Black Shirts and Banned Flags: Ultras Push Politics at Euro 2024

The instructions were concise and clear.

Those hoping to march to the stadium with Hungary’s fans for their soccer team’s first game of the European Championship were expected to report by 10 a.m. sharp, five hours before kickoff.

A strict dress code would apply. Some could wear black. Others were to stick with red, white and green, the colors of the country’s flag. Under no circumstances was there to be any flashiness. “Gaudy colors, clown hats and bagpipes” were all prohibited. They were, prospective marchers were reminded, “going to a soccer stadium, not a circus.”

The hectoring and slightly priggish tone felt jarring, considering the source of the orders: the official Facebook page of the Carpathian Brigade, a virulently nationalistic faction of hard-core fans — ultras, as such groups are known — that provides the Hungarian national team with its vociferous and volatile backing.

The Carpathian Brigade has, in recent years, become perhaps Europe’s most infamous ultra group, its reputation forged by clashing with the police, showering opponents with racist abuse and displaying homophobic banners. In 2021, during the last European Championship, it had to remind members to cover up any Nazi-related tattoos so as not to contravene German law.

None of that has stopped its growth. If anything, it has accelerated it. Drawn by the Carpathian Brigade’s voluble Hungarian patriotism and unabashed right-wing values — an ideology that both echoes and trumpets the populist rhetoric of Viktor Orban, the country’s prime minister — the group may now be able to call on as many as 15,000 members.

It is also not alone. Black-clad ultras have been a fixture at Euro 2024 this month, with detachments — sometimes numbering a few hundred, sometimes a little larger — visible across Germany and at games involving Albania, Croatia, Romania and Slovakia, among others.