Following World War II, high culture that previously had been confined to the upper classes was promoted among the masses. A highly subsidized publishing industry fostered reading: the number of books published increased 10-fold between 1938 and 1988. Reading became a regular habit for about one-third of the population, and a huge network of more than 15,000 public libraries was established. The main national collections are the National Széchényi Library, the Ervin Szabó Library, the libraries of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian Parliament, and the Central Library of Loránd Eötvös University (all in Budapest), plus the libraries of the universities of Debrecen, Pécs, and Szeged.

Among the most notable of the thousands of museums and cultural centres are the Hungarian National Museum, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Applied Arts (all in Budapest), plus the Christian Museum in Esztergom, the Déri Museum of Debrecen, the Janus Pannonius Museum of Pécs, the Ferenc Móra Museum of Szeged, and the collection of the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma. Government subsidizing of culture virtually ended with the introduction of a market system in the 1990s. The capital city is also regarded for its architectural legacy from various periods, which led to its being designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Teaching and scholarship are both emphasized in Hungary’s institutions of higher learning, although, following the Soviet model, scholarly research was de-emphasized in the decades after World War II. During those years, much of the research and the resulting publications moved from the colleges and universities to the several dozen research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (established in 1825) as well as to the institutes of various ministries. The academy was at the apex of Hungarian scientific and scholarly life for over four decades following its reorganization in 1949. Beginning in the early 1990s, however, it fell under persistent attack from the new political leadership, which hoped to cleanse it of its allegedly Marxist scientists and scholars, and funding and staffing dropped precipitously. This decline in numbers and funding continued even under the Socialist-Liberal regimes before and after the turn of the century. The government led by Victor Orbán in the 2010s transferred control of the majority of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ funding to the Ministry of Innovation and Technology, prompting complaints from researchers that the government was undermining academic freedom.

Hungary has an international reputation for scholarship, with one of the world’s highest per capita rates of Nobel laureates. Because of a lack of funding, however, most of these prizewinners have worked in Germany or the United States. Outstanding Hungarian-born scientists included Theodore von Kármán, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Zoltán Bay, John G. Kemény, and Nobelists Eugene Wigner and Albert Szent-Györgyi. Other Nobel laureates were George de Hevesy, Georg von Békésy, John C. Harsanyi, John C. Polanyi, George Olah, and Avram Hershko.

Some of the top Hungarian social scientists included the social philosophers Karl Mannheim and Michael Polányi, the economist Karl Polanyi, and the philosopher and literary critic György Lukács. Hungarian-born mathematicians of international renown included John von Neumann, George Pólya, Gábor Szegő, Pál Turán, and Paul Erdős. Hungarian scholars also have excelled in the disciplines of linguistics, historiography, and literary history.

Sports and recreation

Hungary’s most popular vacation destinations include Lake Balaton and Lake Velence in Transdanubia, the Danube Bend, and the arty Szentendre Island above Budapest, as well as the Pilis, Mátra, and Bükk mountains in the north of Hungary. Lake Balaton attracts tourists from all over central and eastern Europe. A major attraction for the inhabitants of Budapest is Margit (Margaret) Island, an urban oasis of gardens and swimming pools on the Danube River.

Hungary has a tradition of success in international sporting competition. It won a number of world championships and Olympic medals even before the overpoliticization of sports in Soviet-bloc countries. Football (soccer) is especially popular, and Hungarian athletes have also enjoyed success in water polo, fencing, swimming, table tennis, track and field (athletics), rowing, weightlifting, and team handball. More recently, tennis and golf have gained in popularity, especially among the upper middle class.

Media and publishing

Under communist rule, the Hungarian press—about 30 daily newspapers and 1,500 periodicals—was strictly controlled, yet after the 1960s it became the least restricted within the Soviet bloc. Press censorship was relaxed in 1988 and then, within the next two years, completely eliminated. The movement toward news media independence was reversed in the 2010s by the Orbán government, which consolidated its influence over outlets with a pro-government orientation and minimized the reach of independent outlets by denying them state advertising revenue and impeding their owners’ other business ventures. By the end of the decade, hundreds of newspapers, radio and television stations, and Web sites had been sold to Orbán supporters, were self-censoring their content, or had transferred control to the Central European Press and Media Foundation, an umbrella organization guided by Orbán insiders.

In the first half of the 1990s, the number of newspapers increased, but their overall circulation declined. As an example, the print run of the country’s most popular daily, the Népszabadság (“People’s Freedom”), declined from 700,000 to about 200,000 at the turn of the 21st century, and in 2016 the paper was shuttered. There was a similar decline in the leading liberal paper, Magyar Nemzet (“Hungarian Nation”). The leading weeklies include the Szabad Föld (“Free Earth”) and Nők Lapja (“Hungarian Women’s Journal”).

Similar developments took place in book publishing. The change of regime resulted in the birth of several hundred private publishers, but the ending of state subsidies undermined the health of most of the established ones. In the immediate postcommunist period, the number of published books increased by about one-sixth, but the number of copies per book declined by more than two-fifths. Similarly, about half of the public libraries located in smaller settlements were closed down by 1995, and this was accompanied by the reduction of the size of the regular reading public by about one-fourth. Some critics complained that the flood of new books had mass-market appeal but lacked literary or scholarly quality.

After World War II, radio ownership and listening became common. Television appeared only in the late 1950s but soon spread throughout the country. By the early 1980s almost every household had a television. During the communist period there were only two radio stations and two, state-run TV channels. In the decade following, however, the number of radio and TV stations—including cable and satellite TV—increased quickly and significantly. There was a precipitous decline in visits to movie houses and theatres. This was accompanied by the rapid spread of programming on recordable media (videotapes, DVDs, CDs), personal computers, and Internet connectivity. Thus, by the 21st century, electronic media occupied a central place in the leisure activities of Hungarians.