site.btaBTA Director General: BTA Makes Bulgarians at Home, Abroad Take Part in Bulgaria's National Day at Expo 2025 in Osaka

All of Bulgaria and Bulgarians around the world are participating through the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) in Bulgaria's National Day at Expo 2025 in Osaka, said BTA Director General Kiril Valchev on Sunday at the Bulgarian pavilion at Expo 2025 at the launch of LIK magazine's April issue, dedicated to Bulgaria's participation in world expos. The edition was released in Bulgarian, English and Japanese.

The presentation, which was also attended by President Rumen Radev, took place in front of students studying Bulgarian at universities in Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe with lecturer prof. Ivo Vladimirov, as well as the architects of the Bulgarian Pavilion Hiroto Kobayashi and Maria Gospodinova.

A simultaneous online connection was established with the multimedia centre in MaxiM Hall at the Agency's headquarters in Sofia and 40 national BTA press clubs in Bulgaria and abroad.

The BTA Director General noted that with this coverage, BTA now has its 44th National Press Club - in the Bulgarian pavilion at EXPO 2025 in Osaka until October 13, when the event ends.

"The design of the future society for our lives, which is the theme of EXPO 2025, goes through our mutual knowledge and this issue of LIK magazine for Bulgaria and the world exhibitions contributes to this knowledge through the editions in three languages, as the Japanese students studying Bulgarian received the issue in both Bulgarian and Japanese and can use it as a textbook," Valchev said.

The BTA Director General noted that Bulgaria and Japan know each other very well thanks to the Bulgarian participation at the 1970 Osaka World Expo, which was presented in detail in the issue of LIK magazine. It was then that Bulgarian rose and Japanese cherry, Bulgarian yoghurt and Japanese sushi met, and over the years of mutual interest the two nations got to know each other thanks to rhythmic gymnastics and sumo, European and Japanese opera, Valchev said. He said Osaka 2025 will also help, like Osaka 1970, for better mutual knowledge of Bulgaria and Japan.

“Nowadays, we are connected by the achievements of mankind in science presented at world exhibitions, which the LIK issue tells about, and Bulgaria's Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology and RIKEN, the largest research institution in the Japanese state, work together for science,” Valchev said. He also presented the issues of LIK magazine, also published in English, dedicated to the achievements of Bulgarian science - the Bulgarian footprint in space on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the space flight of cosmonaut Georgi Ivanov, which made Bulgaria the sixth country in the world with a man in space, the 155th anniversary of the founding of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, as well as the issue on Bulgarian science in Antarctica.

The BTA and Kyodo have been together for six decades - since 1964, when the partnership agreement between the national news agencies of Bulgaria and Japan was signed, Vulchev said.

The April issue of LIK magazine, titled Bulgaria at the World Expos and published in English and Japanese, was presented simultaneously in Osaka, Sofia and in 40 BTA national press clubs across Bulgaria and abroad.

The magazine, timed to Expo 2025’s 13 April opening and Bulgaria’s new type-A pavilion, blends on-site reporting by Ivan Lazarov with essays on how Bulgarian culture travels. It traces this journey from Aleko Konstantinov’s 19th-century world-fair diaries through the 1970 Osaka Expo—where yoghurt, the Children’s Radio Choir and a pyramid-shaped pavilion won Japan’s heart—to today’s drive, described by SME Agency head Boyko Takov, to make Bulgaria “a factor” in tourism, investment and science. The pavilion’s designers promise an “experience that leaves a mark,” while pieces on Bulgarian yoghurt, the Valley of Roses’ ties with Fukuyama and Munakata, and a chronology of global expos, all drawn from BTA’s expanding digital archives, show how national identity is forged in dialogue with the world.Since January 2024 LIK has been freely accessible. All issues since its revival in 2022 can be downloaded from the BTA website. The April issue Bulgaria and the World Expos is available in Bulgarian, English and Japanese.