October 2026

Aleksandar Vučić acknowledged that his party lost Serbia's election, which closed with record-high turnout. Crowds filled the streets of Belgrade on election night to celebrate the result.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil's presidential election, defeating Flávio Bolsonaro in the second round. Outlets described the result as a historic comeback for Lula.

Index.hu reported that the cause of the tragedy, which it said involved more than sixty deaths, had been established.

Israel's election produced no clear winner, with Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition performing better than pre-election surveys but falling short of the majority needed to form a government. The Zionist opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot also lacks the required majority. Arab parties performed well and could hold the balance of power, but both camps reject cooperation with them.

A large overnight Ukrainian drone attack on Russia paralyzed air traffic in the Russian capital, Portfolio.hu reported. Moscow said it repelled the Ukrainian drone swarm and answered with a heavy strike, Növekedés.hu reported. Euronews.com asked whether the Voronezh strike, which killed two, would lead to negotiations.

Hungarian police detained Matolcsy György, former governor of the Hungarian National Bank, and searched his home in a probe connected to the central bank, seizing several items. The prosecution service spoke publicly about the MNB case after the detention. A court will decide on October 23 at nine in the morning whether Matolcsy is to be held in arrest.

Former chief prosecutor Fürcht Pál told a parliamentary committee investigating enforcement proceedings that his superior, General Tomin Szilvia, passed on an order from above that nothing could come of the Völner-Schadl case. He said the instruction was that the preparatory proceedings concerning Völner had to be closed, and described it as coming from his superiors rather than from inside the prosecution service.

Police detained Matolcsy György, the former governor of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB), and searched his home in a probe connected to the central bank. Several items were seized at the former central bank chief's property. The operation was described as a raid in the MNB case.

Hungary shut down the government portal magyarorszag.hu and several other government websites for 48 hours because of a severe IT security risk, and administrative services were suspended while the sites were down. The shutdown followed the disclosure of two extremely serious vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language, for which emergency patches have since become available.

Hungary's unemployment rate stopped rising in September, but the number of people who remain without work for long periods continued to grow, according to the latest KSH figures. The labour market data show employment falling and unemployment rising over recent months.