--- title: "Hungary's prime minister wants a chess grandmaster as head of state" description: "Peter Magyar has asked Judit Polgar, who beat Kasparov and spent 26 years as the strongest woman in chess, to take a job that is mostly ceremonial and entirely symbolic. She has not said yes." category: "World" category_url: https://herald.la/category/world author: "Naomi Fields" published: 2026-07-20T10:28:00.000Z updated: 2026-07-20T10:28:00.000Z canonical: https://herald.la/article/hungarys-prime-minister-wants-a-chess-grandmaster-as-head-of-state tags: ["hungary", "judit-polgar", "chess", "peter-magyar", "europe"] --- # Hungary's prime minister wants a chess grandmaster as head of state Peter Magyar has asked Judit Polgar, who beat Kasparov and spent 26 years as the strongest woman in chess, to take a job that is mostly ceremonial and entirely symbolic. She has not said yes. Prime Minister Peter Magyar has [proposed Judit Polgar for the Hungarian presidency](https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260720-hungary-pm-magyar-proposes-chess-grandmaster-judit-polgar-for-president), announcing that he would meet her to ask whether she would take it. She has not publicly answered. ## The job on offer The Hungarian presidency is a head-of-state role with limited powers. The president can veto legislation or refer a law to the Constitutional Court, but governing is done by the prime minister and the cabinet. The president is elected by the National Assembly rather than by voters. That is what makes the choice a statement rather than a transfer of power. Magyar's Tisza party [won a large parliamentary majority in April](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/13/who-is-peter-magyar-hungarys-new-leader-who-trounced-viktor-orban), ending Viktor Orban's long tenure, and he has framed his program around dismantling the institutional architecture built during it. Installing a figure with no party history in the ceremonial office fits that argument, and it is also a low-cost way to make it. Whether it is more than a gesture depends on what a President Polgar would do with the veto and referral powers when Magyar's own government produces legislation she dislikes. Nobody has asked her that yet. ## Why the name carries weight Polgar, who turns 50 this week, was the strongest woman ever to play chess, and the qualifier does her a disservice. She became a grandmaster in 1991 at 15 years and 4 months, [breaking a record Bobby Fischer had held since 1958](https://worldchesshof.org/inductee/judit-polgar/). She reached a peak rating of 2735 and a place in the world top 10, the only woman to have done either. She was the top-ranked woman in the world continuously from 1989 until she retired from competition in 2014, a run of about 26 years. She refused throughout her career to play in women-only events, competing in open tournaments against the strongest players alive, and beat a long list of world champions including Anatoly Karpov, Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik, Boris Spassky and Veselin Topalov. In 2002 she beat Garry Kasparov, then the top-ranked player in the world, in a rapid game at the Russia versus the Rest of the World match. Kasparov had years earlier expressed skepticism about whether women could compete at the very top. He was more generous afterward. ## The experiment behind it Polgar's career began as an argument her father wanted to prove. Laszlo Polgar believed that expertise was made rather than born, and that with early, systematic training a child could be brought to the top of a demanding field. He raised his three daughters accordingly, in chess. Two became grandmasters and the third an international master. It is an unsettling story in some respects, and it is usually told as a curiosity about parenting. What it produced, in Judit's case, was a player who spent a quarter of a century as one of the best in the world in a field that had assumed she could not be. ## What happens next Parliament elects the president, and Magyar's majority means his nominee would very likely be confirmed if she accepts. The immediate question is whether Polgar, who has spent her post-playing career on chess education rather than politics, wants the position at all. Her answer will be the first real test of whether this is a serious appointment or a good headline. ## Sources - [Hungary's PM Magyar to ask chess champion Judit Polgar to become president](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-07-19/hungarys-pm-magyar-to-ask-chess-champion-judit-polgar-to-become-president) - [Hungary PM Magyar proposes chess grandmaster Judit Polgar for president](https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260720-hungary-pm-magyar-proposes-chess-grandmaster-judit-polgar-for-president) - [Who is Peter Magyar, Hungary's new leader who trounced Viktor Orban?](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/13/who-is-peter-magyar-hungarys-new-leader-who-trounced-viktor-orban) - [Judit Polgar](https://worldchesshof.org/inductee/judit-polgar/)