Reading this, I started to wonder what it would take to channel the spirit of optimism that exists within Hungary into the sort of international awareness the United Kingdom cultivated with “Cool Britannia” in the mid-1990s through pop music, fashion, football and movies.

Fashion and football proved to be nonstarters for now. According to Budapest style-watcher Gabriella Kiss, the city’s young people “mostly follow Instagram and TikTok influenced trends such as ‘Cool Girl,’ ‘Eclectic Grandpa,’ ‘Gorpcore and techwear,’ and ‘Blokecore.’”

These four basic trends are occasionally accessorized with specifically Hungarian fads: wearing McDonald’s and Lidl socks produced for charity to show the wearer is socially conscious or sporting Tisza sneakers (a resuscitated communist-era brand named after the river, not the political party) because they’re only available in Hungary, for instance. I ask Kiss if she thinks Tisza sneakers and clothes could become an international trend.

“You’d have to persuade an international star or influencer to wear them first,” she says. “And that’s unlikely.”

With football, the problem is that, inside Hungary, the game is tainted by its association with the Orbán regime, as the 16 years of continuous Fidesz rule are called nowadays, and by the colossal amounts of money wasted on building stadia.

“Right now, football is basically a dirty word in this country,” says Peterjon Cresswell, a Budapest-based authority on the game.

In the late 1970s and into the ’80s, controversial Hungaraton record label head of pop music, Péter Erdős, repeatedly claimed that Hungary would produce a global star within a certain number of years. We’re still waiting.

The Power of English

Historically, as Endre Dömötör of the Hungarian House of Music explains, “The answer to why Hungary has never produced a major international star is simple. Until the internet arrived, the American and British music industries were so dominant that artists from other countries could do little more than follow trends. With only a few exceptions, they weren’t admitted into the club unless they moved to one of those two countries and established connections within the music industry.”

There were, of course, several Hungarian acts that moved abroad and tried to establish themselves within the local music industry. Puzzle, The Moog, and Ivan & The Parazol, for example. 

“A major breakthrough would have required a flawless command of English and an additional quality no Hungarian hit ever quite possessed, something like what Abba achieved in the 1970s,” Dömötör explains. “Until the end of the 1980s, however, the greatest obstacle was that Hungarian musicians did not have artistic or professional freedom.” Today there’s still the language barrier.

“It’s now possible to become an international star singing in Spanish, as Rosalia demonstrates. Language is one of the main strengths of local artists such as Azahriah but, of course, only if you understand Hungarian,” Dömötör says.

“The problem is that to break through internationally, artists would almost certainly need a distinctive local flavor. Rosalia is very Spanish. Hungarian artists who incorporate folk elements or have a certain kind of boldness or novelty factor would have the most chance. I don’t think there’s anyone like that now.”

It turns out that Hungarian music professionals have been kicking around the question of what it would take to build a world-class Hungarian act for a few years. UP Music Budapest founder Dénes Pécsi-Szabó put the challenge in a nutshell. He is a board member of the European Music Managers Alliance. As a manager, he represents seven Budapest-based acts he’s been sending overseas for more than a decade.

Narrow Windows

“We like to think we live in a digitally connected world where anything is possible,” he says. “In global pop music, the language window is much wider now but still, if you sing in a small nation’s language your chance to break through the streaming services’ wall of algorithms is narrow. If you prepare for the international market, it’s difficult to go far with the same project locally.”

But as Pécsi-Szabó points out, “There are a lot of subgenres with bands that have 1000s of fans and online listeners in many cities of the world. Bands that can sell 500 tickets in 20 cities globally can still prosper. Not from ticket sales. That’s barely enough to finance the show. But from festival invites, merch sales and royalties,” he continues.

“We don’t have the connections or experience yet to do this on the scale of creating a new Madonna, but we have the knowledge, talent, and determination to produce bands that can be successful outside Hungary. We need to strengthen the Hungarian Music Export Fund and create a healthy market inside this country which will, in turn, make it more appealing to more musicians as a career option,” he adds.

Towards the end of my conversation about football with Peterjon Cresswell, we started talking about film. Would it be possible to make a movie that became such a cult that fans and travelers made pilgrimages to where it was made? I was thinking about how the BBC series “The Night Manager” led to an influx of visitors to Deià, Mallorca, where much of it was shot.

Cresswell referenced 1996’s “Trainspotting” movie set in the underground Edinburgh world of heroin addiction and petty crime with largely undecipherable dialogue if you weren’t from the area. This became a huge and unexpected international hit. The problem is that no one could have predicted the movie’s success. A Hungarian cult film “couldn’t feel fake and manufactured,” as Cresswell says.

So, we can forget a movie inspired by Hegedűs’ election victory dance. And we can forget my speculation. Instead, we can take hope from the fact that young Hungarians today are politically engaged in a way that transcends music, fashion and football. Even those who had to go abroad to work avidly watch the Hungarian parliament in action online. Now, hope is hip in Hungary.

This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of July 31, 2026.