KESMA

Removed from database in October 2026

The Central European Press and Media Foundation (Közép-Európai Sajtó és Média Alapítvány, KESMA) is removed from State Media Monitor’s active database following the change of government in Hungary in April 2026.

KESMA was previously classified Captured Private (CaPr). This classification reflected the sustained editorial control exercised through a privately constituted media conglomerate closely connected to Viktor Orbán’s government and the governing Fidesz party, supported by extensive state advertising.

The foundation remains politically aligned with Fidesz, now in opposition. The state-linked mechanisms that sustained its previous classification have substantially changed, and the available evidence no longer establishes continuing editorial control involving the incumbent state authorities. KESMA therefore falls outside the active scope of the State Media Matrix. Its historical classification is preserved.

KESMA was registered as a foundation on 11 September 2018. On 28 November that year it notified the Hungarian Competition Authority that it would acquire the whole of Opus Press Zrt., Echo Hungária TV Zrt., New Wave Media Group Kft. and Magyar Idők Kiadó Kft., the holding companies through which businessmen closely associated with Orbán and Fidesz transferred their media interests to the foundation without compensation. The consolidation brought approximately 476 media products under common ownership, including television channels, radio stations, national news outlets, regional newspapers and their associated websites.

On 5 December 2018 the government declared the concentration to be of national strategic importance, removing it from competition review, on the stated ground that the public interest lay in saving print media culture, and noting that 21 similar designations had been made before. The Competition Authority issued a certificate of the merger the following day for want of jurisdiction; after the Budapest-Capital Regional Court held in December 2019 that the certificate had not been the appropriate instrument, the authority concluded the procedure again on 29 January 2020 and rejected the notification, confirming that it lacked jurisdiction to examine the transaction. From February 2019 the group’s businesses were progressively consolidated under Mediaworks, centralising administrative, commercial and production functions.

The resulting network included Hír TV, Origo, Magyar Nemzet, Világgazdaság, Ripost, Metropol and numerous county newspapers and regional news websites. Mandiner was also part of the group before transferring to Mathias Corvinus Collegium with effect from 1 January 2025.

Control operated through both the ownership structure and financial dependence on the state. The European Commission’s 2026 Rule of Law Report reiterated earlier monitoring findings that state advertising accounted for more than 30 per cent of Hungary’s advertising market and reportedly supplied up to 75 to 80 per cent of KESMA’s revenue, and recorded that no measures had been adopted to allocate such advertising on transparent, objective, proportionate and non-discriminatory criteria.

The outlets’ editorial coverage consistently supported Fidesz and the Orbán government. The foundation’s leadership reflected the same political relationships. Together, these arrangements constituted the sustained state-linked editorial and financial control that justified the Captured Private classification.

What changed in 2026

The parliamentary election of 12 April 2026 ended 16 years of Fidesz government. The Tisza Party won 141 of the 199 parliamentary seats, while Fidesz-KDNP fell to 52. KESMA’s established relationship with the governing authorities was thereby severed.

The financial consequences were immediate. The preferential state advertising that had sustained the conglomerate largely dried up after the election, exposing the weakness of its commercial revenue model. Investigative reporting in June recorded that the principal publisher had ended 2025 with a reported loss of HUF 14 billion and was undertaking extensive redundancies and portfolio reductions. The 2026 Media Capture Monitoring Report also identified the withdrawal of state advertising after the election as the development that exposed the group’s financial dependence on it.

On 15 June Mediaworks announced a collective redundancy and substantial changes to its publications. The company suspended the printed editions of Bors, Nógrád Megyei Hírlap, Heves Megyei Hírlap and 24 Óra, and discontinued the Ripost.hu and Metropol.hu websites. Approximately half the staff at Magyar Nemzet were dismissed, along with the employees of Pesti Srácok, while further reductions affected Világgazdaság. The dismissal of Pesti Srácok’s staff did not establish that the publication itself had ceased operating: its editor said it was not closing and was in negotiation with the owner.

Magyar Nemzet published its final daily print edition on 31 July and continued as a weekly from August. Together with the suspension of Népszava’s printed edition following the termination of its printing and distribution arrangements by Mediaworks in May, this left Hungary without a nationally distributed printed daily devoted primarily to politics and public affairs.

The editorial relationship to the incumbent government also changed. KESMA’s remaining outlets continued to support Fidesz but became outspoken critics of Prime Minister Péter Magyar and the Tisza administration. In October, Magyar Nemzet reported that its journalists and those of Hír TV had not been given opportunities to question the government at official briefings for several months; that account is the publication’s own.

These developments demonstrate a reversal in political alignment relative to the state, rather than a transformation of KESMA into an editorially independent media organisation.

Why the entry is removed rather than reclassified

KESMA continues to operate as a privately constituted, politically aligned media foundation. Its trustees and affiliated business interests retain their connections to Fidesz, but that party no longer controls the national government. The preferential state-financing arrangements that supported the former capture mechanism have largely disappeared, and no continuing system of editorial direction by the current state authorities has been established for this review.

The network may therefore remain politically partisan and subject to concentrated private editorial control without satisfying the defining state-linked conditions of Captured Private media.

Removal does not signify that its journalism has become independent, that its ownership structure has been dismantled or that the consequences of its earlier capture have disappeared. It reflects a change in the documented relationship between the media group and state power, on the evidence currently available, and the decision is open to reassessment should later evidence establish renewed state-linked control.

No other category in the State Media Matrix adequately describes that relationship. KESMA is neither a publicly owned media institution nor an entity managed by a government-appointed governing body. The independent categories would likewise misrepresent its continued political alignment and editorial structure.

The entry is therefore removed from the active mapping rather than assigned a new classification.

October 2026