site.btaBulgaria's April 19, 2026 Early Parliamentary Elections: Backgrounder

Bulgarians at home and abroad are going to the polls on Sunday to elect their new lawmakers. These will be the country's eighteenth parliamentary elections since the start of democratic changes in 1989 and the seventh snap ones in a row since 2021.

The Election Code that regulates the process was adopted in 2014 and was last amended in February 2026.

Voters

The right to elect National Representatives vests in Bulgarian citizens who are aged 18 by polling day, are not interdicted, and do not serve a custodial sentence. Voter registration is passive. The electoral rolls list people according to their permanent address in Bulgaria.

On April 9, the Directorate General of Civil Registration and Administrative Services (GRAO) at the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works put the tentative final number of eligible voters for Sunday's elections at 6,575,151. The actual number will become clear after polling day because of last-minute additions.

A total of 1,224 accused persons and defendants on trial (650 held in prisons and 574 in pre-trial detention facilities) will be able to vote in 25 sections at the places of deprivation of liberty.

Prohibited from voting are 9,525 legally incapacitated persons and 4,311 prison inmates.

In Bulgaria, 577 non-resident voting certificate holders (candidates, observers and election commission members) will be able to vote at places other than their permanent or present address. Abroad, voters can exercise their franchise in any voting section in any country where such are available, regardless of whether they filed an application.

Candidates

To qualify for election to Parliament, candidates must hold Bulgarian citizenship, be aged 21 by polling day, be not interdicted, and not serve a custodial sentence.

The 240 seats in the next, 52nd Ordinary National Assembly, will be contested by 4,786 candidates (19.9 per seat), including 1,019 who stand simultaneously in two constituencies (the maximum number admissible). Of the candidates, 1,439 are women and 3,347 are men.

A total of 4,785 candidates have been nominated by 24 entities (listed here in the order of the sequential numbers, assigned to them by lot, under which they appear in the ballot):

- 14 parties running on straight tickets:

1. There Is Such a People
2. Direct Democracy
4. Morality, Unity and Honour
6. The Truth and Nothing but the Truth People’s Party
8. Vazrazhdane
10. Movement of Non-Party Candidates
13. Defiant Bulgaria National Movement
14. Velichie
17. Movement for Rights and Freedoms
18. Nation Party
19. Bulgaria Can Party
22. Saprotiva (Resistance)
23. Party of the Greens
24. Glas Naroden (People's Voice)

- 10 coalitions:

3. Blue Bulgaria
5. BSP – United Left
7. Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria
9. My Country Bulgaria
11. Alliance for Rights and Freedoms
12. The Anti-Corruption Bloc
15. GERB-UDF
16. Treti Mart (March 3)
20. Siyanie (Radiance)
21. Progressive Bulgaria

Todor Batkov is the only candidate running as independent, in the Smolyan Constituency. He appears under No. 25 at the bottom of the ballot, after the parties and coalitions.

By comparison, 19 parties, nine coalitions and one independent candidate were registered for the previous parliamentary elections in October 2024.

Election System

National Representatives are elected according to a semi-proportional system with a single transferable vote. For election purposes, the country is divided into 31 multi-member constituencies (3 in Sofia City Region, 2 in Plovdiv Region, and 26 coextensive with the remaining 26 administrative regions).

A fixed number of seats is assigned to each multi-member constituency: 19 in Sofia City No. 23, 16 in Varna, 14 each in Burgas and Sofia City No. 25, 13 in Sofia City No. 24, 12 in Plovdiv City, 11 each in Blagoevgrad, Plovdiv Region and Stara Zagora, 8 each in Veliko Tarnovo, Pazardzhik, Pleven, Sofia Region and Haskovo, 7 in Ruse, 6 each in Vratsa, Sliven and Shumen, 5 each in Dobrich and Kardzhali, and 4 each in the remaining 11 constituencies.

The allocation of seats at the national level is limited to parties and coalitions which have gained no less than 4% of the valid votes within Bulgaria and abroad and to independent candidates who have gained valid votes which are no less than the constituency electoral quota (the total number of valid votes cast in the constituency divided by the number of seats allocated for that constituency).

Each party and coalition is allocated seats using the Hare-Niemeyer Method: the number of seats to be filled is multiplied by the number of votes won by the party/coalition, and the result of this calculation is divided by the total number of valid votes (excluding the valid "None Of The Above" votes) to obtain the number of seats going to the party/coalition concerned.

The process is handled by a Central Election Commission (CEC), which is responsible for the entire country, including for the voting abroad, constituency election commissions, and section election commissions – one for each section where the actual balloting takes place.

Polling Day Arrangements

On Sunday, the polls will open at 7:00 a.m. and will close at 8:00 p.m. By exception, if voters are still waiting outside the polling site at 8:00 p.m., voting may continue until 9:00 p.m.

In Bulgaria, balloting will take place in 11,995 voting sections. There will be over 50 sections at nursing homes and around 40 at other social care institutions.

