Hungarian Canoe Sprint Championships 2026: 60 Titles in Szolnok

Published

2026-09-07T13:43:33+00:00

Author

PaddleStats

Full competition results: Hungarian Senior & Open Para Canoe Sprint National Championships 2026

Hungary settled 60 senior national titles in Szolnok between 3 and 5 September 2026, twenty of them in paracanoe. István Dávid Juhász won five, Ágnes Anna Kiss won five, and Sándor Tótka took the K1 200 m in 0:35.71, five years after winning the same distance at the Olympic Games.

Overview

The Hungarian Senior and Open Para Canoe Sprint National Championships 2026 were held in Szolnok across three days. Unlike the German and Danish championships in the same week, the Hungarian programme is senior-only: every one of the 60 finals decided an adult national title, and a third of them were paracanoe.

Szeged won almost a quarter of the titles on offer. Újpest's line is the neatest in the table — eight gold, eight silver, eight bronze — and Honvéd's is the most lopsided: eight titles, three silvers and not a single bronze, a club that either won or finished outside the podium.

Star Athletes

István Dávid Juhász of Atomerőmű SE had the most productive three days of anyone in Szolnok: five titles, one silver and two bronzes across eight finals. He won the C1 500 m in 1:46.90 and the C1 200 m in 0:40.64, then the C2 500 m and the C2 1000 m with Kristóf Kollár, and the C4 1000 m with Kollár, Viktor Gyula Pálfalvi and Ádám Besenyei in 3:25.87.

The one that got away was the C1 1000 m, where Dániel Fejes of MTK beat him by 5.64 seconds, the largest margin in any of the four canoe finals over 1000 m.

Ágnes Anna Kiss matched his five, and did it without ever getting into a single kayak. She won the C1 500 m in 2:02.66, the C2 500 m and C2 1000 m with Bianka Nagy, the mixed C2 500 m with Csanád Molnár and the mixed C4 500 m with Molnár, Csepke Molnár and Gergő Rumi. Her only defeat came in the C2 200 m, by 0.14 to Réka Opavszky and Dóra Horányi.

Csanád Molnár himself finished on 4 gold and 3 silver, and the MVM Szegedi Vízisport SE canoe group he anchors — with Ádám István Molnár and Lukács Ivo Molnár — won the C4 500 m in 1:32.60 and the C4 200 m in 0:35.57.

The racing

Sándor Tótka, the Olympic K1 200 m champion from Tokyo and an Olympic silver medallist in the K2 500 m from Paris, won the 200 m for Újpesti Torna Egylet in 0:35.71, 0.57 ahead of Balázs Birkás and 0.70 ahead of Kolos Attila Csizmadia.

Birkás got it back within the hour. He and Gergely Balogh won the K2 200 m for Vasas SC-ARC-S Group in 0:33.48, with Tótka and Attila Domoszlai second at 0:33.63 and a third boat at 0:33.70. Three crews inside 0.22 seconds.

In the women's 200 m, Anna Lucz won in 0:42.09 and then partnered Emma Lili Magyar to the K2 title in 0:38.63. The K4 200 m produced the strangest result of the championships: Budapesti Honvéd SE and Újpesti Torna Egylet could not be separated, both crews clocking 0:39.65, so the title was shared and no silver was awarded.

Over 500 m, Gergő Zoltán Keller won the men's K1 in 1:41.41 and Eszter Júlia Rendessy the women's in 1:52.03. Kornél Béke and Zoltán Iván Mircse took the K2 in 1:30.33 for MTK, and the same pair led MTK's K4 to the 1000 m title in 2:59.93 — the only crew under three minutes at these championships.

Bálint Kollek won the K1 1000 m in 3:40.02 for Kovács Katalin Akadémia, 1.61 ahead of Tamás Erdélyi and 3.05 ahead of Lőrinc Halmy.

The K2 1000 m was the closest race of the championships. Bálint Noé and Ádám Varga of Ferencvárosi Torna Club won in 3:17.47; the brothers Álmos Balázs Aradi and Bátor Gergő Aradi of Patent Győr finished 0.12 behind. Over a kilometre, that is roughly half a boat length.

Zsóka Csikós was the busiest woman on the water: the K1 1000 m in 4:00.18, the K2 500 m with Laura Izabella Ujfalvi in 1:41.37 and the K4 1000 m for Központi Sport-és Ifjúsági SE with Réka Kiskó, Dorina Decsi and Lora Szkarlett Debreczeni.

The 5000 m races closed the programme. Erdélyi turned his kilometre silver into gold in 20:41.54, 1.48 ahead of Noé; Rendessy won the women's race in 22:55.83 by 1.71 from Panna Krisztina Sinkó; Balázs Adolf took the men's C1 in 23:05.34 and Borbála Zagyvai the women's in 27:54.22, adding it to the C1 1000 m title she had already won in 4:37.58.

One more line from the sprint deserves the record. Petra Laura Paragi won the women's C1 200 m in 0:46.02 for Szeged, beating Réka Opavszky by 0.61 and Dóra Horányi by 0.67. She then took bronze four more times — in the C2 200 m and C2 500 m with Panna Győre, in the mixed C2 500 m with Dávid Zsombor Barna and in the mixed C4 500 m. One title and four third places from five finals is the profile of a canoeist who is never out of a medal and rarely at the front of one.

