controlled organization rather than one preparing for a real succession battle.

The political stakes go beyond party discipline. One May survey showed Tisza ahead of Fidesz, suggesting the loss of government has not yet translated into a durable recovery for Orban’s camp. At the same time, Magyar has begun using his parliamentary strength aggressively, moving to overhaul public media and submitting a bill to abolish the Sovereignty Protection Office, an Orban-era body critics said was used to stigmatize opponents and journalists as serving foreign interests.

Magyar has also signaled plans to target other Orban-appointed officials, including President Tamás Sulyok. For now, the Fidesz vote suggests Orban still commands total loyalty inside the party, but the absence of a challenger also exposed a harder truth: there is no credible succession path visible yet, only a movement still organized around one man as it tries to rebuild outside power.