Authorities in Budapest have given the green light for the Hungarian capital’s Pride parade to march again this June, after last year’s event was banned under authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.
Orbán’s government was deposed in elections in April.
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“During the notification process for the 2026 Pride parade and the subsequent in-person consultation with the organizers, no grounds for prohibiting the assembly arose,” Budapest police said in a statement to AFP.
Orbán’s Fidesz party passed legislation last year to ban all Pride events in Hungary. In response, more than 200,000 attendees showed up in defiance, attracting supporters from across Europe.
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“We warmly welcome everyone in June who took part in last year’s demonstration, as well as those who continue to believe in equal rights and a democratic Hungary, and those who would like to once again celebrate the transition to democracy,” Budapest Pride said in a statement on social media.
The OK comes as the European Union released more than €16bn in funds withheld from the country after Orbán’s government continued to flout EU rules and conventions on human rights and other issues.
“We can already feel a strong wind of change across Hungary,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said at a press conference announcing the release.
“In only a few weeks, you have driven forward long overdue reforms,” she told Orbán’s successor, Prime Minister Péter Magyar, at the event in the EU capital, Brussels.
“What connects us will be stronger than what divides us,” Magyar said at his swearing-in. “Hungary will be home for every Hungarian, and everyone can feel like they have a place in the Hungarian nation. Family, friends, and communities will be able to speak to each other again.”
While Magyar’s government has not directly addressed the Pride-ban legislation — still on the books but ruled unconstitutional by the country’s high court last year — the new prime minister pledged in Brussels to rectify every issue that precipitated freezing the EU funds. That money is earmarked for housing, transport, energy, social policy, and other sectors in Hungary.
About €2.2 billion (around $2.6 billion) of the funds still frozen are contingent on “academic freedom” being restored in Hungary’s universities, the Guardian reported.
Following last year’s Pride march ban, the progressive mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, rebranded the parade as a “municipal” event to sidestep the government’s shutdown. He was charged with defying the ban just weeks before April’s elections.
“I have gone from being a proud suspect to a proud defendant,” Karácsony said after prosecutors took him to court.
He welcomed the news of Pride’s official return to the capital.
“Freedom and love cannot be banned,” Karácsony posted to socials. “This is an event of freedom-loving Hungarians. It was last year, it will be this year, it will always be.”
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