Viktor Orbán's 16 years in power is over, and the system condemned as an "electoral autocracy" lies in tatters, defeated by a 45-year-old former party insider who convinced a majority of Hungarians to bring it to an end.
"We did it," Péter Magyar told a crowd of cheering supporters in a square beside the River Danube, overlooking Budapest's magnificent parliament on the other side.
"Together we overthrew the Hungarian regime."
Preliminary results, based on more than 98% of votes counted, put his Tisza party on course for an extraordinary 138 seats, with Orbán's Fidesz on 55 and the far-right Our Homeland on six.
For two years Magyar took his burgeoning movement around villages, town squares and cities, rallying Hungarians who had had enough of the cronyism and corruption that had become endemic over years.
