‘Suspicion and fear of high-level fraud before and during the 2026 elections are well-founded,’ the ALDE Party wtote in a resolution adopted last October. The ALDE Congress’ statement, undoubtedly initiated by its Hungarian member, the Momentum party, called ‘on the European Union institutions to prepare immediate responses if the [Hungarian] elections do not meet the necessary democratic standards and to explicitly refrain from recognising the results’ and ‘support the peaceful transfer of power in the event of the Fidesz party’s defeat’.
Voices at the ALDE congress are far from the only ones in the international sphere who decry the integrity of the Hungarian elections—long before they actually happened. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee dedicated multiple articles to the ‘threat assessment of the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary elections’ and ‘The State of Electoral Integrity in Hungary’, in which they claimed that ‘pressing issues cumulatively contribute to an electoral environment that questions the overall fairness of the process’. The German Marshall Fund called for ‘safeguarding Hungary’s 2026 Elections’ a year before they were scheduled to happen. According to the POLITICO, one of the ‘5 key questions’ about the Hungarian elections is: ‘Can the election be free and fair?’
POLITICO hyped up a similar hysteria when it reported that a group of researchers sued X to gain access to data on Hungary’s upcoming elections. The researchers sought to assess data on ‘foreign interference’, a catchphrase usually associated with ‘factors undermining election integrity’. While examining such issues is an admirable pursuit, POLITICO failed to note that X is not a widely used platform in Hungary and therefore can hardly exert any real influence on the election outcome.
None went as far as the Kofi Annan Foundation (a wealthy beneficiary of EU funds, with over €1.5 million in contracted funding), however, which claimed that ‘the factors that contribute most to the increased potential for violence’ in the 2026 Hungarian elections include the precedent of ‘government intimidation during the last election’, the ‘number of consecutive previous elections with moderate violence’, and ‘other forms of violence during the last election’. Unfortunately, the Kofi Annan Foundation failed to substantiate its claims of violence and intimidation in previous Hungarian elections with any evidence.
‘Members of the opposition are also casting doubt about the integrity of the Hungarian elections’
Crucially, members of the opposition are also casting doubt about the integrity of the Hungarian elections. Péter Magyar has already accused Fidesz of cheating on the elections. Ákos Hadházy, member of the Hungarian parliament, outright called for ‘shutting down’ the country if Fidesz cheats on the elections.
It is far from a new idea of framing the Hungarian elections as ’stolen’. In 2022, just one day after the election was concluded, a long piece was published on Project Syndicate with the title ’Hungary’s Manipulated Election’. Another well-known stronghold of liberal journalism, Telex framed the election in 2022 (a day before it actually took place) with an article titled ’No major act of election fraud, just a bunch of dirty little tricks’. In the past years the mainstream media built up a narrative of the ’free but not fair’ Hungarian elections. Some fear that this year the narrative might change to ‘not free and not fair’.
Debunking Fake Narratives about ‘Electoral Fraud’ in Hungary
As the unsubstantiated narrative of ‘stolen’ Hungarian elections began to spread, the government also responded to these claims. When asked about the phenomenon, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that Tisza, the largest opposition party, is bracing for electoral defeat and is therefore promoting these narratives to pre-emptively explain its vote count. Indeed, it can be comforting for the losing side to excuse failure by appealing to the idea of an ‘uneven playing field’.
To debunk these narratives, however, it is important to note that the integrity of Hungarian elections is being questioned even before they have taken place. In other words, this narrative is used as a campaign tool, serving no purpose other than to sow distrust among the Hungarian electorate and undermine faith in the fair functioning of the Hungarian democratic state. Distrust and anger, in turn, are effective tools for opposition mobilization.
To see the fallacy in these arguments about April 2026, one must recall what a ‘rigged election’ actually entails. It is typically—and rightly—associated with ballot-box stuffing, voter intimidation at polling stations, the deliberate miscounting of votes, or the annulment of results after the fact. None of these practices can occur in Hungary by any stretch of the imagination.
‘A vote count is not considered final unless all members of the polling-station commission agree that it is correct’
All Hungarian political parties are entitled to have representatives present at every polling station nationwide, where they participate directly in the vote count. In fact, a vote count is not considered final unless all members of the polling-station commission agree that it is correct. In addition to this multiparty oversight, independent election observers—such as those from the OSCE or civil society—are free to move between polling stations on election day to verify the process. These safeguards ensure that election-day results cannot be manipulated.
Well aware of these strict rules, those who spread misleading narratives about the integrity of Hungarian elections often argue that any cheating occurs not on election day but beforehand. They claim that Hungary’s media landscape, party financing, and electoral laws create an uneven playing field that amounts to electoral fraud. This line of argument seeks to delegitimize election results through vague references to alleged ‘structural failures’ of Hungarian democracy.
A similar logic was applied in Romania, where an election was annulled on the basis of elusive claims of ‘Russian interference’ that were never substantiated—or, worse, scarcely investigated. Such abstract and unproven allegations are far less credible than a concrete and transparent process: a vote count conducted under strict, legally mandated observation, as ensured by Hungarian law.
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