Hungary’s election campaign is about to get even dirtier

BUDAPEST — When will the sex tape drop? 

Talk to voters here about an election shaping up to be the most consequential for Hungary in decades, and it isn’t long before the conversation turns to the alleged secretly recorded intimate footage of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s challenger, Péter Magyar.

In mid-February, journalists began receiving messages containing a still photo of a bedroom with the caption “coming soon.” The image has circulated widely on social media, but no video has surfaced. Magyar has said he suspects his opponents are planning to release a sex tape “recorded with secret service equipment and possibly faked, in which my then-girlfriend and I are seen having intimate intercourse.”

The opposition leader and head of the center-right Tisza party has accused Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party of preparing a smear campaign in what is already a toxic race. And now that the deadline has passed for candidate nominations on Saturday, political analysts expect the smear campaigns and disinformation efforts to intensify. Once the nomination stage ends, a damaged candidate cannot simply withdraw and be replaced.

So will the tape appear soon? And if it does, how will it affect a campaign in which polls show Fidesz trailing by around 9 percentage points? Could it sway the outcome? “We can’t be sure about its impact until we have the content,” said Péter Krekó, executive director of Political Capital, an independent policy research consultancy. “I would not dare to predict because it’s dependent on what’s on the tape.” 

Hungarian politicians have won elections after sex scandals. In 2017, Zsolt Borkai, the Fidesz-affiliated mayor of Győr and a former Olympian, was implicated in a major scandal after an anonymous blog published photos of him attending a group sex party on a yacht in the Adriatic Sea. Borkai was reelected narrowly two years later, though he subsequently stepped down.  

Magyar is “very good with preemptive communication,” said Krekó. “He has tried to get ahead by admitting he was involved in a consensual sexual relationship. That was wise because it potentially minimizes his losses in advance.”

A prominent opposition activist, who is not a Tisza member but supports Magyar, said he is unsure whether the tape would damage the effort to unseat Orbán. He requested anonymity to avoid straining his relationship with Magyar.

“There’s already little enthusiasm for him personally,” he said. “There isn’t a popular embrace. For many on the left and center of the political spectrum, Magyar and Tisza are just useful vehicles to use to get rid of Orbán.”

In the activist’s view, a Tisza victory would reflect a broad anti-Orbán coalition rather than affection for Magyar — similar to Labour’s 2024 victory in Britain, which was less about public enthusiasm for Keir Starmer than a desire to end Conservative rule. And so maybe voters wouldn’t care what baggage Magyar brought with him.

Will Vladimir Putin save Orbán? 

It isn’t just a sex tape people are bracing for. With nominations now closed, András Rácz, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations, is watching for Russian influence operations to ramp up. 

So far, that front has been relatively quiet. But Rácz thinks that will change. Speaking at a panel discussion in Budapest this week, he predicted a significant increase in Russian disinformation efforts aimed at helping the Hungarian prime minister. 

“Orbán’s government has been the best asset Russia has ever had in the EU and NATO,” he said. “It would be foolish for them not to do everything they can to keep Orbán in power.” 

Szabolcs Panyi — an award-winning journalist for Direkt36, an independent, non-profit investigative outlet — similarly expects intensified activity in the final weeks of the race. Citing multiple European national security sources, he has reported that a team of Kremlin-linked “political technologists” has been tasked with influencing Hungary’s election. The effort, he says, will be overseen by Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of staff to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

How successful such an effort will be remains unclear. In September, Russia launched an influence campaign against Moldova’s ruling party, co-founded by President Maia Sandu, in an attempt to swing a parliamentary election toward a pro-Russian party. In the end, it failed: Moldova’s pro-Western governing party retained its majority, decisively defeating the pro-Russian opposition.

There is, however, a key difference between Moldova and Hungary. Moldovan authorities mounted a large-scale effort to counter the Russian campaign. Hungary’s ruling party is unlikely to do the same.