For Bulgarians abroad, there are 493 voting sections in 55 countries. The number of sections is considerably lower than the 710 available for the previous parliamentary elections in October 2024 because legal amendments adopted at the beginning of 2026 limited the number of sections in non-EU countries to 20 each, not counting the sections at the diplomatic missions and consular posts. Most affected in this respect are expat voters in Turkiye, the UK and the US (168, 112 and 53 sections, respectively, for October 2024).

The most numerous voting sections abroad have been opened in Germany (70), followed by Spain (67), the UK (28), Italy and Turkiye (27), Greece (26), the US and the Netherlands (24 each), France (19), and Austria and Belgium (17 each).

The Election Code caps the number of voters per section at 1,000, but the actual average varies from 500 to 800. The limit can and is exceeded for people with dual nationality (Bulgarian and Macedonian/Israeli/Turkish, etc.), who do not live in this country, do not own immovable property there, and cannot obtain a permanent address registration. For election purposes, they are registered at notional addresses. The largest such section, No. 45 in the Sofia Constituency No. 24, lists 97,371 voters, while the actual turnout there was just 500 in October 2024. The section is located in the administration building of the Sredets Borough in the capital city. Similarly, a section in the village of Belo Pole has 12,000 such voters, and one in the village of Logodazh 5,000-6,000 (both are in Blagoevgrad Region, Southwestern Bulgaria).

For the first time in these elections, a total of 400 Braille-inscribed tactile stencils will be available in 1,251 sections in five constituencies (Blagoevgrad, Plovdiv City, Sofia Nos. 23, 24 and 25) to allow voters with sight disabilities to use paper ballots unassisted. QR codes have also been designed for these sections, allowing voters to be able to scan the candidate lists displayed in front of the polling sites and hear the names instead of reading them.

Voters with permanent disabilities which prevent them from going to the polling site will be able to vote in 172 mobile ballot box sections.

Voting is de jure compulsory, but the voting obligation is de facto unenforceable after the Constitutional Court determined by a Decision of February 23, 2017 that the penalty for non-voters (which consisted in removal from the electoral roll for the next elections of the same type) was unconstitutional.

In Bulgaria, citizens can practically only vote in the area where their present address is located or, if they had applied beforehand, at their present address. Countrywide, 577 non-resident voting certificate holders (candidates, observers and election commission members) will be able to vote at places other than their permanent or present address.

Abroad, voters can exercise their franchise in any voting section in any country where such are available, regardless of whether they have filed an application.

Machine voting will be employed in all sections with at least 300 voters: 9,354 at home and 129 in 20 countries abroad. There will be a single voting machine per section.

Paper ballots only will be used in 2,641 under-300-voter domestic sections (including 172 sections for voting by a mobile ballot box), as well as in 364 sections with fewer than 300 voters abroad. Voting by paper ballot is also envisaged as a back-up option, in case a machine fails, which is why all sections have been supplied with the appropriate quantity of this election stationery. Any such switch will require a CEC decision.

Each constituency has a separate combined ballot stating the name and number of the constituency, the full and/or abbreviated name of the party, coalition or independent candidate, a square with the sequential number assigned to the contestants, a "None Of The Above" square, and circles with sequential numbers of the candidates on the lists whose number corresponds to the doubled number of seats in the respective constituency. A different type of ballot is provided for the voting abroad: it lists only the parties and coalitions contesting the election, without circles for preferences.

At the polling site, citizens will be handed a plastic chip activation card by a section commission member. In the machine voting enclosure, the voter needs to insert the card with the chip on the top side into the touch-screen device. When activated in this way, the machine will display the electronic ballot on the touch screen, divided into successive pages. To register their choice, voters must tap the appropriate area on the ballot, which will change its colour when selected. Then a review button has to be pressed to display their choice, so they can check whether it is correct. If not or if they have changed their mind, they can repeat the process. When the vote is confirmed, the machine will print out a separate voter-verified paper record for the two types of election (differing in length), indicating the party/coalition of the voter's choice and the name of the preferred candidate (if any), which has to be folded and deposited in a special machine voting box.

If they use paper ballots, voters have to go behind a polling screen and check the square with the sequential number of the party/coalition/independent candidate or the "None Of The Above" square with an "X" or a "V" sign, using a ballpoint pen writing in blue ink. A single preference for a candidate on a party list may be expressed by marking his or her number on the list by an "X" or a "V" in a circle. The ballot paper is then folded in a way making the marked choice invisible and is deposited in a transparent ballot box without an envelope.

The electronic and paper versions of the ballot look exactly the same.

The ballot counting and tallying process will be videoed at some 11,650 voting sections.

Twenty-six Bulgarian non-governmental organizations will be able to deploy a total of 1,490 observers to monitor Sunday's elections. Four international and foreign organizations have registered observation missions with 180 observers in aggregate: the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and the Committee for Open Democracy.

Five sociological agencies have registered to conduct exit polls on polling day: Myara, Alpha Research, Trend Research Centre, Market LINKS, and Gallup International Balkan.