Page 1 of 8. Browse the published articles, or use site search.
Ivan Hadzhiyski, born in Troyan in 1907, walked and cycled around Bulgaria to write a classic study of how Bulgarians live and think. He was killed as a war correspondent in 1944, and part of his work vanished before it could be published.
Ivo Yanakiev, born in Burgas in 1975, won Olympic bronze in the single sculls at Athens in 2004, a first medal in the event for Bulgaria, Norway and Estonia alike. Gotse Delchev's calendar date, meanwhile, turns out to be less fixed than it looks.
Atanas Hranov, born in Plovdiv in 1961, named an exhibition after the kettles of the last king of Babylon and set Plovdiv's writers into a garden in cast iron. Razlog, between Rila, Pirin and the Rhodopes, celebrates its city day today.
Inspectors who searched the damaged ship Able found no drone fragments, sea-water tests found no oil, and the defence minister says nobody can promise 100% protection. The crew of the other ship hit is still missing.
Petar Zhekov, born in the Rhodope village of Knizhovnik in 1944, won the European Golden Boot in 1969 and played at the 1966 World Cup in England. Rinus Michels is said to have wanted him for Barcelona; the authorities in Bulgaria said no.
On 9 October 1934 a Bulgarian gunman from a Rhodope spa town shot the king of Yugoslavia in Marseille and died that evening, unnamed. Vlado Chernozemski is considered a hero in Bulgaria and a controversial Bulgarian in North Macedonia's official history.
He put some of Plovdiv's rich into the Last Judgement at Bachkovo, in the clothes they actually wore, and signed his self-portrait "Bulgarian". Zahari Zograf, born in Samokov in 1810, left his work on the walls of Rila, Bachkovo and Troyan.
Seven league titles, six cup wins and 350 A Group games for CSKA Sofia: Boris Gaganelov, born in Petrich on this day in 1941, was a left-back who also played at the 1966 World Cup in England. Bulgarian Wikipedia calls him a legend, and the record backs it up.
Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria died on 6 October 1014, reportedly after seeing the army Basil II had blinded at Kleidion. Toma and Tomi celebrate the Apostle Thomas, and Pliska and Preslav, lost in 1001, are about 20 km from Shumen.
Born in Plovdiv on 5 October 1986, Valeri Domovchiyski had a Blackburn Rovers trial in 2008, scored against Bayern Munich for Hertha and turns 40 today. Bansko, Svilengrad and Stara Zagora all mark 5 October too.
Born in Koprivshtitsa on 4 October 1874, the son of a priest who swore in April Uprising rebels, Gavril Katsarov became rector of Sofia University and wrote the Thrace chapter of the Cambridge Ancient History. Madzharovo remembers 1913.
A handover in Thessaloniki on Saturday ended decades of talks, but a leading Bulgarian medievalist calls the evidence that these are Samuel's bones circumstantial.
Born in Karlovo on 3 October 1819, Evlogi Georgiev made a fortune in trade and banking, partly through Manchester, then gave it to build Sofia University's main building. The state he funded tried to bar him from parliament and sued over his will.
On 2 October 1916 Dimcho Debelyanov, a poet whose work remains popular in Bulgaria, was killed on the Macedonian front in a battle with British troops. He had volunteered, and predicted he would not return.
Twenty years ago today Bulgaria lost Atanas Mihaylov, the Lokomotiv Sofia forward who scored five against Monaco, was compared to Puskás, and turned down a fortune to stay at home. Plus Dunavtsi's city day on the Danube.
The Regional Development Ministry has proposed regrouping Bulgaria's provinces from 1 January 2027 to match a new EU classification. No province or municipality boundary moves, but Shumen province would swap Targovishte for Burgas, Sliven and Yambol, and Sofia would stand alone.
Milko Bobotsov was born on this date in 1931 and became the first Bulgarian grandmaster in 1961. He drew with Tal, Spassky, Petrosian and Smyslov while working as a gymnastics instructor, until a stroke ended it at forty.
Vela Blagoeva was born on this date in 1859. Teacher, war nurse, journalist, she helped found the Bulgarian Women's Union in 1901, between the founding of Britain's two great suffrage organisations.
