Origin The origin of Hungarians, the place and time of their
ethnogenesis, has been a matter of debate. Due to the classification of the Hungarian language in the
Ugric family, they are sometimes considered an
Ugric people who originated in the
Southern Urals or
Western Siberia. However, Fóthi et al. 2022 suggests that the conquering Hungarians originated from three distinct regions on the
Eurasian steppe: the
Lake Baikal-
Altai Mountains, spanning present-day northwestern
Mongolia and southern
Siberia, the Southern Urals-Western Siberia and the
Black Sea-
Northern Caucasus. "
Hungarian pre-history", i.e. the history of the "ancient Hungarians" before their arrival in the
Carpathian basin at the end of the 9th century, is thus a "tenuous construct", based on linguistics, analogies in folklore, archaeology and subsequent written evidence. In the 21st century, historians have argued that "Hungarians" did not exist as a discrete ethnic group or people for centuries before their settlement in the Carpathian basin. Instead, the formation of the people with its distinct identity was a process. According to this view, Hungarians as a people emerged by the 9th century, subsequently incorporating other, ethnically and linguistically divergent, peoples.
Pre-4th century AD During the 4th millennium BC, the
Uralic-speaking peoples who were living in the central and southern regions east of the
Ural Mountains split up. Some dispersed towards the west and northwest and came into contact with
Turkic and
Iranian speakers who were spreading northwards. From at least 2000 BC onwards, the
Ugric-speakers became distinguished from the rest of the Uralic community, of which the ancestors of the Magyars, being located farther south, were the most numerous. Judging by evidence from burial mounds and settlement sites, they interacted with the
Indo-Iranian Andronovo culture and Baikal-Altai Asian cultures.
4th century to c. 830 In the 4th and 5th centuries AD, the Hungarians moved to the west of the Ural Mountains, to the area between the southern Ural Mountains and the
Volga River, known as Bashkiria (
Bashkortostan) and
Perm Krai. In the early 8th century, some of the Hungarians moved to the
Don River, to an area between the Volga, Don and the
Seversky Donets rivers. of the Khazars joined the Hungarians and moved to what the Hungarians call the
Etelköz, the territory between the
Carpathians and the
Dnieper River. The Hungarians faced their first attack by the
Pechenegs around 854. The new neighbours of the Hungarians were the
Varangians and the eastern
Slavs. From 862 onwards, the Hungarians (already referred to as the
Ungri) along with their allies, the Kabars, started a series of looting raids from the Etelköz into the Carpathian Basin, mostly against the
Eastern Frankish Empire (Germany) and
Great Moravia, but also against the
Balaton principality and
Bulgaria.
Entering the Carpathian Basin (c. 862–895) (
Chronicon Pictum, 1358) The Hungarians arrived in the
Carpathian Basin, a geographically unified but politically divided land, after acquiring thorough local knowledge of the area from the 860s onwards. After the end of the
Avar Kaganate (c. 822), the
Eastern Franks asserted their influence in
Transdanubia, the
Bulgarians to a small extent in the Southern
Transylvania and the interior regions housed the surviving Avar population in their stateless state. The downfall of the Avar Khaganate at the beginning of the 9th century did not mean the extinction of the Avar population, contemporary written sources report surviving Avar groups. In 862, Archbishop
Hincmar of Reims records the campaign of unknown enemies called "Ungri", giving the first mention of the Hungarians in
Western Europe. In 881, the Hungarian forces fought together with the Kabars in the
Vienna Basin. According to historian György Szabados and archeologist Miklós Béla Szőke, a group of Hungarians were already living in the Carpathian Basin at that time, so they could quickly intervene in the events of the
Carolingian Empire. The foundation of the
Hungarian state is connected to the
Hungarian conquerors, who arrived from the
Pontic steppes as a confederation of seven tribes. The Hungarians arrived in the frame of a strong centralized steppe-empire under the leadership of Grand Prince
Álmos and his son
Árpád, they became founders of the
Árpád dynasty, the Hungarian ruling dynasty and the Hungarian state. The
Árpád dynasty claimed to be a direct descendant of the great Hun leader
Attila. Medieval Hungarian chronicles from the
Hungarian royal court like the
Gesta Hungarorum,
Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum, Chronicon Pictum, Buda Chronicle,
Chronica Hungarorum claimed that the
Árpád dynasty and the
Aba clan are the descendants of Attila. According to eleventh-century tradition, the road taken by the Hungarians under Prince
