Viktor Orbán, Hungarian politician, 38th Prime Minister of Hungary
Viktor Mihály Orbán (Hungarian: [ˈviktor ˈorbaːn] (listen); born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian politician who has served as prime minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has presided over Fidesz, since 1993, with a brief break between 2000 and 2003.

Orbán studied at Eötvös Loránd University and, briefly, at the University of Oxford before entering politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989. He headed the reformist student movement the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége), the nascent Fidesz. Orbán became nationally known after giving an address at the 1989 reburial of Imre Nagy and other martyrs of the 1956 revolution, in which he openly demanded that Soviet troops leave the country. After Hungary's transition to multiparty democracy in 1990, he was elected to the National Assembly and led Fidesz's parliamentary caucus until 1993. Under his leadership, Fidesz shifted away from its original centre-right, classical liberal, pro-European platform toward right-wing national conservatism.

Orbán's first term as prime minister, from 1998 to 2002 at the head of a conservative coalition government, was dominated by the economy and Hungary's accession to NATO. He served as leader of the opposition from 2002 to 2010. In 2010, Orbán again became prime minister after Fidesz's supermajority victory in coalition with the Christian Democrats. Central issues during Orbán's second premiership have included major constitutional and legislative reforms, the European migrant crisis, the lex CEU, and the COVID-19 pandemic. He has won reelection twice, in 2014 and 2018, and in November 2020 became the country's longest-serving prime minister. In December 2021, he became the longest-serving incumbent head of government in the European Union.

Because of Orbán's curtailing of press freedom, erosion of judicial independence and undermining of multiparty democracy, many political scientists and watchdogs consider Hungary to have experienced democratic backsliding during Orbán's tenure. Orbán's attacks on the European Union while accepting its money and funneling it to his allies and family have also led to characterizations of his government as a kleptocracy. Between 2010 and 2020, Hungary dropped 69 places in the Press Freedom Index and 11 places in the Democracy Index; Freedom House has downgraded the country from "free" to "partly free." Orbán defends his policies as "illiberal democracy." As a result, Fidesz was suspended from the European People's Party from March 2019 until March 2021, when Fidesz left the EPP over a dispute over new rule-of-law language in the latter's bylaws.