Only Hungary saw a steeper food price rise in the EU since 2021. Minimum-wage earners can still buy more than before, but the figures hide where the squeeze has moved.
Stefan Avramov died on this date in 1953. Teacher, guerrilla courier, communist, editor, he proposed in 1944 that Gotse Delchev's remains be given to the new Macedonian republic, and two years later they went.
The children's writer Kina Kadreva was born on this date in 1931. She edited Leka nosht, detsa!, the nightly slot that ended the day for a whole Bulgarian generation, and her tales are still in the primary school books.
Eurostat ranks Bulgaria last in the EU for road freight over 2021 to 2025, with a 28% drop in dangerous goods in 2025. But national figures show last year was flat, and the statistic counts Bulgarian lorries, not traffic on Bulgarian roads.
Andrey Lukanov was born on this date in 1938. He helped remove Todor Zhivkov, led Bulgaria through its first democratic election since 1931, and was shot dead outside his Sofia flat in 1996 in a case that remains unsolved.
The chess grandmaster Nino Kirov died on this date in 2008. Twice Bulgarian champion, nine times a Balkaniad player, he was a product of a sporting system Britain never had.
Radko Dimitriev was born on this date in 1859. He ran the Bulgarian General Staff, won the opening battles of the First Balkan War, then commanded a Russian army against Bulgaria's own allies and was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
Fuel prices in Bulgaria were 34.5% higher in August than a year earlier, the sharpest rise in the EU. The government's €300 million relief package offers LPG users and farmers help, but almost nothing for the average petrol or diesel driver.
The actor Cagatay Ulusoy was born on this date in 1990, to a father whose family left Bulgaria for Turkey as children. In 2025 he took Bulgarian citizenship, by a route plenty of people here have looked into.
Morning lows of zero to four degrees are forecast for Thursday 24 September in valleys and near the mountains, bringing the season's first frost. The cold is sharp, brief, and nowhere near enough to trigger the heating season.
Bulgaria declared full independence from the Ottoman Empire on 22 September 1908, after a week of ship meetings and train journeys. It is a public holiday, so almost everything official is shut today.
Georgi Benkovski was born on this date in 1843. He led the Fourth Revolutionary District of the April Uprising under a name taken from a Polish exile's passport, and the British reaction to what followed helped make Bulgaria a country.
The satirist Stanislav Stratiev died on this date in 2000. He spent twenty-five years as playwright of Sofia's Satirical Theatre, and in 1993 the BBC World Service broadcast one of his plays.
A €300 million package presented on Friday pays an automatic €50 to more than 550,000 people on social assistance, abolishes excise on LPG until the end of the year and hands farmers 44 cents a litre. Petrol and diesel get nothing, the opposition calls it election-season money, and the rules against unjustified price rises now run to August 2027.
The director Docho Bodzhakov was born on this date in 1956. Among his films is a BNT comedy about a retired Englishman from Manchester who moves to a Bulgarian village and buys a tractor, which may be the most useful thing on Bulgarian television for British expats.
Bulgaria's tax authority regulates gambling, licensed the advertising industry in August, and runs none of the British safety nets. What that means for Brits who assumed their UK self-exclusion followed them out.
The actor Rousy Chanev was born in Burgas on this date in 1945. He has been on Bulgarian screens since 1965, and last year his home city finally made him an honorary citizen.
Shumen's mayor opens his diary to the public on 28 September, sixteen villages lost power for an afternoon, the police talked phone scams with pensioners, the ballet school came home from Serbia with medals, Novi Pazar hangs a new exhibition, and the warm spell has an end date.
Sofia is already at €1.97 a litre and the national average is a cent higher every few days. The government has promised a package but not a number, the unions expect one by 15 October, and the spring €20 scheme is the template to check yourself against.
The poet Hristo Smirnenski was born on this date in 1898 and was dead at twenty-four. It is also Vyara, Nadezhda, Lyubov i Sofia, one of the biggest name days of the year, and the city day for Sofia itself.
Pavel Panov was born on this date in 1950. In one UEFA Cup run he scored twice against Ajax and twice against Barcelona, and he is still the third highest Bulgarian scorer in European club football. It is also the name day for Lyudmila.
