News from Bulgaria

On 4 September 2026 the Dutch bank ING published its September forecast for Bulgaria. It expects inflation of 5.1 per cent in 2026 after 4.9 per cent in the July estimate, 3.3 per cent in 2027 instead of 2.9 per cent, and 3.2 per cent in 2028. On growth it keeps 2026 at 2.6 per cent, cuts 2027 from 2.5 to 2.3 per cent and puts 2028 at 2.0 per cent. For the euro area it assumes growth of 0.8 per cent in 2026, a contraction of 0.5 per cent for Romania and a gain of 3.4 per cent for Poland. The revision is attributed to continuing uncertainty in energy markets and to interest rates staying higher into 2027.

Assessment: Two numbers count for a buyer: the inflation that pushes construction and running costs, and the interest rate that makes financing dearer. This forecast puts both higher and for longer than it did in July, while 2027 growth eases slightly. Anyone planning to buy or renovate in 2027 should budget a generous cost buffer. Anyone letting out property still has a workable tenant base in an economy growing three times as fast as the euro area.

In the day ahead segment of the Bulgarian Independent Energy Exchange the average price for Saturday 5 September 2026 stands at 128.60 euro per megawatt hour excluding VAT. On Friday it was 169.02 euro, a fall of 24.23 per cent. Volume traded came to 102,896.72 megawatt hours. The price applies to the free market, through which companies and larger consumers buy their electricity; households continue to buy at the regulated tariff.

Since 1 January 2026 (amendment in State Gazette No 85/2025) Tariff No 4 of the Interior Ministry sets fixed euro amounts: 5.11 euro for the application, 102.26 euro for a prolonged residence permit of up to six months and 255.65 euro for six months to one year (Art. 10 paras 5 and 7). The residence card itself costs 20.45 euro (Art. 46), permanent residence 511.29 euro (Art. 12), long-term residence 56.24 euro (Art. 12a); family members of Bulgarian citizens and other special grounds under Art. 24 of the Foreigners Act pay 76.69 euro (Art. 10 para 1). Checklist: have fee and service charge shown separately on any agent's invoice; pay the fee directly to the authority and keep the receipt; match your own ground of residence to the right item, because the amount depends on it; check the tariff in the year of application. Anything above these amounts is a service charge.

Anyone buying furniture or fittings for a let flat in Turkey crosses the land border privately with an allowance of 300 euro (430 euro by sea or air); above that, customs duty and VAT apply. If the purchase runs through the VAT-registered Bulgarian company, import VAT becomes input tax provided three conditions of the Revenue Agency are met: the company is named as importer in the customs declaration, the tax has been paid to the budget, and the goods serve taxable supplies such as short-term holiday letting. The right to deduct may be exercised in the tax period of the import or in one of the twelve following periods. Checklist: have the invoice issued to the company; enter the company as importer in the customs declaration; keep the payment record for the import VAT; enter the customs declaration in the purchase ledger; VAT-exempt long-term residential letting does not satisfy the third condition.

Anyone starting work in Bulgaria as manager of their own company, as a freelancer or as a sole trader registers with the Revenue Agency as a self-insured person within seven days of starting the activity (declaration under service No 818); whoever misses the deadline is insured only for disability, old age and death. The Pensions fund is mandatory; the General Sickness and Maternity fund is optional and can be changed only from 1 to 31 January of a year. The monthly contribution base is chosen by the person between the minimum and the maximum, since 1 August 2026 between 620.20 and 2,300 euro (until July 550.66 and 2,111.64 euro, Social Security Budget Act 2026, State Gazette No 68/2026); the final amount is reconciled with actual income through the annual tax return. Checklist: fix the base in writing on registration; change the sickness-benefit option only if needed and only in January; check the limits with every new budget act; keep the registration confirmation and contribution records.

Assessment: Registration is the least conspicuous step of a move to the coast and the most expensive one if it is missing: without a timely declaration there is no sickness benefit, and the base cannot be repaired retroactively. I put this item on the list of every client with their own company before the first invoicing month.

Nessebar Municipal Council meets on 4 September 2026 at 1.30 pm in the Melsas hall with 36 agenda items. The list includes the amendment of Ordinance No 11 on local taxes and fees, the closing of the 2025 budget and the 2026 draft budget tabled on 21 August, the reconstruction of a water main and two public competitions: building rights on municipal non-residential plots and the letting of shops in a building on Chernomorska Street in Obzor. Items 17 to 35 concern detailed development plans, mostly in Sunny Beach West and Sunny Beach East, plus Kosharitsa and Tankovo; in Kosharitsa the question is the change of use of an agricultural plot in the Drakta locality.

