Budapest holds first legal Pride march in years as thousands march in heat

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9 days · 7 summary articles
Budapest celebrated its first legal Pride march in a generation on Saturday, as thousands took to the streets in sweltering 40°C heat to mark the 31st Budapest Pride under a new government that has reversed Viktor Orbán’s ban on the event. The march, which began at the Opera House at 3 p.m. and wound through the city center toward Vérmező Park, proceeded without police interference despite a law still on the books that was used last year to attempt to block the parade . Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, who received word just minutes before the march started that a criminal case against him for organizing last year’s banned Pride had been dropped, addressed the crowd at the end of the route .
The reversal of fortune for Hungary’s LGBTQ+ community follows the electoral defeat of Orbán’s government and the appointment of pro-European Prime Minister Peter Magyar, whose administration has allowed the Pride march to proceed legally for the first time since 2010 . “Today we celebrate that LGBTQ+ people will have a better life here in Hungary,” Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Benjamin Dousa told reporters at the Opera House gathering . RFSL Swedish Federation President Lovise Brade called the march “an enormous demonstration that contributed to the political shift in Hungary” .
Despite the heat and the absence of last year’s protest imperative, organizers and participants emphasized that challenges remain. Far-right activists removed rainbow flags from the Elisabeth Bridge ahead of the event and replaced them with Hungarian flags, prompting police to increase security along the route . Hungarian polling cited by RFI researcher Ambre Bruneteau shows that more than two-thirds of the population now supports same-sex marriage, a stark contrast to the rhetoric of the Orbán era .
The Budapest Pride march took place as similar celebrations unfolded across Europe, from Oslo’s rainbow-filled streets—where Mayor Anne Lindboe declared the city “a rainbow city” and vowed to defend queer rights amid rising pressures elsewhere—to Helsinki, where a Pride parade drew praise from participants for its scale and spirit . In Dublin, organizers hosted a weekend of performances and club nights as the city’s streets filled with color and music .
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