The Puskas Arena and Its Political Legacy

The Puskas Arena, a steel and concrete cauldron, can be seen from miles around. It is a structure that dominates the Budapest skyline — and, on Saturday evening, it will also command European football’s unbroken gaze. The stadium, which will have a capacity of 61,400 on Saturday, was built for a prestigious occasion such as this. Arsenal’s big date with Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final concludes a decade of ambitious planning and state investment, but the man behind it all might struggle to find gratification.

Saturday marks three weeks since Viktor Orban’s formal exit as Hungary’s prime minister after 16 years in power. A landslide victory for Peter Magyar, once a member of Orban’s Fidesz party, has swept through change in Hungary’s government and promises have been made to 'start again'. Orban is no more. But the Puskas Arena, roughly two miles east of the Danube River, forms part of the 62-year-old’s divisive legacy.

Financial and Political Implications

The latest Champions League final venue was the centrepiece of a rebuilding project that has transformed Hungary’s sporting infrastructure. New builds and renovations were effectively funded by the national purse across the country, all with the intent to harness the soft power of sport. An estimated £500million ($672m) of taxpayers’ money was spent on the Puskas Arena alone. To not be Hungary’s prime minister when it becomes the 18th nation to host either the European Cup or Champions League final will undoubtedly sting for the football-obsessed Orban.

"After an electoral victory, the final would have been an apotheosis of Orban’s international stature," says Professor Zoltan Balazs, from the department of political science at the Corvinus University of Budapest. "The show has been completely stolen from him. That must be painful." Instead, Magyar will be the figurehead who welcomes the best of European football to Budapest.

UEFA and Government Collaboration

"It’s the most bitter personal aspect of Orban’s defeat," says Professor Gyozo Molnar, professor of sociology of sport and exercise at the University of Worcester. "He built the stadium, lobbied for the event and then secured it. I believe he envisaged this as the crowning moment of his 'sport as a nation' project. He will have predicted that he would be victorious in this election and this final, hosted in Hungary, would be the icing on the cake. It would’ve been everything he dreamed of."

Until his final days in charge, Orban’s Hungary typically positioned itself outside of a conventional Europe. Although a member of the European Union since 2004, there was regular friction between Brussels and Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party. Like in 2024, when the EU’s European Court of Justice fined Hungary €200million ($233m; £173m at current exchange rates) for failing to follow the union’s asylum policies and also issued a further penalty of €1m a day until the policy was changed.

In contrast, Hungary has built increasingly tight relations with UEFA, European football’s governing body. Since being awarded the Women’s Champions League final at the newly-renovated Ferencvaros Stadion in 2019 and the European Super Cup final a year later (replacing Porto as hosts during the pandemic), there were four matches given to the Puskas Arena at the delayed 2020 European Championship held in 2021. There was also the 2023 Europa League final, when Sevilla beat Roma on penalties in the Hungarian capital, but nothing compares to this weekend for prestige.

Football as a Political Tool

UEFA has previously estimated that as many as 450million people tune in to watch their showpiece event. Budapest’s confirmation as host in 2024, though, brought a telling endorsement of Orban. "The Puskas Arena and the infrastructure provided by the government for the organization of UEFA events has played a big role in this," Sandor Csanyi, president of the Hungarian Football Federation, said in a press release. Csanyi, like Orban, has been a key figure in bringing the final to the city.

As one of Hungary’s richest men, with Forbes estimating his wealth to be $2.2billion this year, the 73-year-old banker and financier serves as a FIFA vice-president and UEFA treasurer. Csanyi and Orban have always been allies, working closely on a programme that has rebuilt Hungarian football. The funding primarily came through a corporate tax scheme introduced by Orban in 2011, where Hungarian companies have been able to make contributions to sporting bodies and clubs instead of paying tax on their profits. Analysis from 24.HU, a news outlet in Hungary, estimated in 2021 that more than £2billion had gone towards the scheme.

