Tens of thousands of people joined Budapest Pride in extreme heat, marking the first edition of the march since Viktor Orbán’s government lost power in Hungary’s April election.

Reuters placed participation above 10,000, while DW and an Associated Press report carried by PBS described the crowd as numbering in the tens of thousands. The accounts used different levels of precision but agreed that a large crowd filled the streets.

The 31st annual Pride began near the Hungarian State Opera and moved through the city centre before crossing the Erzsébet Bridge over the Danube. Participants danced, played music and carried large rainbow and European Union flags. Temperatures reached at least 38C during a heat wave affecting much of Europe, leading organizers to hand out water and the city utility to open fountains along the route.

The atmosphere was described by some participants as less tense than under the previous government. One first-time marcher told AFP, in reporting carried by DW, that she believed conditions were improving because national leadership had changed. Another participant told AP that people appeared happier and that more older residents were present.

Those impressions did not amount to a completed change in legal rights. Prime Minister Péter Magyar and his Tisza party defeated Orbán in a landslide after 16 years of his leadership, but the new government had not repealed the law and constitutional amendment used to outlaw Pride. Police nevertheless authorized the 2026 event and provided security.

Ban remains on the books

Orbán’s government had argued that Pride violated children’s moral and spiritual development. Human-rights organizations and other critics rejected that reasoning, and politicians across the European Union condemned the ban.

The restrictions formed part of a wider policy record affecting LGBTQ+ people. Orbán’s government prohibited adoption by same-sex couples, barred changes to gender markers in official documents and limited school materials it regarded as promoting homosexuality or gender transition.

In April 2026, the European Union’s highest court ruled that Hungary’s 2021 restrictions on making LGBTQ+ content available to minors violated EU law and a treaty commitment to human rights and equality. The supplied reporting did not establish that the ruling had already produced revised Hungarian legislation by the date of the march.

Magyar had not announced a programme to undo all the earlier measures. He asked for patience when questioned by Hungarian media and said his government should not tell people how to live. Asked about same-sex marriage and adoption, he said everyone should be free to love and live with whom they chose within the law, and that his government was open to discussing sensitive social questions if there was public demand.

That position left activists with signs of greater official tolerance but without the full legal changes some sought. One participant pointed to parliamentary debate over same-sex adoption as a positive development while acknowledging that existing law had not changed.

A contrast with the previous year

The 2025 march proceeded despite the government’s effort to prohibit it and became the largest Pride event in Hungary’s history. The supplied reports carried different organizer estimates for that turnout: DW cited about 200,000 people, while the AP account published by PBS put it above 350,000. Both described the turnout as open defiance of the ban and a blow to Orbán’s authority.

The 2026 march took place under a different government and with police authorization, even though the legal instrument behind the earlier ban remained in force. That combination made the event both a celebration and a measure of an incomplete political transition.

For marchers, the visible changes were immediate: police secured the route rather than enforcing a prohibition, and thousands crossed the capital without the confrontation anticipated under the previous administration. The unresolved question was whether those practical changes would be followed by legislation expanding rights or repealing restrictions inherited from the Orbán era.