Álmos took them first to Transylvania in 895. This is supported by an eleventh-century Russian tradition that the Hungarians moved to the Carpathian Basin by way of
Kiev. Prince
Álmos, the sacred leader of the Hungarian Great Principality died before he could reach
Pannonia, he was sacrificed in Transylvania. In 895/896, under the leadership of
Árpád, some Hungarians crossed the
Carpathians and entered the
Carpathian Basin. The tribe called
Megyer was the leading tribe of the Hungarian alliance that conquered the centre of the basin. At the same time (c. 895), due to their involvement in the 894–896
Bulgaro-Byzantine war, Hungarians in Etelköz were attacked by Bulgaria and then by their old enemies the Pechenegs. The
Bulgarians won the decisive
battle of Southern Buh. It is uncertain whether or not those conflicts contributed to the Hungarian departure from Etelköz. From the upper
Tisza region of the Carpathian Basin, the Hungarians intensified their campaigns across continental Europe. In 900, they moved from the upper Tisza river to
Transdanubia, which later became the core of the arising Hungarian state. By 902, the borders were pushed to the
South-Moravian Carpathians and the
Principality of Moravia collapsed. At the time of the Hungarian migration, the land was inhabited only by a sparse population of Slavs, numbering about 200,000, There is also a consistent Hungarian population in Transylvania, the
Székelys, who comprise 40% of the
Hungarians in Romania. The Székely people's origin, and in particular the time of their settlement in Transylvania, is a matter of historical controversy.
After 900 In 907, the Hungarians destroyed a
Bavarian army in the
Battle of Pressburg and laid the territories of present-day Germany, France, and Italy open to Hungarian raids, which were fast and devastating. The Hungarians defeated the Imperial Army of
Louis the Child, son of
Arnulf of Carinthia and last legitimate descendant of the German branch of the house of
Charlemagne, near
Augsburg in 910. From 917 to 925, Hungarians raided through
Basel,
Alsace,
Burgundy,
Saxony, and
Provence. Hungarian expansion was checked at the
Battle of Lechfeld in 955, ending their raids against
Western Europe, but raids on the
Balkan Peninsula continued until 970. The
Pope approved Hungarian settlement in the area when their leaders converted to
Christianity, and
Stephen I (
Szent István, or Saint Stephen) was crowned King of Hungary in 1001. The century between the arrival of the Hungarians from the eastern European plains and the consolidation of the
Kingdom of Hungary in 1001 was dominated by pillaging campaigns across Europe, from Dania (
Denmark) to the
Iberian Peninsula (contemporary
Spain and
Portugal). After the acceptance of the nation into Christian Europe under Stephen I, Hungary served as a bulwark against further invasions from the east and south, especially by the Turks. At this time, the Hungarian nation numbered around 400,000 people. They have distant Hungarian ancestors who intermarried with locals. The
Ottoman Empire had to recruit troops from conquered Christian people, most notably through the
devşirme system, a special "tribute in blood", by which the
Janissary corps was primarily staffed. In this system, Christian youths were taken, or children where kidnapped during Ottoman raids, primarily from the Balkan provinces, then converted to Islam and drafted into Ottoman service. The Hungarian population experienced the recruitment of its people under the Ottoman regime. The Hungarians who were relocated from Hungary to the banks of the Nile were soldiers in the
Ottoman army, brought there by Sultan Selim to serve as border guards. These groups of Hungarians ended up in Egypt-Sudan after retiring from military service, concluding their army careers there. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman conquest turned
Kingdom of Hungary into a battlefield. According to Hungarian historiography, the ethnic pattern of Hungary changed significantly due to the centuries long wars. During the Ottoman occupation, the
Principality of Transylvania maintained the continuity of Hungarian statehood. The Habsburg–Wallachian military campaigns between 1599 and 1604, and Ottoman–Tatar military campaigns between 1657 and 1661 were destructive for the Hungarians living in the region and the Hungarian settlements connecting the Hungarian ethnic blocks of the
Partium and
Székely Land suffered the most extensive destruction. Between the
Battle of Mohács in 1526 and the suppression of
Rákóczi's War of Independence in 1711, the Hungarian and Catholic dominated population structure of the Late Medieval Kingdom of Hungary was broken up, in Transylvania the Romanians became majority and the Hungarians became a minority population, and in the more sheltered mountainous regions, the Romanian population steadily grew, benefiting from additional immigration from Wallachia and Moldavia.
