Orban Government Seeks to Move Budapest Pride Parade March off Streets and Indoors to ‘Protect Children’

The annual Budapest Pride march in Hungary in 2025 should be held in a ‘closed place’ rather than on a boulevard in the centre of Budapest, as it has been done so far, the chief of staff of pro-Russian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Wednesday, citing the need to ‘protect children’, digi24 reports.

It remains unclear whether Orban's government intends to move the event indoors or restrict access as well.

The plan is part of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's crackdown on LGBTQ+ activities as the pro-Russian nationalist leader prepares for elections in 2026, in which his right-wing Fidesz party faces an unprecedented challenge from a new opponent.

Community members say that Pride is a friendly event and does not pose a threat to children.

Orban, who has been in power since 2010, has been pushing a Christian conservative agenda, and in 2021 he banned ‘homosexual propaganda’ among young people under 18, despite strong criticism from human rights organisations and the European Union. 

Orban, a longtime ideological ally of President Donald Trump, told his supporters that this year's Pride organisers ‘shouldn't even bother’ as the event would be ‘a waste of money and time’, but he did not disclose any other details.

His chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, said on Wednesday that Pride should not be held as it has been in the past. He said that the aim was to ‘implement the child protection point of view’ and that he did not see any risk in ‘the Pride parade being held indoors’ and added that the government would discuss the issue in a meeting and later propose a law.