Peter Magyar Is on the 2026 TIME100 Next - Time Magazine

In April, Peter Magyar’s Tisza party ended 16 uninterrupted years of Viktor Orban’s rule in Hungary.

Orban’s authoritarian-leaning regime—an inspiration to far-right parties across the West—posed a threat not just to Hungarian democracy but also to the European Union’s identity as a bloc. In a time of surging Euroskeptic populism, Magyar’s landslide victory offers the most unabashedly pro-European political outcome in the post-Brexit era.

How did Magyar do it? He’s a conservative, originally part of Orban’s Fidesz party, who is dubious about immigration and quick to invoke the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But in stark contrast to Orban, Magyar wants to root out the corruption in Budapest and pledged to rebuild institutions Orban weakened. His victory gives Hungary the opportunity to close the book on this illiberal period of its history, having proved that the people and institutions, the rule of law and democracy, are more powerful than one man. It’s a lesson that should resonate from Europe to the U.S.