Burgas Municipality is restoring the road surface of Angel Dimitrov Street in the Sarafovo district, on the section from Albatros Street to the Sarafovo military recreation home. The street will be partially closed in stages from 3 September 2026. The temporary traffic arrangement will remain in place for four months.

The Bulgarian Development Bank has concluded the contracts for the energy renovation of 630 multi-family buildings in over 100 municipalities by the 31 August 2026 deadline. The funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan amount to 332.5 million euro after 85.9 million euro were added in August to the original 246.6 million euro; 100 per cent of eligible costs are covered for around 1.3 million square metres of housing. The bank took over the scheme in 2026 from the Ministry of Regional Development following a cabinet decision and approval by the European Commission. In Burgas the first phase covered 30 blocks in the Meden Rudnik, Izgrev, Slaveykov and Lazur housing estates; further buildings were on the reserve lists.

On 3 September 2026 the Registry Agency explained what the deadline extension in the Euro Adoption Act, adopted by the National Assembly on 2 September, means for companies: founding documents may be brought into line with the capital shown in euro until 31 December 2028. Until then OOD, AD and partnerships limited by shares can publish annual accounts and register procuration, branches, pledges, attachments, liquidation and beneficial owners without amending their articles. Amendment becomes mandatory only when the documents are changed for another reason, such as a new name, a change of seat, a change of shareholders or a capital increase or reduction. The agency and the Ministry of Justice had supported the extension.

Assessment: For owners with an EOOD that holds nothing but a flat this means no notary appointment and no fee just because of the euro. I still advise updating the articles with the next amendment that is due anyway, rather than joining the queue at the end of 2028.

The jubilee edition of the National Honey Festival “Kiril Kirov” runs until 7 September 2026 on Mesambria Square in the old town of Nessebar, daily from 9 am to 11 pm. At eleven stalls producers show honey varieties, pollen, propolis, ointments, cosmetics, wax products and ceramic souvenirs; honey lemonade is among the novelties. Nessebar Municipality supports the festival, the organiser is producer Nikolay Kirov; displays of honey extraction are announced for the 26th edition.

On 27 August 2026 Pomorie Municipal Council decided unanimously, with 19 votes, that Mayor Ivan Aleksiev negotiates with the co-owners on buying their shares in the two-storey house at 1 Stefan Karadzha Street. The municipality so far holds 35.160 of 199 ideal shares and wants to acquire the remaining 163.84; no purchase price has been named yet. The house is to remain the permanent seat of the society “Anhialo”, founded in 1992, which was granted three rooms of around 35 square metres there in 2009. The decision falls in the year in which Pomorie commemorates the burning of Anhialo 120 years ago, in 1906.

On 2 September 2026 the Ministry of Economy put a draft law on public-private partnerships up for public consultation; comments may be submitted for 30 days. According to the explanatory memorandum, partnership projects worth around 880 million euro were implemented in Bulgaria between 2019 and 2023, against 2.31 billion euro in Greece over the same period; at present at most one project a year gets under way. The aim is to raise the number of projects from two in 2019 to 2023 to at least five between 2026 and 2030, with a mandatory prior assessment of economic viability, life-cycle costs and risk allocation. Private capital is to co-finance public infrastructure because the state budget cannot carry it alone.

On 2 September 2026 the Tourism Ministry set out the next steps of its reform: from 24 to 26 September the leadership of TUI Group is expected in Bulgaria with around 150 senior managers, over 100,000 airline seats are secured for summer 2027, and at least 50 per cent of the tourist tax is to go into promotion and connectivity. In parallel, talks on a visa on arrival are under way, with a focus on more consular capacity in Turkey; on 27 September an association of universities for tourism studies is founded, and a QR system rates businesses against over 100 criteria. The ministry's guiding line: equal service, equal rules, against unfair competition in short-term letting and among tour operators.

Assessment: A visa on arrival for guests from Turkey would open the south coast to a market that lies right behind the border, and TUI's seat planning decides how well holiday flats are booked in May and October. I watch both points more closely than any price statistic, because they set the demand of 2027.

