This article lists the heads of state of Hungary, from the Hungarian Declaration of Independence and the establishment of the Hungarian State in 1849 (during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848) until the present day.
The current head of state of Hungary is President of the Republic Tamás Sulyok, former Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court. He was elected on 26 February 2024 and took office on 5 March 2024.
The politics of Hungary take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic. The prime minister is the head of government of a pluriform multi-party system, while the president is the head of state and holds a largely ceremonial position. As of 2024, The country is considered "no longer a full democracy" by the EU, and is generally said to have democratically backslid since 2010 when the Fidesz–KDNP Party Alliance led by Viktor Orbán won a two-third parliamentary supermajority and adopted a new constitution of Hungary that have both remained in place since.
Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the parliament. The party system since the last elections has been dominated by the conservative Fidesz. The three larger oppositions are Democratic Coalition (DK), Momentum and Jobbik; there are also opposition parties with a small fraction in parliament (e.g. Politics Can Be Different). The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
Count Mihály Ádám György Miklós Károlyi de Nagykároly (Hungarian: gróf nagykárolyi Károlyi Mihály Ádám György Miklós; English: Michael Adam George Nicholas Károlyi; or in short simple form: Michael Károlyi; 4 March 1875 – 19 March 1955) was a Hungarian politician who served as a leader of the short-lived and unrecognized First Hungarian Republic from 1918 to 1919. He served as prime minister between 1 and 16 November 1918 and as president between 16 November 1918 and 21 March 1919.
The assessment of his political activities is strikingly contradictory, although there is a general consensus that he was a weak and unsuccessful leader. Beyond this, during the Horthy era, he was identified as one of the main causes of Treaty of Trianon and officially sentenced as a traitor by the legal court. Conversely, according to the political left, he was respected as a statesman who recognized that the culpable war policies of the leaders of the Monarchy were leading Hungary into the disaster of World War I, and he attempted, in his own way, to counteract this. These contradictions in his evaluation still continue to resonate among various political factions of Hungarian domestic political life even in the early 21st century.
Sándor Garbai (27 March 1879 – 7 November 1947) was a Hungarian socialist politician who was the de jure leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic as both its head of state and prime minister.