Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on May 24, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Add as preferred source on GooglePeter Magyar, Hungarian opposition leader, walked to Romania to gain support from ethnic Hungarians, challenging Viktor Orban ahead of the 2026 elections.
BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar walked across the border to Romania on Saturday after a week-long journey, in a attempt to win support of the ethnic Hungarians in Romania and appeal to conservative voters in the run-up to the 2026 elections.
Magyar's centre-right Tisza party emerged last year to mount the most serious challenge to nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban since he rose to power in 2010.
Most opinion polls now put Tisza ahead of Orban's Fidesz party with the next parliamentary elections due in early 2026. No date has been set yet.
Carrying Hungary's national flag, Magyar walked across the border on Saturday morning with a group of supporters.
"We are not going (to Romania) to escalate tensions or to cause any harm to our Hungarian brothers and sisters living there. We are going there to express our solidarity," Magyar said on May 14 when he set out on foot in hiking gear.
On his way to the border, Magyar stopped in small towns to talk to rural voters, who have traditionally supported conservative Orban.
Orban's government provides financial support to ethnic Hungarian communities in Romania and in 2014 granted the right to vote to Hungarians living abroad. In the last election in 2022 94% of these voters supported Fidesz.
The latest poll by the Publicus think tank, published on Friday, showed Tisza with 43% support among decided voters in Hungary while Fidesz had 36%.
Magyar announced his march on May 12 after Orban flagged he could cooperate with Romanian hard-right presidential candidate George Simion ahead of the May 18 election there.
The RMDSZ party representing ethnic Hungarians in Romania, said Simion's win would pose a threat to minorities' rights and urged its voters to support centrist Nicusor Dan who ended up winning the vote.
(Reporting by Anita Komuves, Krisztina Fenyo and Krisztina ThanEditing by Tomasz Janowski)
Peter Magyar's journey aims to win the support of ethnic Hungarians living in Romania and to express solidarity with them.
Recent opinion polls show the Tisza party leading with 43% support among decided voters, while Orban's Fidesz party has 36%.
Orban's government provides financial support to ethnic Hungarian communities in Romania and granted voting rights to Hungarians living abroad.
The RMDSZ party warned that a win for hard-right candidate George Simion would threaten the rights of minorities.
The next parliamentary elections in Hungary are due in early 2026, although no specific date has been set yet.
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