On 1 September 2026 Fraport Twin Star reported three million passengers handled at Burgas and Varna airports since the start of the year. Burgas resumed operations on 1 May after its runway had been rehabilitated for more than 60 million euro. New in the route network this year are Athens, Barcelona, Budapest, Gdansk, Paris, Rome and Basel, with Greece, Spain and Italy added as source markets. Traffic from Poland, Israel, Hungary, Slovakia, Belgium and France grew by double digits. Ryanair serves Rome from Burgas, Wizz Air expanded in Varna, and Eurowings, Austrian Airlines, Discover Airlines, Jet2.com, TUI and Bulgaria Air held or raised their capacity. The operator expects the year to end above the 2025 result.

On 6 September at 5.30 pm the national festival “Tastes of Bulgaria” opens on the square in front of the “Prosveta 1888” cultural centre in Pomorie, with chefs from Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece; entry, food and drinks within the festival are free of charge. The organisers are Pomorie Municipality and the Burgas regional administration together with the state departments for tourism and culture. In parallel, the Pomorie Crafts Festival 2026 runs from 5 to 7 September with folklore, stilt walkers, a fire show and acrobatics for Unification Day.

The border police daily bulletin of 3 September, 6 am, reports heavy traffic at the Kapitan Andreevo crossing for cars entering and lorries leaving; no congestion is reported for Lesovo and Malko Tarnovo. All Bulgarian border crossings operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For the drive from the southern coast to Istanbul, Malko Tarnovo on the E-87 is the nearest crossing; it is designed for cars and coaches, so lorry queues do not build up there.

Between 1 June and 31 August, the emergency department of the Burgas university hospital carried out over 13,500 examinations, an average of 150 patients per day. More than 6,000 of those examinations took place in the paediatric and orthopaedic units, roughly 1,000 per month each. In the same period 6,851 people were admitted for inpatient treatment, close to 90 percent of them as emergencies.

Between 1 June and 31 July 2026, 2,602,719 tourists visited Bulgaria, compared with 2,689,000 in the same period of 2025, a decline of 1.5 per cent. The Ministry of Tourism calls the drop manageable and wants to stretch the season from Easter into autumn. Around 90,000 visitors and about 1,000 journalists are expected for the Eurovision Song Contest in Burgas in May 2027, with 300,000 to 400,000 beds available; the city is compiling a list of hotels committed to reasonable room rates.

Assessment: I read this figure as a warning to landlords who rely on July and August alone: demand is stable, but it no longer grows by itself. Anyone letting on the southern coast gains by being bookable from Easter and by setting a clear price for the Eurovision month of May 2027, when beds in Burgas will be scarce. Price gouging in that window will be publicly visible, so I advise fixed rates that can be maintained afterwards.

On 2 September the Ministry of Tourism presented a reform package for 2027. From 27 September 2026 guests will rate accommodation and services nationwide via QR code against more than 100 criteria. Flats and rooms let through online platforms are to be brought into the official tourism system under clear rules, with uniform requirements as for hotels. A guarantee fund for tour operators is being prepared, around 150,000 airline seats have been agreed for the German market for summer 2027 from mid-May, and municipalities must return at least half of the tourist tax to advertising, events and connectivity.

On 2 September the National Assembly adopted, at first and second reading in one sitting, an amendment to the Act on the Introduction of the Euro: companies now have 36 instead of 12 months to convert the capital stated in their founding documents from leva to euro. A filing with the Commercial Register solely for the conversion is no longer required; the adjustment is submitted together with the next amendment that is due anyway. The background was a backlog of applications at the Commercial Register, because the original deadline had effectively shrunk to six months for dormant companies and nine months for active ones.

The Road Infrastructure Agency API restricts heavy traffic around the public holiday on 6 September: on Friday 4 September from 3 pm to 8 pm and on Saturday 5 September from 9 am to 2 pm, lorries over 12 tonnes may not use the Trakia, Hemus and Struma motorways leaving Sofia. On Monday 7 September the ban applies from noon to 8 pm in the direction of Sofia. Exempt are scheduled passenger services and transports of dangerous goods, live animals, perishable and temperature-controlled goods.

Since 1 September 2026 the National Health Insurance Fund NZOK pays 10 per cent more for clinical pathways; a normal birth is reimbursed at 1,039 euros, acute kidney failure at 1,167 euros. 20 per cent of the pathway value is earmarked for medical staff, and general practitioners receive 4.4 per cent more, backdated to 1 January. From October 2026 the electronic health system shows every patient what the fund paid for their treatment and allows them to report services not received; in the first month 32 such reports came in and five contracts were terminated.

