Feb 13, 2026, 1:39 p.mFeb 13, 2026, 1:39 p.m
The Hungarian opposition’s leading candidate for the April 12 parliamentary election, Peter Magyar, has filed a complaint about the anonymous threat to publish a sex video.
Peter Magyar has filed a complaint.Image: keystone
He wrote on Facebook that there was, among other things, suspicion of unauthorized data collection and misuse of personal data. He assumes that the threat to publish a sex video he secretly recorded came from the circle of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been in power since 2010.
Rumors about the alleged existence of a sex video that could put Magyar in a bad light in the current election campaign have been circulating in the media and social media channels controlled by Orban for days. The reason was the appearance of a new website launched by unknown people that showed an empty bedroom. The only post on this page was accompanied by the English-language captions “Coming soon” and “Once upon a time… 2024.08.03”.
Hungarian journalists subsequently identified the bedroom as part of an Airbnb apartment on Budapest’s Ringstrasse. The owner appears in the land register as the wife of an oligarch whose companies are said to regularly receive government contracts.
Magyar had already stated that in August 2024, following a party with activists from his Tisza party, he had sex with his ex-girlfriend in the room shown, who, as he wrote, “seduced” him again at the time. Others had used the room before him and he found traces of alcohol and drug use. He himself has never consumed drugs in his life.
Magyar himself comes from Orban’s right-wing populist Fidesz party, but in February 2024 he surprisingly broke with the system of patronage and corruption that he criticized and that Orban had established over a decade and a half. The Tisza party he founded has been ahead of Fidesz by eight to twelve percentage points in opinion polls for more than a year.
According to observers, Orban is fighting doggedly to maintain his current almost unlimited power. The right-wing populist’s entourage does not seem to be squeamish when it comes to their choice of means. Videos made with artificial intelligence have already appeared in which Magyar says sentences that he did not actually say. However, all previous attempts to defame Orban’s challenger have been ineffective. (hkl/sda/dpa)