Political and Financial Impact

Football, the country’s biggest sport, overseen by Csanyi as head of its federation, has been the greatest beneficiary. Ferencvaros, Hungary’s most-decorated club, had a new roughly 24,000-capacity stadium built, while Debrecen, in Hungary’s second-largest city, had their own new home constructed. The most notable build, perhaps, was the decadent home of Puskas Akademia, situated in Felcsut, a village where Orban spent much of his childhood. Only founded in 2005, the club’s roughly 4,000-capacity home is among the most beautiful stadiums in Europe.

Orban, once a semi-professional player in his youth, has an obvious love of football but, from the start of his second stint as prime minister in 2010, it became central to his political ideologies. There were reflected glories to be found in reviving a sport in which Hungary was considered to have the greatest national team of the 1950s. Ferenc Puskas’s name adorns the greatest build of them all but Jozsef Bozsik, another member of that fabled 'Mighty Magyars' side, gives the title to Honved’s newly-built home in Budapest, opened in 2021.

Political Ideology and Football

"If you go back to the Soviet era of Hungary, there was a very strong connection between the Communist party and sports, especially football," says Molnar, who grew up in Hungary. "When the Iron Curtain fell and it became a democratic country again, a lot of politicians in the early 1990s actively tried to distance themselves from sport because the connection between sport and state was associated with Communism. It was only in 1998, when Fidesz came to power, that they started to create closer links between politics and sport.

"Sport wasn’t peripheral to Orban’s project, it was absolutely central. You could go as far to say that alongside media capture and constitutional change, which he has done multiple times, sport was one of the three pillars of his regime." If the hope was for Hungary — and Orban — to see tangible improvements in its football teams, the enormous investments are yet to deliver. Only twice (Debrecen in 2009-10 and Ferencvaros in 2020-21) have a Hungarian team gone beyond the Champions League’s qualifying stage in the past 30 years. UEFA’s country performance rankings place Hungary between Israel and Ukraine.

Political Transition and Future Challenges

Hungary, led by Liverpool midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai, did qualify for Euro 2024 in Germany but failed to reach the knockout stages. They missed out on this summer’s World Cup in North America after a home defeat to the Republic of Ireland in November. That will go down among the Puskas Arena’s darkest nights, but at least this weekend will bring an element of validation. "It’s the physical centrepiece of Orban’s entire sport-nation-building project," adds Molnar. "This is the crown jewel and the naming tells you everything. It was a tribute to Puskas but also to the golden age of Hungarian football. Orban wanted to create a bridge with the stadium, between the golden age of Hungary and contemporary Hungarian football.

"Bringing the Champions League final to Budapest was the culmination of everything he’s worked towards." Peter Magyar’s challenge was predicted to be strong, but few expected him to hand Orban such a convincing loss at the polls. The Tisza party, only founded in 2020, won 141 of the 199 seats, with Orban’s Fidesz left with just 52. The effects of that heavy defeat were felt across the Atlantic. United States vice-president JD Vance went to Hungary to support Orban in April, speaking at a rally at MTK Sportpark in Budapest, an indoor facility built at a reported cost of £65million by the state. That event included Vance putting President Donald Trump on loudspeaker. “I love that Viktor,” Trump told the rally through Vance’s phone. “He’s a fantastic man and we have a tremendous relationship.”

Political Change and Sport

Orban could rightly claim to be Trump’s greatest European ally, but it counted for little when polling opened. A drubbing has removed Orban from the public eye and invited debate over his huge investments in sport. "The excessive stadium-building programme and other financial support for sports has backfired in terms of popularity," adds Balazs. "Football can move masses, and it is a way of generating political support among the younger generations. That must have been the expectation, but very strikingly those generations, at least in these elections, were overwhelmingly for a change of government."

Magyar also has his own decisions to make when driving through change in Hungary’s government. He has pledged to rid the country of corruption and bring anyone guilty of profiteering during Orban’s reign to justice. The merits of the controversial tax scheme that helped to build the Puskas Arena and fund Hungary’s football clubs must also be considered. "Sport did well in this, the government did well and the entrepreneurs did well but the general public was cut out of the loop completely," says Molnar. Hungary has its new political era. But a Champions League final in Budapest owes everything to the old one.