The article notes ongoing tensions around LGBTQ rights in Hungary amid shifting leadership and unresolved legal and policy questions.

Legal and political developments around LGBTQ rights in Hungary continue to evolve despite the ECJ ruling.

Prosecutors had charged Karácsony in January 2025 for organizing and leading a banned assembly after attempting to register the march as a municipal event to avoid a permit.

Prosecutors in Hungary have dropped charges against organizers of last year’s Pride marches after a EU Court ruling found the 2021 anti-LGBTQ law to be in breach of EU law, making the cited ban unlawful.

Budapest’s Green Party mayor Gergely Karácsony, previously charged for organizing the city’s 30th Pride parade despite an official ban, is among those cleared.

The charges against Karácsony were dropped after the ECJ ruling in April stated that the facts described in the indictment no longer constitute a crime.

The 2026 Pride Parade is planned for June 27, with unclear indications on whether the government will address LGBTQ rights or reverse the previous laws.

The parade had been banned by the government under then-prime minister Viktor Orbán, with the 2021 anti-LGBTQ law being tightened in 2025.

Prosecutors filed the charges in January amid a government ban on public events involving LGBTQ content.

In June 2025, the Pride parade drew about 200,000 participants despite the ban, and Karácsony asserted that “neither freedom nor love can be banned in Budapest.”

The same period saw tens of thousands of protesters in Budapest turning the Pride event into a larger anti-government demonstration against then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Even with the ban, the Pride march proceeded with a turnout exceeding previous years.