Early modern period The first accurate measurements of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary including ethnic composition were carried out in 1850–51. There is a debate among Hungarian and non-Hungarian (especially
Slovak and
Romanian) historians about the possible changes in the ethnic structure of the region throughout history. According to Hungarian historians, the proportion of Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin was at an almost constant 80% during the
Middle Ages. The Hungarian population began to decrease only at the time of the
Ottoman conquest, reaching as low as around 39% by the end of the 18th century. In 1715 (after the Ottoman occupation), the
Southern Great Plain was nearly uninhabited but now has 1.3 million inhabitants, nearly all of them Hungarians. As a consequence, having also the Habsburg colonization policies, the country underwent a great change in ethnic composition as its population more than tripled to 8 million between 1720 and 1787, while only 39% of its people were Hungarians, who lived primarily in the centre of the country.
19th century to present In the 19th century, the proportion of Hungarians in the Kingdom of Hungary rose gradually, reaching over 50% by 1900 due to higher natural growth and
Magyarization. Between 1787 and 1910 the number of ethnic Hungarians rose from 2.3 million to 10.2 million, accompanied by the resettlement of the
Great Hungarian Plain and
Délvidék by mainly
Roman Catholic Hungarian settlers from the northern and western counties of the Kingdom of Hungary. Spontaneous assimilation was an important factor, especially among the German and Jewish minorities and the citizens of the bigger towns. On the other hand, about 1.5 million people (about two-thirds non-Hungarian) left the
Kingdom of Hungary between 1890–1910 to escape from
poverty. : Kingdom of Hungary lost 72% of its land and 3.3 million people of Hungarian ethnicity. The years 1918 to 1920 were a turning point in the Hungarians' history. By the
Treaty of Trianon, the Kingdom had been cut into several parts, leaving only a quarter of its original size. One-third of the Hungarians became minorities in the neighbouring countries. During the remainder of the 20th century, the Hungarians population of Hungary grew from 7.1 million (1920) to around 10.4 million (1980), despite losses during the
Second World War and the wave of emigration after the attempted
revolution in 1956. The number of Hungarians in the neighbouring countries tended to remain the same or slightly decreased, mostly due to assimilation (sometimes forced; see
Slovakization and
Romanianization) and to emigration to Hungary (in the 1990s, especially from
Transylvania and
Vojvodina). After the
"baby boom" of the 1950s (
Ratkó era), a serious demographic crisis began to develop in Hungary and its neighbours. For historical reasons (see
Treaty of Trianon), significant Hungarian minority populations can be found in the surrounding countries, most of them in
Romania (in
Transylvania),
Slovakia, and
Serbia (in
Vojvodina). Sizable minorities live also in
Ukraine (in
Transcarpathia),
Croatia (primarily
Slavonia), and
Austria (in
Burgenland). Slovenia is also host to a number of ethnic Hungarians, and Hungarian language has an official status in parts of the
Prekmurje region. Today more than two million ethnic Hungarians live in nearby countries. There was
a referendum in Hungary in December 2004 on whether to grant Hungarian
citizenship to Hungarians living outside Hungary's borders (i.e. without requiring a permanent residence in Hungary). The referendum failed due to insufficient
voter turnout. On 26 May 2010, Hungary's Parliament passed a bill granting dual citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living outside of Hungary. Some neighboring countries with sizable Hungarian minorities expressed concerns over the legislation. As of 2025, three Hungarians have been in spaceflight.
Bertalan Farkas (1980),
Charles Simonyi (2007) and
Tibor Kapu (2025). ==Ethnic affiliations and genetic origins==