350,000 Czechs March Against State Capture of Public Media — The Largest Protest Since the Velvet Revolution

Prague's Letná Plain hosts its biggest crowd since 1989 as citizens reject a bill to replace public broadcaster licence fees with state budget funding — a playbook tested in Hungary, Slovakia, and Serbia.

More than 350,000 people gathered at Prague's Letná Plain on Sunday in what organisers say is one of the largest demonstrations in Czech history, rivalling the 1989 Velvet Revolution rallies held on the same ground. The target: a government bill to scrap the mandatory licence fees that fund Czech TV and Czech Radio and replace them with direct state budget allocations. Protesters argue the move would hand ministers a financial chokepoint over newsrooms.

The bill's first reading was pushed through parliament in the middle of the night in late October, a procedural choice that telegraphed the coalition's awareness of public opposition. Since then, demonstrations have spread across Czech cities, staff at public broadcasters have gone on strike, and the Million Moments for Democracy group has escalated to a national mobilisation. Lead organiser Mikuláš Minář called Sunday's rally "just a beginning." The coalition driving the bill is led by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and his ANO movement, joined by the Motorists for Themselves party and the anti-migrant, pro-Russian Freedom and Direct Democracy party. Babiš, a billionaire who returned to power last year, dismisses the protests as manufactured hysteria. In an op-ed last week, he listed what he called "seven lies" being spread by the opposition and insisted: "Under no circumstances will we interfere in editorial work." ANO still polls at roughly 30%. The structural concern is not abstract. Protesters explicitly name Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Slovakia under Robert Fico, Serbia, and Poland's previous government as precedents where state budget control became the lever for hollowing out editorial independence. Protest banners read "We refuse the Slovak scenario" and "Hands off the media." The proposed changes would cut public broadcaster budgets by approximately 15%, with the remaining funding dependent on annual government budget negotiations rather than a ring-fenced licence fee. International media bodies have sided with the protesters. The European Broadcasting Union, the European Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and the International Press Institute have all criticised the government's media plan, drawing explicit comparisons to Orbán's and Fico's playbooks. The licence fees in question amount to 205 koruna (approximately £7) per month — modest, but the independence they guarantee is the actual asset at stake. The political calculus is instructive. Babiš's coalition holds a parliamentary majority and ANO's polling remains stable. The protests are enormous, but they do not automatically translate into legislative defeat. The question is whether sustained mobilisation can fracture coalition discipline or force procedural concessions — a dynamic that has played out differently in each of the Central European precedents the protesters cite. What makes this structurally significant is the location and the lineage. Letná Plain is not a neutral venue — it is where Czechoslovaks gathered to end communist rule. The protesters are deliberately connecting the current fight to that democratic origin story, framing public media independence not as a policy preference but as a constitutional safeguard. Whether that framing holds against a coalition with a comfortable majority and stable polling is the central question of Czech politics in 2025.