István Kovács (1945 –) is a historian, polonist, poet, and literary translator.

He graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in 1968 with a degree in history and Polish studies. In the academic year 1970/71, he studied history at the university of Vienna as a Herder Fellow of Gyula Illyés. He has been a research fellow at the Research Group of the Department of Central and Eastern European Literature of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 1972, a senior research fellow at the Department of Polish Studies at ELTE since 1981, and Cultural Counsellor at the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw since 1990.

Between 1994–1995 and 1999–2003 he worked as Consul General in Krakow. In the meantime he was head of the Polish Department at Péter Pázmány Catholic University, which he founded.

Between 2004 and 2011 he was a senior research fellow at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include the history of partitioned Poland, and Polish-Hungarian relations in the middle third of the 19^th century. He is a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.