Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, center, flanked by his team reacts after a parliamentary election in Budapest, Hungary, Sunday, April 12, 2026. —Petr David Josek—Associated PressHungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in a closely watched general election on Sunday, after early results showed the opposition Tisza party looked set to win a two-thirds majority. With nearly half of the votes counted on Sunday evening, Tisza was projected to win 135 of 199 seats in parliament, the national election office (NVI) said. Orbán's ruling Fidesz party would get 57 seats based on the current standing."The election results are not final yet, but the situation is understandable and clear," Orbán said at the Fidesz campaign offices. "The responsibility and possibility of governing was not given to us. I have congratulated the winner."The results mean that Tisza party leader Péter Magyar is on course to become the country’s new Prime Minister, ousting Orbán, who has led Hungary since 2010. While polling leading up to Sunday’s Election Day indicated that Orbán’s party was trailing Tisza by a significant margin, the outcome marks a stunning political shift in the European country.Read more: Why MAGA Republicans Are Obsessed With Viktor OrbánOrbán, who has cast himself as a proponent of “illiberal democracy,” is an icon of the global far-right and an ally of President Donald Trump—so much so that U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance joined Orbán in Budapest on Tuesday, in an effort to boost the Prime Minister’s flailing campaign just days before the general election. Vance said that Orbán was “wise and smart” and that his leadership “can provide a model to the Continent.” TIME spoke to two experts before Sunday about what was at stake in this election and what Orbán's loss of power could mean for Hungary, the European Union, and beyond.“It’s a very important election for what it means for Europe, what it means for Ukraine, but also what it means for the broader far-right movement around the world, which has built up Hungary as the kind of far-right, illiberal ‘democratic model’ where you have an elected autocracy pushing back against migrants and against supposedly woke values,” Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told TIME.Here’s what to know about the possible ramifications of this election.What the election could mean for HungaryIn the years since he first rose to become Prime Minister, Orbán and his party have taken control of Hungary’s media outlets and deployed propaganda to vilify his political opponents, as well as consolidated their power over institutions intended to serve as checks on executive authority, such as the country’s courts. In 2022, the European Parliament said that Hungary has become a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy,” meaning that, while the country holds elections, “respect for democratic norms and standards is absent.”Bergmann said that Hungary is considered by many to be “one of the most corrupt countries now in the European Union.”“[Orbán has] utterly changed the nature of Hungarian democracy where it basically revolves around him,” Bergmann said. “He has run Hungary as if it were his fiefdom.”But polls leading up to Election Day showed Orbán’s party trailing behind the opposition party, which Bergmann attributed at least in part to voters’ growing frustration and concerns regarding corruption in Hungary.Magyar was able to bring together Orbán’s critics, ranging from voters on the far left to those on the right who have become disgruntled with the Prime Minister, Bergmann said in the lead-up to the election. Magyar is a conservative and was previously part of Orbán’s party before splitting off in 2024. He has pledged to implement anti-corruption reforms in the country if elected.Zsuzsanna Végh, a political analyst at the German Marshall Fund, called this “a milestone election” for Hungary when speaking to TIME ahead of Election Day. Magyar's party winning the election signifies Hungarian voters’ rejection of Orbán’s far-right movement. Before Election Day, Végh said that the rise of Magyar and his party creates “a realistic chance to oust Orbán and potentially reform the country to halt the autocratization that we have seen over the past decade and a half and return to a more democratic way of governance and just generally operation of the state.”Whether Magyar will follow through on the reforms he has promised remains to be seen. His party looks set to secure a two-thirds majority, an outcome which Végh previously said would give him "almost a free hand to actually reform the country."What the election could mean for the EUUnder Orbán’s leadership, Hungary’s relationship with the EU has grown increasingly contentious over the years. The Prime Minister has “become a thorn in the side of the European Union,” Bergmann said, often using his veto power in a way that has hindered the EU’s response to various issues, particularly the war in Ukraine. Hungary has, for instance, blocked the EU’s attempts to impose sanctions against Russia over the war, as well as to support Ukraine.“Effectively, over the past years, the Hungarian government have been blocking EU decision-making, have been hampering the EU’s ability to really act as a global power,” Végh said.Before Election Day, Végh said that she expected that a win for Magyar’s party would lead to “a change, and a Tisza government would approach the European Union much more constructively.” Magyar’s party “positions Hungary as a member of the EU that wants to be a member of the EU, that wants to cooperate, that wants to use this framework to the benefit of the country, instead of undermining the joint action of the union,” Végh said.Magyar previously told The Associated Press that, if his party won the election, he would work to mend the country’s fractured relationship with the bloc, saying that he thought the general election “will be a referendum on our country’s place in the world.”But Bergmann acknowledged that “there’s a lot of uncertainty about Péter Magyar and where he’ll actually position himself.”With regards to Ukraine, Végh said she expected that “Magyar will not veto outright.”“He would not be representing Russian interests in the EU’s decision making process, and that is already a huge shift” from Orbán, Végh said.If Magyar upholds his pledge to implement anti-corruption reforms in Hungary, that could also help repair the country’s relationship with the EU, since much of the tension in the relationship stemmed from the rise of corruption in Hungary, Végh said. In 2022, the EU began suspending billions of dollars in funding to Hungary over violations of the bloc’s rule-of-law standards. Experts told TIME that Hungary’s struggling economy was one of the reasons that Orbán’s party was polling poorly leading up to Election Day. If Magyar's party implements his promised reforms and repairs Hungary’s relationship with the EU, then the bloc would likely release funding for the country, which “will create an economic windfall,” Bergmann said. How much funding the EU releases to Hungary, Végh said, depends on the extent of reforms made.The new leadership in Hungary could also lead to conversations about making changes to the EU’s governing rules. The EU needs to have unanimity among its 27 member nations in order to take action on certain issues—a rule that some have criticized as one that, at times, can limit the union’s effectiveness.Bergmann said before Election Day that, following a loss for Orbán’s party, “The hope, I think, for Europe is that … you could begin to have conversations about reforming the EU and making it work better.” The significance of Trump and Vance’s support for OrbánAt a rally in Hungary on Tuesday, Vance called Trump and put the phone on speaker so the audience could hear the American President as he commended Orbán, particularly over Orbán’s anti-immigrant policies. Trump described Orbán as “a fantastic man” and said the Hungarian Prime Minister “did not allow people to storm your country and invade your country like the people have and ruined other countries.”“I’m a big fan of Viktor,” Trump said. “I’m with him all the way.”Both Végh and Bergmann said ahead of the election that they didn’t think the American politicians’ efforts to promote Orbán would be effective. Polling shows that Trump is a polarizing politician among people in Hungary: 46% of people in the country have little to no confidence in him as a world leader, while 53% have some or a lot of confidence in him, according to a poll released by the Pew Research Center last June.But Végh characterized Vance’s visit to Hungary as an attempt to keep Orbán’s base mobilized ahead of the election—and a move that demonstrates the allyship between the MAGA movement and Orbán’s party.While Orbán is seen as a model of the far-right movement, Végh previously said that his party losing the election may not have a direct impact on the rise in far-right politicians globally.“In Europe particularly, the rise of far-right parties is driven by domestic dynamics,” she said. “The French context, the Polish context, the Italian one is going to determine the overall success of the far-right parties in the given countries.”At the same time, Végh told TIME that Orbán's Fidesz losing would leave far-right parties with “a crucial takeaway”: “The realization that even Viktor Orbán’s regime is not foolproof and it is possible to, after all, fall out of power in this hybrid state of a regime.”