On 2 September construction began on the three-storey extension of the “Lyuben Karavelov” primary school in the Vazrazhdane district of Burgas; the old north wing and the old gymnasium are being demolished. The new building adds five classrooms and a modern gymnasium, raising capacity from around 570 to around 700 places. The cost is the equivalent of around 1.18 million euros excluding VAT, funded by the Ministry of Education from 2024, and the construction period is at most 360 calendar days.

Radostina Ivanova-Mishineva, honorary consul of the Republic of Austria in Burgas since 2017 with responsibility for the Burgas, Varna and Dobrich regions, will also represent Switzerland as honorary consul, according to the Swiss Embassy in Bulgaria. The lawyer lectures in labour law and runs a law firm in Burgas. Two German-speaking countries thus have a consular contact point directly on the southern coast.

According to preliminary estimates by the Ministry of Finance, the consolidated budget deficit stood at 3 billion euros at the end of August 2026, or 2.4 per cent of expected economic output. Revenue reached 30.1 billion euros (60.7 per cent of the annual target), expenditure 33.1 billion euros (58.3 per cent). Compared with August 2025, revenue rose by 3.2 billion euros or 11.9 per cent, tax revenue by 2.2 billion euros. The ministry attributes the deterioration in August mainly to payments under the Recovery and Resilience Plan, whose deadline for eligible measures expired on 31 August; final figures for July and August follow at the end of September.

Assessment: A deficit below the 3 per cent threshold with revenue growing at a double-digit rate is not an alarm signal for me but the picture of an investment year. What matters to buyers is that transfer tax and property tax are municipal matters and do not depend directly on this balance. What I am watching instead is whether the state cuts capital spending in 2027, because road and water projects on the coast would then slow down.

According to Eurostat data of 1 September, Bulgaria’s unemployment rate was 3.6 per cent in July 2026, after 3.5 per cent in June and 3.8 per cent in July 2025. The EU average was 6.1 per cent, the euro area 6.4 per cent. Among under-25s Bulgaria stood at 14.1 per cent, below the EU figure of 15.1 per cent and the euro area figure of 14.9 per cent.

Five bids have been received by the Road Infrastructure Agency API for updating the design and the major refurbishment of the Trayanovi Vrata tunnel at kilometre 53 of the Trakia motorway; the estimated value is 40,433,152.49 euros excluding VAT, funded from the state budget. The tunnel has been in service since 1985; the tube towards Burgas is 720 metres long and was last repaired in 1996/97, the tube towards Sofia 685 metres, last repaired in 2002/03. The works cover waterproofing, ventilation, drainage, a new carriageway, two emergency cross-passages between the tubes, fire suppression and energy-saving lighting; design takes 60 days, construction 365 days.

According to preliminary data from the National Statistical Institute NSI of 31 August, the stock of foreign direct investment in Bulgaria amounted to 36,839 million euros at 31 December 2025, 8.7 per cent more than at the end of 2024. The largest items are manufacturing with 11,273 million euros, trade with 7,583 million and telecommunications and IT with 4,367 million euros. Real estate activities account for 4,183 million euros, electricity and gas supply for 3,008 million euros; because of the new classification of economic activities, the sectoral structure is not comparable with the previous year.

According to Eurostat's flash estimate, harmonised annual inflation in Bulgaria rose to 5.1 per cent in August, up from 4.4 per cent in July. Month on month, consumer prices increased by 0.8 per cent. Bulgaria was thus above the euro-area average of 3.3 per cent; only Lithuania at 5.8 and Cyprus at 5.2 per cent were higher. The main driver was energy, up 14.3 per cent year on year, after 10.3 per cent in July.

Assessment: For buyers, inflation above the euro-area average is a two-edged signal. It raises running costs and pressure on financing, yet also makes real assets more attractive as an investment. I see no reason to rush, but rather an argument to calculate purchase price, incidental costs and financing over several years rather than for the moment.

From 1 September 2026, people insured under Bulgaria's second pension pillar can for the first time choose how their accumulated capital is invested. Three sub-funds are on offer: a dynamic one with up to 90 per cent in shares and other variable-income instruments and an expected return above 7 per cent, a balanced one with up to 55 per cent variable-income assets and 4 to 7 per cent, and a conservative one with up to 25 per cent and 2 to 3 per cent. Anyone who does not choose by the end of November is allocated by age: up to 50 to the dynamic fund, over 50 with more than three years to retirement to the balanced fund, and within three years of retirement to the conservative fund. The multi-fund model starts on 1 January 2027.