The Open Society Foundations began operating in Hungary in 1984 under the leadership of George Soros, a Hungarian-born Jewish Holocaust survivor. Over the next four decades, the network directed tens of millions of dollars into the country, aiming to shape and push its politics, media, education, and civil society towards the left.

From 1985 to 1995, it delivered 4.4 million dollars’ worth of more than 1,000 photocopiers to libraries, hospitals, and public institutions. Between 1991 and 1996 it spent 5 million dollars on school breakfast programs that fed tens of thousands of children.

After the 2008 financial crisis, the foundations directed 8.6 million dollars to over 150 local groups. In 2010 they contributed 1 million dollars for emergency relief after a major toxic spill. They also funded health care modernization worth 17 billion Hungarian forints. Between 2016 and 2023 alone the foundations channeled 89.5 million dollars into at least 90 left-wing Hungarian nongovernmental organizations working on governance, journalism, and European Union integration.

Ironically, one early beneficiary was outgoing nationalist and so-called ‘illiberal’ Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In 1989 he received an Open Society Foundations scholarship to study at Oxford University.

However, Orbán later broke with that world. As prime minister, he prioritized national sovereignty, secured long-term Russian energy contracts, advanced infrastructure ties with China, and resisted European Union migration quotas. His government passed foreign funding transparency laws and forced the foundations to scale back their Budapest operations.

Yet, four decades of sustained investment have now yielded a different outcome. On April 12, 2026, Péter Magyar and his Tisza Party seized 138 seats out of 199 in parliament. Voter turnout hit a record 79.5 percent. Within hours Alex Soros, chairman of the Open Society Foundations and George Soros’ son, publicly congratulated Magyar and declared that the Hungarian people had taken back their country.

Indisputably, Magyar is tightly tied to the Soros network. His platform and key advisers emerge directly from the ecosystem built by 40 years of foundation grants. The priorities he pushes — unlocking more than 10 billion euros in frozen European Union funds, easing resistance on migration policy, and aligning judicial reforms with Brussels expectations — match precisely the causes long funded by the network. 

Certainly, Hungary occupies a critical geostrategic position in Europe. It shares a direct border with Ukraine and Serbia. It sits on major natural gas pipelines that supply much of Central Europe. It wields decisive votes inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union (EU) on sanctions, enlargement, and security policy.

Ergo, a government shaped by this network now risks reversing hard-won energy independence, softening migration controls, and accepting political conditions tied to EU money that previous leaders rejected.

George Soros has directed more than 32 billion dollars globally through his foundations since 1984. In Hungary, that long campaign has finally delivered a parliamentary supermajority responsive to the same transnational agenda once advanced through civil society grants. Magyar denies any personal financial transfers. Yet the decades of funding trails, the overlapping policy objectives, the aligned organizations, and the swift victory congratulations paint a clear picture.

This emerging landscape carries immediate consequences for border security, household energy prices, and independent national decision-making.

Hungarian voters chose change. The hard data on foundation spending, election results, and post-victory reactions reveal exactly which vision now controls Budapest. However, the months ahead will test whether Hungarian national interests or the Soros network agenda ultimately prevail.

George Soros has openly described his own worldview: “I fancied myself as some kind of G-d… I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood.” He later elaborated, “It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of G-d, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.”

With this new philosophical and geopolitical climate in mind, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be careful about accepting its new Hungarian counterpart’s invitation to go to Budapest and avoid ending up arrested like Pinochet in the United Kingdom over ICC charges.

The new Hungarian era is not promising at all and the “Israel-Hungary special relationship” is doubtlessly at risk.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)