VIKTOR Orbán led Hungary as prime minister for 16 years before he was finally unseated by Hungarian voters in the April 2026 elections. His defeat was made possible by a broad coalition of political and civil society groups, led by Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party. Orbán had long projected himself as a populist and nationalist strongman, often aligning more closely with Russia’s Vladimir Putin than with the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).