Two Portuguese men and one British man were arrested on Friday and charged with disorderly conduct after a fight at the Champions League fan festival site in Budapest, police said.
The incident took place in the early hours of Saturday, May 30, when several fans got into a brawl at about 00:20 on Kiraly Street in Budapest's 7th district, the police statement said. Officers detained three people at the scene; police also said a British man who climbed on to the roof of a parked car and damaged the vehicle was arrested and charged.
Beyond the immediate arrests, the BRFK 7th District Police Department has opened proceedings against unknown perpetrators on suspicion of gang violence and officers were studying camera footage to identify other supporters involved in the clashes, authorities said.
The detentions came as the Hungarian capital mounted a major security operation for Saturday’s Champions League final between Arsenal and Paris St-Germain at Puskas Arena. Authorities described the match as a high-risk event and planned to deploy nearly 4,000 police officers across Budapest — a scale the senior official Zoltan Janos Kuczik called "the largest single-day police deployment in Hungary's history."
Security preparations for the final began more than a year ago. Police said they expected tens of thousands of travelling supporters to arrive in Budapest without match tickets, a fact that complicated crowd management around fan zones and transport hubs even as officers concentrated on protecting the stadium and official festival site.
Arsenal staged a sold-out public screening of the final at Emirates Stadium, with gates scheduled to open at 3pm and the club encouraging supporters without tickets to avoid gathering around the stadium; the screening was due to close after the trophy presentation in Budapest. The match itself was scheduled to kick off at 17:00 BST.
The arrests underline the gap between a heavily resourced security plan and the diffuse reality of large numbers of fans moving through the city without tickets. Police said they were combing CCTV and other footage from the night to identify participants beyond the three men already charged, and the BRFK investigation into gang violence points to potential additional legal steps depending on what the footage reveals.
What happens next is procedural: investigators will analyse camera material and witness accounts to build cases against any further suspects and determine whether the incidents prompt more serious charges. For now the three detainees face disorderly-conduct charges, and separate proceedings against unknown perpetrators remain open as police seek to establish the scope of the violence that erupted before kick-off.
