1 February
The Day of the
Republic of Hungary

1 February – The Day of the Republic of Hungary

On 1 February 1946, the National Assembly of Hungary proclaimed the Act on the Form of State, thereby establishing the Republic of Hungary. In remembrance of this event, the Hungarian government declared this date a national day of commemoration for the republic in 2005.

According to the people's resolution announced by the Hungarian National Council on 16 November 1918, the Kingdom of Hungary was replaced by an "independent and sovereign people's republic". However, on 27 February 1920, the National Assembly adopted a law "on the restoration of constitutional order and the provisional arrangement of supreme state power", which annulled the decisions of the revolutionary period and introduced the institution of the Regent.

On 1 March 1920, Miklós Horthy was elected Regent of Hungary, thus creating a kingdom without a king. After the Second World War, on 1 February 1946, the National Assembly formally abolished the monarchy and declared Hungary a republic.

Following the proclamation of the law, Zoltán Tildy, then Prime Minister and President of the Independent Smallholders' Party, was elected President of the Second Republic.
The Third Republic of Hungary was declared on 23 October 1989—on the anniversary of the 1956 revolution—by Mátyás Szűrös, Speaker of the National Assembly and provisional President of the Republic, in Budapest.