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Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has opened the door to a new era, its leader Herbert Kickl has told supporters, as they celebrated an unprecedented election victory.

Kickl's party won 28.9% of the vote according to official tallies - almost three points ahead of the conservative People's Party (ÖVP) on 26.3%, but far short of a majority.

Kickl's victory is only the latest in a string of far-right election successes in Europe and he praised voters for their "optimism, courage and trust" in delivering a "piece of history".

The FPÖ has been in coalition before, but the second-placed ÖVP has refused to take part in a government led by Kickl.

Kickl's main rival, incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer of the ÖVP, has said it was “impossible to form a government with someone who adores conspiracy theories”.

There was a high turnout of 77.3% as Austrian voters took part in an election dominated by the twin issues of migration and asylum, as well as a flagging economy and the war in Ukraine.

As half the map of Austria turned dark blue, FPÖ general secretary Michael Schnedlitz said "the men and women of Austria have made history today", although he refused to say what kind of coalition his party would try to build.

Postal votes were still being counted on Monday morning, but an analysis of voters suggested those aged 35-59 were most likely to back the far right, and marginally more women than men.

Kickl's party has won 57 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 51 and the Social Democrats on 41, according to government projections.

Most of the votes have now been counted, but the final result will not be officially declared until Thursday.

The Freedom Party's fiery leader had promised Austrians to build "Fortress Austria", to restore their security, prosperity and peace.

The party wants firm rules on legal immigration and it has promoted the idea of remigration, which involves sending asylum seekers to their original countries. It also wants a bar on the right to asylum as a step towards citizenship.

Herbert Kickl has aligned himself closely with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his self-styled "illiberal democracy". On Sunday night, Social Democrat leader Andreas Babler warned that Austria must not follow the same path as Hungary.

Kickl had also spoken of becoming Volkskanzler (people's chancellor) which for some Austrians carries echoes of the term used to describe Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

The FPÖ was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s. Two days before the vote some of its candidates were caught on video at a funeral where an SS song was sung.

As the party's victory became clear, a small group of protesters appeared outside parliament carrying anti-Nazi banners. One read "Nazis, get out of parliament", while another said, "Don't let Nazis govern, and never [let them] march".

Forming a coalition is likely to prove complicated for Kickl, who is a divisive figure.

The Social Democrats, Greens and Neos have all ruled out a partnership with the far right.

The only possible coalition Kickl's party could form is with the conservatives, although the FPÖ would have to find a solution to the ÖVP's refusal to have Kickl as chancellor.

When Geert Wilders' Freedom Party won the Netherlands' election last November, he dropped his bid to become prime minister so that three other parties would agree to form a coalition. However, Kickl is keen to lead his country, promising Austrians to act as their "servant and protector".

Political analyst Thomas Hofer told the BBC it was by no means clear that Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, who oversees the formation of government, would give Kickl a “direct mandate to form a coalition”.

The ÖVP could in theory scrape together a coalition with the Social Democrats if the latest projections are correct, and could attract the liberal Neos party or the Greens.

Equally, Karl Nehammer may come under pressure from within the ÖVP to drop his objection. One leading FPÖ figure said after such a historic defeat he should resign, although that was rejected by the general secretary of Nehammer's party.

President Van der Bellen has voiced reservations in the past about the FPÖ because of its criticism of the EU and its failure to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The party opposes EU sanctions on Moscow, citing Austria's neutrality, and many of its MPs walked out of a speech to the parliament in Vienna last year by Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky.

On Monday, Austrians had mixed feelings about the election results.

"I find it really sad that people get so close to radical right-wing ideas and ignore history," Nikolai Selikovsky, a resident of Vienna - which predominantly voted for the Social Democrats - told AFP.

"It also shows the failure of the other parties that they can't talk to each other constructively."

"I’m asking myself what we did wrong in the past 75 years," Karin Grobert, a commuter, told Reuters. She expressed concern that Austria will shift further to the right if coalition talks fail.

But Josef Binder, a 57-year-old carpenter who voted for FPÖ, said there was no reason other parties could not cooperate with Kickl.

