After graduating with a law degree from a Catholic university in 2003, Magyar began working as a lawyer. In 2006, while Fidesz was in opposition, he provided pro bono legal representation to anti-government demonstrators arrested during violent protests against the then-Socialist government.
That same year, he married fellow lawyer Judit Varga, who would later become
one of Orbán’s most prominent ministers. The couple moved to Brussels in 2009, where Varga worked advising a Hungarian member of the European Parliament.
During their years abroad, alongside a stint as a stay-at-home father for their three children, Magyar worked for Hungary’s Foreign Ministry and as a diplomat with its permanent representation to the European Union.
After returning to Hungary with his family in 2018, Magyar moved into leadership roles at several state-affiliated institutions. Meanwhile, Varga’s star was rising within Fidesz, and she was appointed justice minister in 2019. Alongside Katalin Novák, an Orbán ally who in 2022 became Hungary’s youngest president and the first woman to hold the office, Varga was widely seen as a possible successor to Orbán.
But a political scandal in 2024 was soon to change Magyar’s personal and political trajectory, and fundamentally transform Hungarian politics.
After returning from Brussels, Magyar’s relationship with Varga deteriorated, and the couple divorced in 2023.
The following year, Varga was implicated in a
scandal that rocked Hungary when it emerged that President Novák had granted a pardon to a convicted accomplice in a child sexual abuse case. The decision shocked the country and led to
Novák’s resignation, while Varga, who had endorsed the pardon, also stepped down.
The next day, Magyar gave a lengthy interview to the popular Hungarian YouTube channel Partizán in which he publicly broke with Fidesz, accusing Orbán’s government of systemic corruption and operating in the interests of a small circle of political and economic elites.
The interview quickly went viral, drawing more than 2 million views in a country of fewer than 10 million, and transformed Magyar from a relatively obscure insider into a national political figure overnight.
In the weeks that followed, he intensified his criticism of the government and began organizing public events. On March 15, Hungary’s national holiday, he
addressed thousands of supporters in Budapest and announced plans to launch a new political movement that would later become the Tisza party.