Opavszky and Horányi, both of Újpesti Torna Egylet, are the pair Paragi keeps running into. They won the C2 200 m by 0.14 from Kiss and Nagy, took silver in the 500 m, and Horányi added bronzes in the C1 500 m and the C1 1000 m. Between Szeged and Újpest, the women's canoe programme in Hungary is effectively a two-club conversation.

Paracanoe

Twenty of the sixty titles were paracanoe — a third of the championships — and the KL and VL classes were raced over both 200 m and 5000 m, a double that ought to reward two entirely different athletes.

Except it didn't. Róbert Suba of MVM Szegedi Vízisport SE won the VL2 200 m in 0:56.37 and the VL2 5000 m in 26:07.05, and took silver in the KL1 200 m behind Péter Pál Kiss. Kiss then won the KL1 5000 m as well. Tibor Kiss of Merkapt-Mekler László SE did the same in KL2, Erik Kiss of INTER-ÉPFU AVSE in KL3 — three unrelated Kiss champions in three consecutive classes, each winning both distances.

Among the women, Dalma Boldizsár won the VL2 200 m and the VL2 5000 m, Julianna Molnárné Tóth the VL3 double for Budapesti Honvéd SE, Nikoletta Molnár the KL3 200 m in 0:54.58 and Réka Baranyai the VL1 titles. Honvéd's eight golds owe as much to this programme as to the sprint.

The pattern repeats down the paracanoe results, and it is worth naming what it means. In most countries the 200 m para sprint and a 5000 m para race attract different entries — the sprint fills, the distance race does not. In Szolnok the same athletes contested both, so the KL1, KL2, KL3, VL1, VL2 and VL3 classes each produced a double champion rather than two separate ones. It makes for a thin field over 5000 m and a very clear hierarchy inside each class.

What's next

The domestic season ends here. Behind it sits the ICF Canoe Sprint and Paracanoe World Championships in Poznań, where the Hungarian squad raced until 30 August, four days before Szolnok opened; alongside it, the two other national championships of the same week, Germany's on the Beetzsee and Denmark's in Silkeborg.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who won the most titles at the Hungarian championships in 2026?

István Dávid Juhász and Ágnes Anna Kiss, five each. Juhász also collected a silver and two bronzes for eight medals in total, the highest count of the championships.

Who won the men's K1 200 m?

Sándor Tótka, in 0:35.71, ahead of Balázs Birkás and Kolos Attila Csizmadia.

How long did the championships last, and did juniors race?

Three days, 3 to 5 September, and no. Unlike the German and Danish championships held in the same week, the Hungarian programme is senior-only — all 60 finals decided an adult title, including the 20 paracanoe classes. Germany ran 130 titles over six days across four age grades; Denmark decided 52 of its 76 below senior level.

Which club won the most medals?

MVM Szegedi Vízisport SE — 27 medals and 14 titles, roughly a quarter of everything on offer. Újpesti Torna Egylet had 24 medals but eight golds.

What was the closest finish?

The K2 1000 m, decided by 0.12 seconds in favour of Bálint Noé and Ádám Varga. The women's K4 200 m was closer still: two crews stopped the clock on 0:39.65 and shared the title.

Is Szeged now bigger than Újpest?

On this evidence, in titles yes and in depth no. Szeged won 14 to 8, but Újpest reached the podium 24 times against Szeged's 27 and produced medallists in every discipline group — kayak, canoe, mixed and long distance. Read the map instead of the table and Budapest still supplies the volume: Újpesti Torna Egylet, Budapesti Honvéd SE, MTK and Vasas SC-ARC-S Group took 20 titles between them, against 14 for Szeged and five each for Atomerőmű SE and Kovács Katalin Akadémia. One club converts better; the other covers more ground.

Does a paracanoe programme this large distort the medal table?

It changes it, and deliberately so. A third of the titles were paracanoe, and Budapesti Honvéd SE finished third in the table largely through that programme. A federation that awards a third of its national titles in KL and VL classes is making a statement about where it thinks the sport is going.

Should anyone read the 5000 m results as marathon form?

Carefully. Tamás Erdélyi won the K1 5000 m two days after finishing second over 1000 m, and Borbála Zagyvai doubled the C1 1000 m with the C1 5000 m. In Hungary the long-distance title is contested by the same sprinters who race the kilometre, which is not true everywhere. Read the 5000 m as a second data point on the same athletes rather than as a separate discipline, and it becomes useful: Erdélyi beat Bálint Noé over 5000 m two days after Noé had won the K2 1000 m title.

Three days in Szolnok gave Hungarian canoeing an unusually clean set of answers: István Dávid Juhász and Ágnes Anna Kiss as the most complete canoeists in the country, Sándor Tótka still fastest over 200 m, and MVM Szegedi Vízisport SE as the strongest club programme in a system that has several. The two crews who shared the K4 200 m title will have to wait a year to settle it.

View on PaddleStats