Hope in the Making:

Young Hungarians at a Turning Point

a photo & reported essay by Ian Schultz | for Everything is Political | May 2026

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I left JFK for Budapest on April 7th with fifteen rolls of film and the intention to not photograph Hungary’s pivotal election, in which autocrat Viktor Orbán and his regime of two decades was set to lose (they did!), but to see for myself how a generation raised with no memory of otherwise greets the moment when democracy comes knocking at their door.

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…A hundred thousand people are said to have attended the rally in Heroes’ Square. The biggest crowd I’ve ever seen, enveloped in a joyous insurrectionary energy. Countrymen of all ages and backgrounds packed shoulder to shoulder, unified less by ideology than shared anguish with the status quo.

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