The father of the Bulgarian cavalry was born in a Bessarabian village on this date in 1863. It is also the first day of the school year, which catches out British expat parents more reliably than anything else on the calendar.
Delyan Dobrev says agreements cover three Bulgarian battery projects. Lower electricity bills are the promise, but households need more than a company name to budget on.
Investigators report no evidence of outside involvement in the six deaths, while forensic and institutional inquiries continue. Here is what remains unresolved and where families can raise child-protection concerns.
She filmed the show trials, the erasures and the things nobody wanted said, and became the first winner of a Bulgarian prize for civic courage. She died on this date in 2023, on a feast day that is also a strict fast.
Born in Odessa in 1879, he fled the Russian Civil War and took a chair at Sofia University from a man who had just been allowed to go the other way. Twenty-four years and 27 monographs later, Bulgaria dismissed him as a bourgeois specialist.
He stopped a Soviet boxer in Moscow in front of a Soviet crowd, at nineteen, and Bulgaria has not had a younger Olympic champion since. On the way to the final he beat a flyweight from Belfast who went home and became a press photographer.
The dissident writer jabbed on Waterloo Bridge with a poisoned pellet died on this date in 1978, aged 49. Nobody was ever charged, and his widow's account suggests the umbrella everyone remembers was not the weapon at all.
The percussionist who took Bulgaria to fifth place in Helsinki with nothing but a folk singer and a drum was born today in 1966. His instrument is the one you hear at every village wedding, and it is worth knowing its name.
Bulgaria's sharpest satirist was born in Sofia on 9 September 1941, three years to the day before the coup that made his birthday a state holiday. He spent the next decades mocking the result from inside a state theatre, and packing it out.
Bulgaria's most influential composer grew up in Shumen, conquered Berlin, and used his Party credit to pull musicians out of Belene. He died today in 1978. Plus Bogdan's name day and five towns marking the Virgin's birthday.
Bulgaria's longest-serving communist leader was born in Pravets today in 1911, on a date his own mother disputed. Belene, whose Danube island held his regime's most notorious camp, celebrates its town day alongside coal-town Radnevo.
On 6 September 1885 Plovdiv rose, its governor was marched through the streets, and Eastern Rumelia joined the Principality of Bulgaria in a single day. It is a Sunday and a public holiday, so this one changes your plans.
Bulgaria's Sydney 2000 triple jump champion was born in Pleven today, into a house where sport was banned. Add a pair of biblical name days and five town celebrations, and it is a fuller Saturday than it looks.
Aleksandar Shalamanov was born on this day in 1941. He is the only Bulgarian to have competed at both a Winter Olympics and a World Cup, and was named in the all-star team of 1966.
Major General Nikolay Rusev says the pilot count reaches 15 by April 2027, yet the jets lack their self-protection system and the second batch of eight has slipped towards 2030. Three different readiness dates are now on the public record, and the MiG-29s are still flying the alert over the coast.
Vasil Gendov died on this day in 1970. He made the first Bulgarian film in 1915, watched it burn in the bombing of Sofia, and spent his last decades building the archive that saved everyone else's.
The prime minister says the European Commission has approved Bulgaria's latest recovery-plan payments in recognition of its anti-corruption push, days after the EU deadline passed. The same cabinet meeting cut the recycling levy on fridges and washing machines by about four times and named three motorways as priorities. Here is what is documented, where the outlets disagree, and what a Brit here will notice.
Elitsa Todorova was born in Varna on this day in 1977. Her drums and folk voice took Bulgaria to fifth in Helsinki in 2007, still the country's best Eurovision result.
Ljuba Welitsch died on this day in 1996. She ran away to school in Shumen, was coached in Salome by Richard Strauss himself, and made her name at Covent Garden in 1947.
Lyuboslav Penev was born on this day in 1966. He won a Spanish double with Atletico Madrid, but cancer kept him out of the 1994 World Cup, the tournament that made his teammates immortal here.
Svetoslav Todorov was born on this day in 1978. He scored 26 goals to take Portsmouth into the Premier League, then wrecked his knee days before they got there.