What's behind Péter Magyar's ascent to power in Hungary after Prime Minister Orbán's defeat

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar spent most of his professional life moving comfortably within the political world built by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. On Sunday, he brought that system down.

The 45-year-old lawyer and leader of the opposition Tisza party has charted a meteoric political rise since bursting into public view in early 2024. He galvanized large numbers of voters across Hungary who gave him a powerful mandate in Sunday's election, ending Orbán’s 16-year grip on power.

“Together we liberated Hungary, we took back our country,” Magyar told tens of thousands of his jubilant supporters at a victory party alongside the Danube River in Budapest, the country's capital, late on Sunday night.

“You gave us a mandate to build a functioning and humane home for all of us,” he said to thundering cheers from the jubilant crowd.

Before emerging as the prime minister’s most effective critic, Magyar spent years inside the governing elite. A member of Orbán’s nationalist-populist Fidesz party since 2002, he moved easily within its political ecosystem, holding senior posts at state-run institutions and rubbing elbows with figures at the center of power.

While some of Magyar’s supporters are wary of his former ties to the ruling party, others believed only someone who has seen Orbán’s system from the inside can bring it down.

Magyar's personal life has faced scrutiny. His ex-wife, Judit Varga, accused him of abusive behavior during their marriage. Magyar has denied the allegations, saying they were part of a political campaign to discredit him after he turned against the ruling party.

His rise energized a broad segment of Hungarian society that, disenchanted with previous generations of fragmented and ineffectual opposition parties, has long sought a viable alternative to Orbán.

While Orbán has campaigned on a myriad external threats facing Hungary, like the war in neighboring Ukraine, Magyar has focused on bread-and-butter issues that affect ordinary Hungarians: inflation, low wages, the deterioration of public health care and transportation, and endemic corruption.

While Magyar has succeeded in mobilizing Orbán critics from across the political spectrum, support for him is not always rooted in ideological alignment. Some liberal voters remain wary of his combative style and conservative views.

Hoping to avoid mistakes by previous opposition leaders who gave Fidesz ammunition for attacks, Magyar has carefully avoided taking firm positions on a number of divisive issues like Orbán’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies and whether Hungary should extend more support to Ukraine.

Magyar has described himself as drawn to politics from an early age. As a child growing up during the final years of communist rule, he admired Orbán and his circle of young liberal democrats who were challenging Soviet domination at the end of the Cold War.

Magyar has said he watched parliamentary debates on television while in grade school and attended political demonstrations with his parents. Immersed in conservative politics, Magyar joined Fidesz in 2002 at 21, and formed friendships with other rising figures in the party including Gergely Gulyás, who would later become Orbán’s chief of staff.

After graduating with a law degree from a Catholic university in 2003, Magyar began working as a lawyer. In 2006, while Fidesz was in opposition, he provided pro bono legal representation to anti-government demonstrators arrested during violent protests against the then-Socialist government.

That same year, he married fellow lawyer Judit Varga, who would later become one of Orbán’s most prominent ministers. The couple moved to Brussels in 2009, where Varga worked advising a Hungarian member of the European Parliament.

During their years abroad, alongside a stint as a stay-at-home father for their three children, Magyar worked for Hungary's Foreign Ministry and as a diplomat with its permanent representation to the European Union.

After returning to Hungary with his family in 2018, Magyar moved into leadership roles at several state-affiliated institutions. Meanwhile, Varga’s star was rising within Fidesz, and she was appointed justice minister in 2019. Alongside Katalin Novák, an Orbán ally who in 2022 became Hungary’s youngest president and the first woman to hold the office, Varga was widely seen as a possible successor to Orbán.

But a political scandal in 2024 was soon to change Magyar’s personal and political trajectory, and fundamentally transform Hungarian politics.

After returning from Brussels, Magyar's relationship with Varga deteriorated, and the couple divorced in 2023.

The following year, Varga was implicated in a scandal that rocked Hungary when it emerged that President Novák had granted a pardon to a convicted accomplice in a child sexual abuse case. The decision shocked the country and led to Novák's resignation, while Varga, who had endorsed the pardon, also stepped down.

