Skip to main content

Hungary Today

Hungary Today is an English-language news portal based in Budapest, billing itself as the leading English-language news source for Hungary. The portal, active since 2011, covers politics, economy, culture, and sport. It is published by the Friends of Hungary Foundation (Magyarország Barátai Alapítvány), a Hungarian NGO founded in 2011 to strengthen ties between Hungary and Hungarians living abroad. The foundation relies on private donations, including from state-linked firms such as gas and oil company MOL Group. MOL Group was long seen as closely associated with Orbán and his administration. In 2020, the Hungarian state transferred a 10 percent stake in MOL to Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a think tank run by Orbán’s then political director, Balázs Orbán. While its “About Us” page says the newsroom strives to “provide a complete, unbiased picture of Hungary,” the Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC), a research institute that studies media systems worldwide, found that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has regularly appeared at its annual conferences, and journalists and analysts it interviewed in 2023–2024 said the outlets increasingly function as vehicles for government narratives.


Country and Regional Context