The Final Year

Hungary is preparing for general elections in 2026. The stakes are high for the authoritarian Orbán government, and they know it, too. In the spring of 2025, one year before the elections they began rolling out a string of Putin-esque laws designed to ban LGBTQ protests like Pride, restrict the remaining free media outlets, harass NGOs and generally tighten the screws on freedoms in the country.
In response, a wave of protests began. On the streets and in everyday life Hungarians started talking about a sense of doom. We don’t know whether for better, or much worse, but things will radically change this year. It feels like an end of a period, and with no way to know whether the government will topple or descend into open oppression of its people.

People take to the streets weekly with a sense of urgency: this is the final year of the regime as we’ve known it for 15 years.