EditHow Orbán channelled millions into friendly media – and Western groups took their cut
Companies connected to the Swiss-German Ringier Axel Springer group or the RTL Group controlled by Bertelsmann participated in the public-money pipeline
Hungarian investigative outlet Átlátszó, partner of EUalive, has obtained a trove of previously secret documents revealing how the Orbán government spent the equivalent of more than €340 million of public money on communication campaigns between 2019 and 2024. The funds flowed through two large framework contracts managed by the National Communication Office (Nemzeti Kommunikációs Hivatal), and a substantial portion ended up in the coffers of pro-government media. Yet the records also show that Western-owned commercial media groups operating in Hungary received tens of millions of euros from the same system.
Átlátszó secured the documents only after years of litigation. A freedom-of-information request filed in 2024 was rejected by the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office under Antal Rogán. Multiple court victories, culminating at the Kúria, still failed to produce the files while Fidesz remained in power. Only after the 2026 change of government were five USB drives containing more than a thousand PDF files finally handed over. The outlet analysed roughly 70 percent of the total spending – more than 88 billion forints, or approximately €242 million – using AI-assisted processing of the poorly scanned documents.
The two framework contracts, signed in 2019 (net 50 billion forints, about €138 million) and 2022 (net 75 billion forints, about €207 million), had a combined ceiling of 125 billion forints, or roughly €344 million. Almost all the money was channelled through New Land Media Kft., a company controlled by Gyula Balásy. New Land acted as the central intermediary: it planned campaigns, bought advertising space and earned a standard 15 percent agency fee. On the €242 million analysed, that fee alone amounted to around €26.5 million.
The campaigns covered a wide range of government messaging: the “Hungary is moving forward” slogan, tax exemptions for young people, the child-protection referendum, national consultations, minimum-wage increases, housing support and narratives about inflation caused by the war in Ukraine. Placements were ordered by number of appearances rather than by audience reach or GRP metrics. This allowed media outlets to schedule ads at convenient times with almost no risk of financial penalties if the planned exposure was not achieved. In one documented case the sanction for non-delivery was just eight million forints.
The largest single beneficiary was Mediaworks, the giant publisher controlled through the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA) and closely linked to Lőrinc Mészáros. Mediaworks and related entities received approximately 29.5 billion forints – more than €81 million – between 2020 and 2024. Spending peaked at nearly 10 billion forints (€27.5 million) in 2023. The money bought advertising across the group’s national titles (Magyar Nemzet, Nemzeti Sport, Világgazdaság, Bors) and its network of county newspapers.
Other major recipients included Digital Minds Kft. (about 14.3 billion forints, or €39 million), a company linked to the business circle of Rogán’s family; Publimont, Mészáros’s outdoor advertising firm (12.56 billion forints, €34.6 million); and Village Media (3.3 billion forints, €9.1 million), which specialised in hyper-local placements. TV2 Media Group took around 2.7 billion forints (€7.4 million), while Hír TV received 1.63 billion forints (€4.5 million).
What makes the picture more complex is that commercially oriented, Western-owned media also collected significant sums. Companies connected to the Swiss-German Ringier Axel Springer group – publisher of the popular tabloid Blikk – received roughly 2.1 billion forints, or about €5.8 million. Magyar RTL Televízió (RTL Klub), part of the Luxembourg-based RTL Group controlled by Bertelsmann, was paid more than 1.25 billion forints, approximately €3.4 million. These outlets were treated as “tolerated” rather than fully favoured, yet they still participated in the public-money pipeline.
A concrete illustration of the system’s inefficiency is the 2022 border-guard recruitment campaign. More than 600 advertising spots were booked across TV2 channels, Hír TV and even the opposition-leaning ATV at a total cost of 1.24 billion forints (about €3.4 million including agency fees and VAT). The result was only a few hundred additional recruits, implying a cost of roughly four million forints – more than €11,000 – per new border guard.
The documents confirm a clear hierarchy that investigative journalists have long described with the old socialist-era categories of “prohibited, tolerated, supported.” Independent outlets received nothing. Fully loyal media, especially those inside the KESMA orbit or linked to Mészáros and the Rogán circle, received the bulk of the money. Commercial players with Western ownership were allowed a smaller but still lucrative share. Intermediary companies were frequently inserted into the chain, creating additional layers of profit for politically connected owners.
Balásy’s firms had already dominated National Communication Office tenders for years, winning an estimated 73 percent of contracts worth nearly 900 billion forints (around €2.5 billion) between 2015 and 2023. The 2019 and 2022 framework agreements simply institutionalised that dominance on an even larger scale.
The Átlátszó investigation shows that the system was not merely a crude subsidy for propaganda outlets. It was a sophisticated mechanism for distributing public resources that rewarded political loyalty while still allowing established commercial – including Western-owned – media groups to profit. When state advertising later dried up after the 2026 election defeat, many of the same pro-government titles that had grown fat on these contracts faced sudden financial crisis, mass layoffs and closures. The Western-owned titles that had taken a more modest share proved more resilient, precisely because they had never been as dependent on the single public-money pipeline.
The newly released documents provide the most detailed evidence to date of how, for half a decade, Hungarian taxpayers financed both an extensive domestic propaganda apparatus and a quieter stream of revenue for international media groups operating in the country.
The article in Hungarian by EUalive’s partner Átlátszó can be found here.
Caption: AI-generated illustrative image
Updated: August 25, 2026 - 11:00
