Before Viktor Orbán came to power in 2010, Hungary was a relatively free democracy with a high level of freedom of speech and media pluralism. Freedom House in its assessments defined Hungary as “a free democracy with a high level of civil liberties and political rights”. Over the more than 15 years of Viktor Orbán’s rule, Hungary has undergone significant political transformations, and the situation with freedom of speech has deteriorated significantly. Today, according to the international organization Reporters Without Borders, Hungary occupies one of the lowest places in terms of freedom of speech among the countries of the European Union. For comparison, in the RSF Freedom of Speech Index ranking as of 2025, Hungary occupied only 68th place.
Since the last parliamentary elections in April 2022, the situation with freedom of speech and democracy in Hungary has shown a steady trend of regression. The OSCE/ODIHR mission stated at the time that the elections were technically well-organized, but “were marred by the lack of a level playing field.” The conclusions also noted the unequal access of candidates to the media, the predominant dissemination of pro-government narratives, and biased and biased coverage of events.
The root cause of such democratic regression is one – the policies of the current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his team, which helped him usurp power and subjugate all key media outlets and media outlets in Hungary. His main assistants on this path were Minister and Head of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Antal Rohan, one of the leaders of Fidesz – Gábor Kubatóv, and the leader of the Fidesz parliamentary faction, Máté Kocís. This trio acts as architects and at the same time tools for cementing existing approaches in media policy and transforming Hungary into a European autocracy.
Antal Rogan plays a key role in organizing and coordinating the media strategy of the government and the Fidesz party. De facto, he heads the structure that forms government messages, coordinates their distribution and placement in pro-government media. Rogan has been widely criticized by international human rights organizations for publicly discrediting independent media and for influencing the editorial policy of government-controlled media. In January 2025, the United States imposed sanctions on him, and lifted them four months later. The restrictions (asset freeze and travel ban) were imposed by the Joe Biden administration on charges of corruption and non-transparent control over strategic sectors of the economy, but were lifted after the change of the US administration as a result of Donald Trump’s victory. This case was the first example of the White House applying sanctions against such a high-ranking official in Viktor Orbán’s government.
Gabor Kubatov is a strategist and a typical “apparatchik” responsible for organizing the party structure and the functioning of electoral mechanisms. Although Kubatov does not directly manage the editorial policy of the media, he is the manager of how the party (government) messages get into the media and reach the electoral base. He also oversees the database of Fidesz supporters, also known as the “Kubatov list”, thanks to which an effective mechanism for their mobilization has been established if necessary.
Mate Kocsis is one of the leading legislators of Orbán’s party. In media policy, his role is to consolidate and make regulatory and procedural decisions in favor of pro-government media outlets, foundations, and media holdings. Although Mate Kocsis does not formally lead or oversee media operations, he is responsible for promoting legislative initiatives and ensuring the interests of the parliamentary majority, which adopts laws that complicate the activities of independent journalists and media.
State advertising under Viktor Orbán in Hungary has transformed from a tool for informing citizens into a key mechanism for political control over the media market. The advertising budgets of ministries, state agencies and companies are directed exclusively to media controlled and loyal to the government, while independent publications receive nothing. This creates unequal conditions, where pro-government media have stable funding, while independent and opposition media are forced to survive on subscriptions, donations and foreign grants. This imbalance and injustice have been recorded by international institutions and numerous journalistic investigations. According to data submitted to the European Commission and materials from the Financial Times, the total expenditure on state advertising in pro-government media over several years amounted to more than one billion euros. This effectively played the role of subsidizing loyal media. Such a practice not only destroys competition in the market, but also displaces independent editorial offices, which simply cannot compete with media financed from the budget.
For the opposition parties, the consequences are obvious: limited access to the media, especially television and regional press, which have been squeezed under the largest media holding KESMA. In practice, this has led to the fact that even when opposition candidates are formally allowed to participate in debates, they receive minimal airtime, which cannot outweigh the daily presence of government politicians in the information space and level out their statements and distributed narratives. As a result, the Hungarian voter sees an informationally distorted picture, where the government’s position is well covered, and all alternative opinions are marginalized and “lost” in the general information flow of the media loyal to Viktor Orbán.
Media structures and conglomerates such as MVTA, KESMA, Mediaworks Hungary, TV2 Group and Newwave media group in Hungary perform not only an organizational and media function, but also serve as a kind of filter that undermines and makes impossible the development of free media. As a result, the Hungarian opposition is deprived of the opportunity to gain full information access to its audience and potential voters.
As a result, opposition forces, primarily Petro Magyar’s “Tysa”, as well as DK, Momentum and others, are forced to compensate for the lack of traditional (television) platforms for accessing voters by maintaining channels on Youtube, social media pages, and through direct interaction with voters during “field” events and rallies. Of course, they are effective channels for delivering information to the target audience, which is mainly made up of young people, educated people and active Internet users, and yet they are inferior in reach to television, which is watched mainly by Orban’s electorate and people of pension and elderly age.
In the parliamentary elections to be held on April 12, 2026, for the first time in many years, the ruling Fidesz party does not have a convincing advantage according to opinion polls, and its ratings at home have decreased due to economic and social problems caused by the ineffective and corrupt policies of the Viktor Orbán government. Therefore, these elections will be a real test for the Hungarian people of their readiness to end Orbán’s dictatorship and initiate democratic transformations.