How crisis is growing within Orbán's party and why the attack on Ukraine failed to be its lifeline

A growing crisis is unfolding within Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz.

The roots of this crisis are clear: for the first time, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán faces a genuinely strong opponent Péter Magyar.

Read more about how the crisis developed and what steps Orbán is taking to overcome it in the investigation by Hungary’s respected outlet Direct36: The attack on Ukraine didn’t save him: how Orbán is handling the crisis in his party and what he plans for the elections.

On 18 February, Orbán gathered his MPs and senior officials at a hotel on Lake Balaton. Fidesz holds such meetings every year, but this one was different. For the first time in 15 years of undisputed rule, the party faced a serious rival.

That rival is the newly formed Tisza Party, led by the young politician Péter Magyar. The ruling party’s approval ratings began to drop and a Medián poll even showed Tisza overtaking Fidesz in November 2024.

Still, Orbán did not take Magyar seriously.

According to Direct36, Hungary’s political establishment "deeply despised" the new opposition leader, dismissing him as a "clown" who would soon make fatal mistakes and destroy his own popularity.

To accelerate that outcome, pro-government propaganda spread the narrative that Magyar was part of the "Soros network." The goal was to provoke him into statements that would let Fidesz brand him as a "liberal" and a "Soros puppet."

Orbán’s proposal to ban "foreign agents" was also an attempt to lure Magyar into that debate but he skillfully avoided the trap.

The "Teflon Magyar," as some now call him, managed to sidestep all of Orbán’s pitfalls without losing public support.

On 6 March, following an EU summit that discussed aid to Ukraine, Orbán launched a new idea for his election campaign: a "national consultation," effectively a pseudo-referendum, aimed at preventing Ukraine’s EU membership.

According to Direct36’s sources close to the government, the true purpose of this campaign was to test Fidesz’s organisational capabilities and evaluate local party heads to determine who would become candidates for the 2026 elections based on their performance.

The anti-Ukraine rhetoric also served another purpose: to distract from Hungary’s worsening economic problems.

Yet, insiders admit the campaign failed to achieve that. The anti-Ukrainian narrative did not stop Fidesz’s decline, as polls show. Voters simply don’t believe Ukraine’s EU accession affects their daily lives.

The government then tried a different tactic, accusing Tisza of alleged ties to Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), but that too had no impact on Magyar’s ratings.

Meanwhile, in May, Orbán himself made several missteps that further damaged his party.

The first was his endorsement of George Simion, an extremist Romanian politician. The second was his decision to withdraw a controversial bill targeting civil society and journalists after facing rare, open resistance from within Fidesz itself.

Then came another blow: the Budapest Pride on 28 June. The government’s attempt to ban it backfired, generating sympathy for the event and frustration with the authorities.

Seeking to rebuild support, Fidesz has recently launched a series of populist measures: a 3% mortgage program for young voters, food vouchers worth 30,000 forints for pensioners and tax cuts for mothers with two or three children. These efforts have helped stop the party’s decline in the polls.

As a result, the mood within Fidesz is somewhat more optimistic than it was in the spring.

"The election can still be won with hard work," one Fidesz politician said.

However, given the scale of the challenges, that optimism remains far from certainty.