"They also have to realise, the other parties, that if they negate 29% of voters, that that's actually not okay, it's undemocratic," he added.

Some worried about what the FPÖ's policy of remigration could mean for them.

Berat Oeztoprak, a 22-year-old kebab seller in Vienna, told Reuters: "What I might fear is that many will no longer be allowed to stay here."

He added: "I was born in Austria and I know that I belong here. I also did two years in the army and I have a badge. And I also served for the state for two years, I pay my taxes, I'm nice to the people here, they're just as nice to me."

Kickl's victory is the latest in almost a year of vote successes for radical right-wing parties in Europe.

Italy's Giorgia Meloni heads a right-wing coalition as leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party and Germany's AfD topped the polls in the eastern state of Thuringia last month. France's National Rally won the vote in European elections last June.

Unlike Kickl, Italy's prime minister has given her full backing to the EU's defence of Ukraine in the face of Russia's full-scale invasion.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel congratulated Kickl, posting a picture of the two together, and Marine le Pen of the National Rally said "this groundswell carrying the defence of national interests", after the votes elsewhere in Europe, confirmed the "people's triumphs everywhere".

Geert Wilders said times were changing, and that "identity, sovereignty, freedom and no more illegal immigration/asylum" was what millions of Europeans were longing for.

Kickl has tapped into fears about immigration in Austria and he has made the most of anger at the government's handling of the Covid pandemic, embracing conspiracy theories about obscure treatments for the virus.

For Kickl and his party, Sunday's election victory represents a significant recovery from 2019, when they came a distant third in the wake of a video sting scandal that engulfed their former leader.

I encourage you to click through for a real surprise with the unveiling.

Warning: This story contains distressing details from the start.

An abrupt silence swamped the courtroom in Avignon as three large television screens, positioned high on three walls, flickered back to life. One could sense people bracing themselves.

In a bleak trial about extraordinary allegations of drugs and rape, it was time to show more of Dominique Pelicot’s carefully curated home videos.

Those videos, filmed by Pelicot and kept on a hard drive that he labelled “abuse”, document assaults on his ex-wife, Gisèle, over the course of a decade.

Fifty men are accused of raping her after she was drugged and left unconscious in the couple’s bed by her husband.

Now 72, Gisèle Pelicot has waived her anonymity so the full details of what she was subjected to can be revealed to the French public. Her lawyers fought to have videos of the crimes screened in court.

Although the judge had earlier said people “of a sensitive disposition” would be able to leave, one of Gisèle Pelicot’s legal team said many had decided to “look the rape straight in the eye”.

Many of the men recruited by her ex-husband on the internet insist they did not believe what they were doing was rape.

Dominique Pelicot sat behind a glass panel, slumped in his chair. His grey hair neatly cut, his left hand raised to block his view of the screen.

Gisèle Pelicot sat on the opposite side of the court, her head against the wall, her eyes occasionally closed. A blank, unreadable expression on her face.

On the screen, in near silence, a short, pale man wearing only blue underpants and black socks, could be seen approaching a bed.

The camera wobbled as it followed him. Behind the man, a woman lay on her left side, almost naked, on a crumpled white sheet. And then, without edits, without any blurring, the sex acts began.

At times, later in the video, you could clearly hear the woman snoring.

In court, Dominique Pelicot appeared to place both hands over his ears. For years he had laced his wife’s food and drink with an anti-anxiety drug, which made her unconscious and seriously affected her health.

This and other videos, shown in court and on Gisèle Pelicot’s insistence to the public watching from an overflow room near by, lie at the heart of the prosecution’s case.

Prosecutors argue that all 50 men who accepted online invitations from Pelicot to visit the family home in the village of Mazan, near Avignon, must have known his wife was unconscious.

Therefore, they must have realised that she was not a consenting partner in some kind of sex game in which she merely pretended to be asleep. Therefore, they must have intended to rape her.

But a string of defence lawyers and their clients have now sought to challenge that.

The man visible on screen in this particular video was a 43-year-old carpenter, named in court as Vincent C.