The next day, Magyar gave a lengthy interview to the popular Hungarian YouTube channel Partizán in which he publicly broke with Fidesz, accusing Orbán’s government of systemic corruption and operating in the interests of a small circle of political and economic elites.

The interview quickly went viral, drawing more than 2 million views in a country of fewer than 10 million, and transformed Magyar from a relatively obscure insider into a national political figure overnight.

In the weeks that followed, he intensified his criticism of the government and began organizing public events. On March 15, Hungary’s national holiday, he addressed thousands of supporters in Budapest and announced plans to launch a new political movement that would later become the Tisza party.

In June that year, Tisza won 30% of the vote in European Parliament elections, and Magyar became an EU lawmaker.

In interviews since entering politics, Magyar has portrayed himself as someone who often voiced dissent even while working within the Fidesz system, saying he regularly expressed criticism and pushed for internal debate.

Beyond the substance of his criticism of Orbán’s rule, Magyar has developed a level of political celebrity that, not counting Orbán, is rarely seen in Hungarian politics. After his rallies, crowds often surge toward the stage to take selfies with him, waiting patiently as he poses for photos with supporters one by one.

Peter Magyar, the leader of the opposition Tisza party waves a national flag after a parliamentary election in Budapest, Hungary, Sunday, April 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

Peter Magyar, the leader of the opposition Tisza party applauds after claiming victory in a parliamentary election in Budapest, Hungary, Sunday, April 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

FILE - Péter Magyar, a former Fidesz insider that broke ranks with the party in February, poses for a portrait after an interview with The Associated Press in Vac, Hungary, on May 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos, File)

FILE - Former Hungarian government insider Peter Magyar gives a speech next tot Kossut Lajos Square on Tuesdy, in Budapest, Hungary, March 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos, File)

FILE - Péter Magyar, the former husband of one-time justice minister and Orbán ally Judit Varga meets with people in the crowd after his speech on Hungary's National Day in Budapest on Friday, March 15. 2024. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos, File)

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a former assistant principal in Virginia accused of ignoring warnings that a 6-year-old student brought a loaded gun to school that was later used to shoot his first grade teacher.

Ebony Parker is charged with eight counts of felony child neglect, one for each of the bullets in the gun brought into Richneck Elementary schoolteacher Abby Zwerner 's classroom in Newport News in January 2023, prosecutors have said. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison upon conviction.

The charges allege Parker “did commit a willful act or omission in the care of such students, in a manner so gross, wanton and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life,” according to court documents.

Parker's attorneys were in court Monday morning and could not be reached for comment about her defense. But her attorneys in a civil trial last year argued that the shooting was “unforeseeable.” They argued Parker did not have a legal duty to protect Zwerner and told the jury in that case "the law requires you to examine people’s decisions at the time they make them.”

Criminal charges against school officials after a school shooting are quite rare, experts say. The shooting sent shock waves through this military shipbuilding community and the country at large, with many wondering how a child so young could gain access to a gun and shoot his teacher.

Last November, a jury awarded $10 million to Zwerner, siding with her claims in a lawsuit that Parker ignored repeated warnings that the child had a gun.

Zwerner was shot as she sat at a reading table in her classroom. She spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet narrowly missed her heart and remains in her chest.

Parker was the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal as defendants.

The lawsuit said Parker had a duty to protect Zwerner and others from harm after being told about the gun. Zwerner’s attorneys said Parker failed to act in the hours before the shooting after several school staff members told her that the student had a gun in his backpack.

Zwerner testified she first heard about the gun from a reading specialist who had been tipped off by students. The shooting occurred a few hours later. Despite her injuries, Zwerner was able to hustle her students out of the classroom. She eventually passed out in the school office.

Zwerner is scheduled to testify in the criminal case, according to court records.

The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he climbed to the top of a dresser to retrieve the gun from his mother's purse.

FILE - Former Richneck Elementary School assistant principal Ebony Parker looks back into the courtroom during Abby Zwerner's lawsuit against her on Oct. 28, 2025, in Newport News, Va. (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot via AP, Pool, File)