More than 10,000 Hungarians joined Budapest’s first annual Pride march on Saturday since the electoral defeat of right-wing leader Viktor Orban.
Braving record heat, participants walked through the city with huge rainbow and European Union flags.
Last year, Mr Orban tried to ban the march as part of his wider policies targeting LGBTQ+ rights, which instead became a mass anti-government demonstration attracting tens of thousands.
This year, following his defeat to Peter Magyar’s centre-right Tisza party, the ban was lifted, allowing the march to proceed.
The march began Saturday afternoon as temperatures reached at least 38 C (100 F) amid a record-breaking heat wave that has gripped most of Europe. Organizers distributed water bottles to marchers, and the city’s public water utility opened fountains along the route.
Participants set off from Budapest’s iconic Opera house and wound through the city center before crossing the Erzsébet Bridge over the Danube River. Members of Hungary’s LGBTQ+ community and masses of supporters danced to music and waved rainbow flags.
Fanni Fajth, an 18-year-old student, said the mood was much more optimistic after the political change in the country, and due to hopes for new rights related to adoption, and marriage in the future.
“Everyone is just so much more uplifted,” she said.
“I think it would be wonderful if we just had equal rights finally after all these years.”
Orban, who cast himself as a defender of what he called Christian values from Western liberalism, passed laws ending the change of gender in personal documents, halting adoption by same-sex couples and banning materials in schools seen as promoting homosexuality or gender transition.
“The biggest change is actually the change in politics in the country,” said Mate Tarnai, a 51-year-old chemist.
“We feel more freedom personally as well, and also the atmosphere in the country is much more relaxed than last year.”
Tarnai also said he hoped for equal rights from Magyar’s government.
Magyar, a conservative, has asked for patience when asked by Hungarian media about changing legislation that curtailed the rights of the LGBT community.
Boglarka Boruzs, 23, an interpreter and translator, said for her the biggest change from Orban’s rule was that LGBTQ+ people could feel safer and more accepted in everyday life, and politicians held the power to “make society understand that it’s okay to be gay.”
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 Orbán-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.
