Thousands march in Budapest Pride after Orbán's fall
Tens of thousands marched through Budapest in 38C heat, the first Pride since Orbán was voted out and a test of whether real space had opened.
Tens of thousands of people marched through central Budapest on Saturday in punishing 38C heat, turning the city’s 31st Pride parade into the first such march since Viktor Orbán was voted out in April.
The march began at the Opera House, moved through the city center and crossed the Erzsébet Bridge over the Danube. Participants waved rainbow and European Union flags, danced to music and moved under a sun that made the gathering physically demanding. Organizers handed out water bottles, and the city’s public water utility opened fountains along the route to keep the crowd moving.
Hungary adopted a law on March 18, 2025, that restricted freedom of assembly by tying it to a 2021 child-protection law banning the public portrayal to minors of homosexuality or gender transition. On April 14, 2025, lawmakers adopted the 15th constitutional amendment, which took effect the next day and specified in the constitution that a person is “a man or a woman” while elevating child protection above all other rights except the right to life. Budapest police used that framework to ban Pride in 2025, even after Mayor Gergely Karácsony tried to proceed with a municipal event called Budapest Freedom Day, linked to the 1991 withdrawal of Soviet troops. Police issued a final ban on June 19, 2025, and UN human rights experts called the measures the effective criminalization of peaceful LGBT assemblies in Hungary.
Police approved this year’s march and imposed restrictive orders for three counter-demonstrations under Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s government. The European Union’s top court struck down Orbán’s anti-LGBTQ ruling in May 2026. Last year’s Pride, held despite the ban, drew more than 100,000 people, with some counts putting attendance above 350,000.
The mood was calmer and more hopeful than before, but the government had not repealed the law.
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