Neo-Nazis Linked to “Terrorist Activities” to Host Budapest Concert

A branch of an international neo-Nazi network the UK government suspects of involvement in terrorist activity is organising a two-day concert in Budapest. It won’t be for the first time.

“More than 10 bands from Europe” will take the stage in early February, according to the Hungarian affiliate of Blood & Honour (B&H), a UK-founded international neo-Nazi music network.

The gig is the most recent in a series of international neo-Nazi events held in the Hungarian capital, some of which have been banned in previous years. February is especially important for Hungarian and international far-right groups. Many travel to Budapest to honour Nazi and collaborationist forces who attempted to flee the besieged Hungarian capital in February 1945. They have billed these events as a ‘Day of Honour’.

“Blood & Honour is an international right-wing terrorist network,” Thorsten Hindrichs, an expert on European far-right music scenes from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, told Bellingcat. 

“I fear that the festival will contribute to the further normalisation of right-wing extremism and terrorism, especially if state security authorities and political officials simply let it happen without further ado,” Hindrichs added.

“Hungary.….has declared zero tolerance against Nazi ideology, open anti-Semitism and racism,” a representative for the country’s national police told Bellingcat. The police “will take firm, unambiguous action against extremist manifestations, in proportion to the seriousness of the offence, where necessary.”

Concerts Are a Significant Source of Revenue

Concerts aren’t just about music for the far-right. They are also an important source of income from ticket sales and merchandise, researchers of the International Centre for Counter-terrorism (ICCT), a Netherlands-based think tank, wrote in a 2024 analysis. Far-right fashion items are especially important merchandise, as Bellingcat has shown.

The cost of the February 2025 concert is advertised on Blood & Honour’s website at €30 as a “support fee both days” (“támogatás mindkét nap” in Hungarian), though it is unclear from the wording in both languages whether this fee is for the whole event or 30 euros for each day. Organisers only accept cash payments and indicated the concert would take place “on private land somewhere in Hungary.” 

Last February, Blood & Honour’s Hungarian branch charged a total of €45 for a two-day event. They also highlighted the opportunity to buy merchandise, including items from the so-called Blood & Honour “support shop”. While the branch advertises merchandise on its website, it is only available for sale at in-person events. Many of the items use open Nazi symbolism, with one shirt bearing a Totenkopf over a swastika with text beneath reading ‘White Power.’

In October 2024, another two-day neo-Nazi concert took place at a community hall in Csömör, a village near Budapest. Ticket prices were €100; a Telegram channel promoting the concert claimed 300 tickets would be available, suggesting that ticket sales alone likely brought in tens of thousands of euros in revenue. Hungarian media reports have suggested that the community hall was rented under false pretences by the neo-Nazis, with a private individual reportedly claiming it was for a birthday party with foreign guests. The event was promoted as the ten-year anniversary of the French neo-Nazi and Blood & Honour affiliate Tomasz Szkatulski’s fashion brand.

Local activists identified the location after the concert. Using a video posted on Szkatulski’s Telegram channel from the event and comparing it to imagery from the community hall, Bellingcat was able to independently confirm the geolocation.

Szkatulski was banned from entering Germany and Bulgaria in 2023, following a Bellingcat investigation into the far-right “International Fight Night” planned for Budapest in May that year.  Szkatulski was a co-organiser and participant of the event.

In December 2024, yet another neo-Nazi concert was held just west of Budapest, as reported by Hungarian media outlet Telex. Hosted by a Budapest-based “cultural association” and music label with ties to Blood & Honour, this concert featured international neo-Nazi bands with antisemitic lyrics, including a Greek band that openly advocates violence against Jews in their songs.

The organisers of the upcoming 2025 concert indicated on their website that they would not be revealing the names of all the bands slated to appear “in order to ensure the invited bands arrive.” Bands currently publicly advertised to perform at the February concert include neo-Nazi bands from Sweden, Spain, Poland and Hungary.

Banned In Several Countries

This January, the UK government announced that it was freezing all assets in the country owned by Blood & Honour and its affiliates under counter-terrorism sanctions.

“The UK Government has.…reasonable grounds to suspect [Blood & Honour] of being involved in terrorist activities through promoting and encouraging terrorism, seeking to recruit people for that purpose and making funds available for the purposes of its terrorist activities,” the government stated.

Despite this, expert Thorsten Hindrichs told Bellingcat that he “would not be surprised if some of the income generated in Budapest also benefited the British [affiliate] of Blood & Honour.”

Blood & Honour’s Friends: Legio Hungaria

Blood & Honour and Combat 18 have other far-right friends in Hungary. One of them is Legio Hungaria which has been the main organiser behind several so-called ‘Day of Honour’ events in Budapest. Legio Hungaria also has links to the international Active Club movement.

In 2023, Legio Hungaria’s leader, Béla Incze, publicly admitted that his organisation has a “strong relationship” with Combat 18. The interview was published on a website run by American white nationalist Greg Johnson, who reportedly moved to Budapest in 2019 after being deported from Norway.

Incze is a veteran of Hungary’s far-right scene. In 2010, he reportedly told Hungarian journalists he was not anti-semitic but merely fighting for a world “without Jews”. He was arrested in 2012 after being accused, alongside a far-right politician, of defacing a Holocaust memorial for Jewish victims of Hungarian Nazi collaborators with antisemitic slogans that reportedly included “Not your country, you filthy Jews!”

Other groups with which Incze claimed Legio Hungaria has a “strong relationship” include the Hammerskins, an international neo-Nazi gang banned in Germany in 2023, and Betyársereg (Outlaws Army), a far-right group led by a former Blood & Honour member who served almost two years in prison for aggravated assault on a Roma Hungarian.

In 2022, Legio Hungaria posted on its public Telegram channel about an event it “jointly organised” with C18’s Hungarian affiliate honouring a former Waffen-SS member. The post praised the former Nazi soldier for having “remained faithful” to the SS motto. 

In 2020 Legio Hungaria was part of a concert event to honour Ian Stuart Donaldson, the neo-Nazi founder of Blood & Honour. In a Telegram post, Legio Hungaria indicated they would have propaganda materials, merchandise and a “recruitment station” set up for their group at the 2020 neo-Nazi concert.

Neither Blood & Honour nor Legio Hungaria replied to Bellingcat’s requests for comment; Legio Hungaria’s leader, Béla Incze, posted a response on his personal Telegram channel.

In the posts, he stated that neither he nor any other Legio Hungaria leader would respond to Bellingcat’s inquiry. He also said that the Hungarian B&H and Hungarian C18 were affiliated groups that had been organising public and private events for many years. “If their activities were in any way linked to terrorism or support for terrorism, they would have been contacted by the relevant authorities long ago,” Béla Incze posted.

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