Hungary’s largest LGBT advocacy organization is campaigning to overturn the country’s ban on legal gender recognition, a policy introduced under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government.
The Háttér Society has launched a petition calling on parliament to repeal Section 33 of a 2020 law, which defines a person’s official sex according to biological characteristics recorded at birth and prevents that entry from being changed.
The group is calling for a “quick, transparent and accessible” process allowing transgender people to change the sex marker and corresponding name on official documents.
The Orbán government defended the law on the grounds that biological sex is an objective characteristic and should remain fixed in civil records. The measure formed part of a broader conservative approach to gender and LGBT policy, including Hungary’s 2021 Child Protection Act.
Pressure to reverse the policy has also come from European institutions. In September, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers urged Hungary to establish a legal framework for changing sex or gender markers in official documents, citing previous European Court of Human Rights rulings.
Hungary’s new government has already proposed rolling back several Orbán-era LGBT restrictions following the April 2026 election, but Section 33 remains unchanged.
The dispute over gender recognition is therefore shaping up as another major cultural battle over how far Hungary’s post-Orbán government will move away from the conservative policies of the previous administration.
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