The campaign to elect Bulgaria’s seventh president officially began at midnight on September 25 and ends 24 hours before voting starts on October 25, 2026. The Central Election Commission (CEC) registered 27 presidential and vice-presidential tickets.
For this election, machine voting will be conducted in all polling stations except those in the country with fewer than 300 voters; polling stations where voting is conducted using a mobile ballot box; polling stations in medical establishments, homes for the elderly and other specialized institutions providing social services; polling stations on vessels flying the Bulgarian flag; and those outside the country for which fewer than 300 applications have been submitted or where fewer than 300 voters cast ballots in the previous election.
The addresses of the 11,778 polling stations in the country have been published on the CEC website.
As of 11:00 a.m. on September 23, a total of 18,430 Bulgarian citizens across 66 countries had registered to vote abroad in the presidential and vice-presidential election, Boryana Stoynova from the Foreign Ministry said. Applications for voting abroad can be submitted until September 29. The highest number of applications comes from Turkiye - over 7,000, followed by nearly 3,000 from Great Britain, around 1,500 from Germany, over 1,300 from the USA, and more than 700 from Spain, Stoynova explained.
The campaign concludes at midnight on October 23.
Rather than producing a winner in the first round, Bulgarian presidential elections traditionally go to a second; a possible runoff will be held on October 1.