He stood now in front of the judges in a separate glass-walled area at the rear of the courtroom, with his head bowed down, looking away from the screen.

“Do you recognise the facts of aggravated rape that you are accused of?” asked lead judge Roger Arata – an affable figure with a large white moustache.

“No,” Vincent C replied.

His explanation, delivered haltingly, amounted to a hazy assumption that, since Dominique Pelicot had told him his wife was a consenting partner in a sex game, he had not given the matter any more thought.

At this point Gisèle Pelicot left the courtroom for a few minutes, saying “I can’t bear that man”.

Vincent C acknowledged the experience was “weird,” and unlike anything he had encountered with other couples. And yet, he went on, “I didn’t say to myself: this isn’t going well... I don’t think [about much else] in those moments."

However, having spoken to his mother and to lawyers, and watching the trial unfold, Vincent C said he had come to understand more about French law, the meaning of rape and the gravity of his actions.

“Now that I am being told how the events unfolded, yes, the acts I committed would amount to rape."

“Are you aware that Gisèle Pelicot was a victim of your acts?” asked the judge.

“Yes.”

Pelicot has himself admitted all the charges against him.

Outside the courtroom, a lawyer representing another of the accused men distinguished between Pelicot and the others.

“Today it’s clear that Dominique Pelicot’s position is to try to dilute his responsibility by dragging down 50 other men. [Gisèle] is the victim. The question is whether the others were complicit in it or were tricked into participating,” said Paul-Roger Gontard.

While some of the accused have admitted to rape, others have claimed to have spoken or interacted with Gisèle Pelicot in the bedroom.

“So, there are grey zones in this trial,” Mr Gontard continued, pointing to the fact that the videos themselves had already been edited by Pelicot himself, meaning that evidence potentially helpful for the defence could have been cut out.

“He selected what he wanted to keep. He selected the shots. But don’t let that fool you. Everyone says he’s very manipulative.

"Many [of the accused] thought it was a libertine project with the couple, only to discover it was actually a sinister and criminal scheme devised by the husband.

“The question today is when did they realise something was wrong? This realisation varies among [the accused]. The question often arises – why didn’t they leave? It’s not that simple to leave at that moment when faced with a clearly dominant personality in a situation where they are naked and recorded by a camera,” the lawyer added.

Ten minutes’ drive from the courthouse, in a small house in a suburb of Avignon, another of the accused, who has already testified in the trial, agreed to speak to the BBC on condition of anonymity. The man, a nurse by profession, portrayed himself as a victim of Dominique Pelicot.

“I was terrified… I was reduced to the state of an instrument. He was the one who told me: ‘do this.’ I said to myself, this man is not normal, he is a psychopath. It is an ambush, a trap. He is going to kill me in this house,” said the accused man.

He also claimed that Gisèle Pelicot had “reacted to simple caresses… she scratches herself with a co-ordinated movement”, which he said led him to believe that she was conscious and merely pretending to sleep.

When I challenged him, suggesting he was simply seeking to present himself as a victim to avoid culpability, he insisted that was not the case.

He lashed out, repeatedly, at the way the trial was being conducted, at alleged “pseudo-feminists”, and the “hysteria” the media had generated.

Speaking forcefully, but occasionally sobbing, he maintained he was not a rapist. However, he acknowledged that “I will never be considered innocent in this case. I will always carry my guilt with me. I know that.”

The trial in Avignon is set to continue for many more weeks, with a verdict due shortly before Christmas.

Only half of the accused have so far been called to testify, but already this case has revealed, in the grimiest detail, the horrors to which Gisèle Pelicot was subjected, and her extraordinary courage in declining her right to privacy.

The case has also highlighted longstanding debates about French laws and attitudes surrounding rape, and the extent to which a woman’s consent is, or should be considered, a factor in court.

Many of the men have admitted wrongdoing and, like Vincent C, even apologised to Gisèle Pelicot in the courtroom, but they have also insisted that since they didn’t intend to rape, they should not be found guilty of it.