Bulgaria has added one of its biggest current sporting names to its sales pitch abroad. Karlos Nasar, the Olympic, world and European weightlifting champion, has accepted an invitation from Tourism Minister Ilin Dimitrov to take part in a campaign promoting the country internationally, the Ministry of Tourism announced. He follows Dara, the Eurovision 2026 winner, who signed up to the same initiative a day earlier.
The idea is straightforward: showcase Bulgaria through successful Bulgarians who can speak about it personally, as goodwill ambassadors for the country's tourism. At the meeting Dimitrov handed Nasar a statuette of the Bulgarian rose, the emblem the Ministry wants to carry into its international messaging. "Let the world see our country not only as a beautiful destination, but as a nation with history, spirit, and personalities who tell its story," the minister said. Nasar, for his part, said the country "is beautiful and deserves to be seen by more people around the world."
Anyone who spent last summer on the Black Sea coast saw the British number plates in the Sunny Beach car parks. The Tourism Ministry has seen the same figures, and it is now reaching for bigger names to keep them coming.
The man with the gold medal
The BTA report calls Nasar an "Olympic, world and European champion" and leaves it there, which rather undersells him. At the Paris 2024 Olympics he won gold in the men's 89kg category at the age of 20, breaking two world records in the process, including a 224kg clean and jerk, according to the International Weightlifting Federation. He was Bulgaria's first Olympic weightlifting champion in two decades, in a sport the country once dominated. For a tourism ministry looking for a face that reads as young, internationally known and unambiguously Bulgarian, he is an obvious pick.
The pairing with Dara is the same logic from a different field. Darina Yotova, who performs as Dara, won the Eurovision Song Contest 2026, putting Bulgaria back at the top of a contest it had sat out for three years. Between them, an Olympic platform and a Eurovision stage cover a lot of the audience the Ministry is trying to reach.
Selling more than a beach
The more interesting line is the minister's: not only a beautiful destination, but a nation with history and personalities. Read between the words and it is a deliberate move away from the image Bulgaria has long carried in northern Europe, the one of a cut-price summer beach and not much else. The campaign's plan, the Ministry says, is to produce videos and promotional materials featuring well-known Bulgarians, artists, athletes, scientists and young achievers, talking about the country in their own voice rather than over stock footage of a sunset.
Whether a statuette and a set of promo videos shift a national image is another question, and the Ministry has not put a budget or a target on the campaign. But the strategy is clear enough, and it is a familiar one: lend the country some borrowed star power and hope the association sticks.
What it means for British expats
Britain is squarely among the markets this kind of campaign is aimed at. Around 343,000 UK visitors came to Bulgaria in 2025, up roughly 22% on the previous year, according to tourism figures reported by Travel And Tour World, making the UK one of the country's faster-growing source markets even if Romania and Turkey send far more. Much of that traffic still lands on the Black Sea coast, which is the slice of Bulgaria most Brits see first. Our visit Bulgaria guide covers the country beyond the resorts, and the Sunny Beach guide the part of it most British holidaymakers already know.
For those of us already living here, this is soft power rather than anything that changes a Tuesday. No form to file, no fee, no deadline. But the framing is worth noting, because it is the same argument expats tend to make to friends back home: that Bulgaria is a country with a long history and a character of its own, not just a cheap fortnight by the sea. It is mildly satisfying to hear a tourism minister make the case in public, statuette and all.
The campaign rolls out through videos and promotional materials over the coming period. The Ministry has not said when the first of them featuring Nasar will appear.