Tens of thousands march in the first Budapest Pride since Orban was voted out

Tens of thousands of people gathered in soaring temperatures in Hungary’s capital to celebrate the 31st annual Budapest Pride, the first such LGBTQ+ march since former prime minister Viktor Orban, who had sought to ban the event, was ousted in an April election.

The march began Saturday afternoon as temperatures reached at least 38C amid a record-breaking heatwave that has gripped most of Europe.

Organisers distributed water bottles to marchers, and the city’s public water utility opened fountains along the route.

Participants set off from Budapest’s famous Opera house and wound through the city centre before crossing the Erzsebet Bridge over the Danube River.

Members of Hungary’s LGBTQ+ community and masses of supporters danced to music and waved rainbow flags.

Luca Uj, who was participating in her third Pride event, said she felt the mood at the march was more relaxed now that Mr Orban’s government, which implemented numerous anti-LGBTQ+ policies during its 16 years in power, had been defeated.

“There used to be a lot of tension. But now I see people as being somehow happier, and there are more older people, too,” she said.

Saturday’s Pride march came a little more than a year after Mr Orban’s nationalist-populist government passed legislation and a constitutional amendment to outlaw the event, drawing criticism from human rights groups and politicians across the European Union.

Yet in open defiance of the ban, last year’s Pride went on as planned and was the biggest in Hungary’s history, with organisers estimating attendance at more than 350,000.

The massive turnout for the march, which the government for months had insisted would no longer be permitted, was seen as a major blow to Mr Orban’s prestige.

Mr Orban was defeated in the April election by a centre-right challenger, Prime Minister Péter Magyar and his Tisza party.

Hungary’s new government has not repealed the Orban-era legislation that outlawed Pride, but police this year authorised the event and were providing security along the route.

Kristof Gyorgyi, a first-time Pride participant who travelled to Budapest from the southern city of Szeged, said he has high hopes that Hungary’s new government will take steps to extend rights to sexual minorities that are available in many other European countries.

“The fact that there’s already a debate in Parliament about whether an orphaned child is better off with a same-sex couple or in an orphanage is a positive sign,” he said, referring to the Orban-era ban on same-sex adoption, as well as same-sex marriage.

“Obviously, the laws haven’t changed yet, but there are already many signs of hope for our community,” he said.

Hungary’s previous government long insisted that Pride, a celebration of LGBTQ+ visibility and struggle for equal rights, was a violation of children’s rights to moral and spiritual development — something rights groups and many experts have rejected.

In April, the EU’s highest court ruled that Orban-era legislation from 2021 that banned the availability of LGBTQ+ content to minors violates EU law and breaches a foundational treaty guaranteeing respect for human rights and equality.