Tens of thousands of people gathered amid a heat wave in the capital of Hungary on Saturday to celebrate the 31st annual Budapest Pride.

Specifically, it was the first such LGBTQI+ march since former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—who had sought to ban the event— was ousted from power following the April elections.

The march began on Saturday afternoon, as temperatures reached at least 38°C amid an unprecedented heat wave affecting most of Europe. Organizers handed out bottles of water to protesters, while the city’s public water utility turned on fountains along the route.

Participants set off from the iconic Budapest Opera House and made their way through the city center before crossing the Erzsébet Bridge over the Danube River. Members of Hungary’s LGBTQI+ community and a crowd of supporters danced to the music and waved rainbow flags.

Luka Uyi, who was participating in a Pride event for the third time, said she felt the atmosphere at the march was more relaxed now that the Orbán government—which implemented numerous anti-anti-LGBTQ+ policies during its 16 years in power—had been defeated.

“In the past, there was a lot of tension. But now I see people as somehow happier, and there are also more older people,” he said.

Saturday’s Pride march took place a little over a year after Orbán’s nationalist-populist government of Orbán passed legislation and a constitutional amendment to ban the event, drawing criticism from human rights organizations and politicians across the European Union.

However, in open defiance of the ban, last year’s Pride took place as scheduled and was the largest in Hungary’s history, with organizers estimating attendance at over 350,000 people. The massive turnout at the march—which the government had insisted for months would no longer be permitted—was seen as a serious blow to Orbán’s reputation.

Orbán was decisively defeated in the April elections by a center-right opponent, Prime Minister Péter Mátyás and his party, Tisza. Hungary’s new government has not repealed the legislation from the Orbán era that outlawed Pride, but the police granted a permit for the event this year and provided security along the route.

Kristóf György, who participated in Pride for the first time after traveling to Budapest from the southern city of Szeged, said he has high hopes that Hungary’s new government will take steps to expand the rights of sexual minorities, which are available in many other European countries.

“The fact that there is already a debate in Parliament about whether an orphaned child is better off with a same-sex couple or in an orphanage is a positive sign,” he said, referring to the ban during the Orbán era on adoption by same-sex couples, as well as on same-sex marriage.

“Obviously, the laws haven’t changed yet, but there are already many signs of hope for our community,” he added.

Hungary’s previous government long insisted that Pride, a celebration of LGBTQI+ visibility and the fight for equal rights, constituted a violation of children’s rights to moral and spiritual development —a claim that rights organizations and many experts have rejected.

In April, the EU’s highest court ruled that the Orbán-era legislation from 2021, which banned the availability of LGBTQI+ content to minors, violates EU law and contravenes a fundamental treaty guaranteeing respect for human rights and equality.