The radicalization of national conservatism in Hungary, under the leadership of prime minister Viktor Orban, is well documented. Less known, at least internationally, is what has happened at the sub-national level. This paper focuses on borderlands as one particular local domain, where national, regional and local interests and ideologies intersect and interact with global geo-political developments. In 2015, in the midst and aftermath of the so-called “refugee crisis”, Hungary erected a fence – sometimes referred to as a wall – along the entire length of its border to Serbia. It also reinforced physical infrastructure and/or instated other measures of protection at the borders to Croatia and Romania, both of which are fellow members of the European Union. In 2020, like many other European countries, the government emphasized border closings as one of the most prominent measures against Covid-19. These processes of re-bordering and re-boundarization took place within borderland spaces rich in histories of territorial disputes and population movements. However, under the impact of democratic transition, European integration and de-escalation of the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s and 2000s, these borderlands have been characterized by institutionalization of cross-border cooperation and ambitious attempts at joint policy formation at the local level. European Union policymakers expected, as did many scholars in the field of borderland studies, that the development towards more permeable borders and more cooperation would continue. It was also assumed that institutions of cooperation would be main proponents in this endeavor. The paper questions this assumption by asking how cross-border cooperation institutions and other local actors in the borderlands have reacted to policies of re-bordering since 2015. The paper can thus establish whether there are differences in attitudes towards radical nationalism between the country’s core and (border-close) ‘peripheries’.