Budapest Pride participants march over the Erzsebet Bridge in Budapest, Hungary,
on June 28, 2025, despite an official ban. The country’s new government will allow
this year’s Budapest Pride march to take place without restrictions. (Courtesy photo)
Michael K. Lavers | The Washington Blade
Courtesy of National LGBT Media Association
Hungarian police on May 29 announced they will allow the annual Budapest Pride march to take place. The parade is set for June 27.
“We will march freely in fresh air for our rights, for the democratic Hungary,” said Budapest Pride on its Facebook page.
“The Budapest Metropolitan Police has approved the 2026 Budapest Pride Parade and also has issued restrictive orders in relation to three counter-demonstrations,” a Budapest Metropolitan Police spokesperson told Politico.
Budapest is Hungary’s capital and largest city.
Hungarian lawmakers last year passed a bill that banned Pride events and allowed authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify participants.
MPs later amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.
More than 100,000 people defied the ban and participated in last year’s Budapest Pride parade. The event became one of the largest protests against then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government since he took office in 2010.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar took office last month after his center-right Tisza party ousted Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition in elections that took place on April 12.
The European Union’s top court, the EU Court of Justice, days after Orbán’s ouster struck down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law that MPs approved in 2021.
The court ruled that the Orbán reforms breached EU rules on a number of levels, and significantly that the reforms also broke the founding values of Article 2 of the EU Treaty -— an unprecedented finding, according to reporting by the BBC.
BBC points out that the court ruled that the Hungarian law interfered with rights such as a ban on discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation, respect for private and family life and freedom of expression and information, and that the law also stigmatized and marginalized LGBTQ+ people and associated them with people convicted of pedophilia.
\According to the court’s ruling, the Hungarian law was “contrary to the very identity of the Union as a common legal order in a society in which pluralism prevails.”
John Morijn, professor of law and politics in international relations at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, told BBC the ruling was historic in its symbolism, in that it means the rights of a group in society can not be negotiated away.
“You cannot equate what is totally natural — that 10 percent of the population loves the same sex — with egregious crime,” Morijn said.
The EU on May 29 announced it will release more than $18.59 billion in funds to Hungary that it withheld while Orbán was in office.