Could 2026 be the year that democracy fought back? | David Van Reybrouck

It is undoubtedly too early to declare victory, but the recent electoral defeats of Viktor Orbán, Aleksandar Vučić and Flávio Bolsonaro make me wonder: is 2026 turning out to be the year democracy slowly, but surely, fought back?

Even in Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reigning bloc lost its parliamentary majority and saw the spectacular rise of Arab parties. Though the opposition may not be able to form a government yet, it does have the larger parliamentary bloc.

The shift began with an astonishing election result in Hungary in April. Against all odds, Orbán, the EU’s most deeply entrenched autocrat, was unseated by challenger Péter Magyar. Over his long years in office, Orbán had done everything possible to consolidate and perpetuate his authoritarian grip on power. The media were in his pocket, the judiciary ate from his hand and academic freedom was systematically curtailed. Yet a broad civic movement coalesced around Magyar’s party and succeeded in ousting him. The banks of the Danube witnessed their most exuberant night of celebration this century.

Joy was equally palpable last Sunday night, 300km down the river in Belgrade. There in Serbia, the Student List, a bottom-up alliance of students, academics and angry citizens, unexpectedly sent Vučić packing. Vučić had held a tight grip on power since 2014, first as prime minister, then president, relying on a familiar cocktail of far-right bravado, financial scandals and contempt for the rule of law: the winning formula of recent years. But there seems to be a limit to what citizens are ready to accept. Vučić’s fate was sealed after the newly constructed roof canopy of the Novi Sad train station collapsed in 2024, killing 16 people and triggering widespread public fury against systemic corruption.

Then came the biggest news of all on Monday morning, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defied expectations to emerge victorious in Brazil’s presidential election. In the first round, Flávio Bolsonaro had been in the lead, and almost every poll predicted he would win the run-off. Many Brazilians braced themselves for an administration at least as radical-right as his father’s. Instead, Lula, the son of poor, illiterate farmers and a former factory worker himself, surprised friend and foe alike by winning the presidency of Latin America’s largest economy for the fourth time.

Commentators were quick to point out that Lula’s victory halted a winning streak for rightwing populists across Latin America. That is certainly true, but zooming out reveals a broader pattern. This is not primarily a story of left v right, but rather of democrats v post-democrats. Hungary’s Magyar is by no means a leftist; he is a centre-right leader who was once a member of Orbán’s own party. In Serbia, the Student List was headed by Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist and university professor with no pronounced ideological profile. While he champions liberal values such as press freedom and the rule of law, his stance on Kosovo aligns with traditional Serbian nationalism: it should not be independent.

What Magyar, Srdanović and Lula share – despite significant political differences – is a fundamental belief that the rules of the democratic game must be respected. Elections must be fair, judges and journalists must work independently, and checks and balances exist for a reason.

Post-democrats, by contrast, treat laws and international agreements as mere suggestions, a convenient menu of policy options from which they can cherrypick. They use elections to gain power, only to hollow out democratic institutions once they are in office and maximise their private business profits. As corruption is key, they have to remain in power to stay out of jail. Opposing voices must be muzzled and critical media prosecuted. Post-democrats only keep the outer shell of democracy. Bolsonaro Jr took a page from Donald Trump’s playbook: election results are declared unimpeachable when he wins, and rigged when he loses. Similarly, Netanyahu is now attempting to discredit the Israeli election outcome, by suggesting Qatar interfered on behalf of the Palestinian parties.

Post-democrats have been on the rise for years, and it is terrifying. Since 2000, we have witnessed a steady, deliberate dismantling of democratic achievements across every continent. Anyone reading the latest international Democracy Report, produced by the V-Dem Institute, could easily despair. In terms of overall democratic health, it finds that we have effectively regressed to the levels of 1978. Only 7% of the world’s population live in liberal democracies.

Yet after years of alarming headlines about global democratic backsliding, the news from Budapest, Belgrade and Brasília offers rays of hope in dark times. So does the massive wave of Gen Z protests this year, from India and the Philippines to Albania, Argentina and Chile. Huge crowds of young people have taken to the streets to challenge autocratic power and corruption in their countries.

Could liberal democracy be finding its second wind? Is it actually possible to defeat autocrats and authoritarian regimes after all? Could this mark the beginning of a democratic revival that might extend to the US next week? Most polls suggest that the Democrats stand a strong chance of reclaiming at least the House of Representatives in the upcoming US midterms.

Meanwhile, the delegitimisation of Arab voters in Israel this week reminds us of the limitations of change via the ballot box. Elections can help us get rid of post-democrats, but in deeply divided societies they are not enough to heal. The individual, silent act of voting must be complemented with collective processes of deliberation.

Nonetheless, globally, 2026 may come to rank as the best year for democracy in more than a quarter of a century. Could this be the turning point?

What this tell us ahead of critical elections in some of the EU’s largest member states in the year ahead – France, Spain, Germany and Poland – remains anyone’s guess. Looking at the momentum of the AfD in Germany, rightwing populist parties with post-democratic tendencies remain very much alive in Europe. And Vox could be part of a People’s party-led government in Spain in a matter of weeks. But Hungary, Serbia and Brazil have delivered a vital reminder: the rise of autocrats and their permanence in power are not immutable laws of nature. Soon enough, post-democracies may start to feel passé.

• David Van Reybrouck is a Belgian author and philosopher laureate for the Low Countries. He is the author of Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, and the initiator of Democracy27