Turnout: 50.70%
About this election
Bulgaria held a snap parliamentary election on 19 April 2026 — the country's seventh in just five years, and the one that finally broke a long cycle of deadlock. Progressive Bulgaria (PB), a new party founded by former president Rumen Radev, who resigned the presidency in January 2026 to lead it, won a commanding majority with 131 of the 240 seats on 43.91% of the vote — the first time any single party had secured an outright majority in the National Assembly since 1997. GERB-SDS, the party of veteran former prime minister Boyko Borisov, fell to 39 seats (13.18%), its worst showing in years. We Continue the Change–Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB), led by Asen Vasilev, ran separately and took 37 seats (12.42%); the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) of Delyan Peevski won 21 (7.01%); and the nationalist, pro-Russian Revival (Vazrazhdane) of Kostadin Kostadinov 12 (4.19%). Turnout was 50.70%.
Since April 2021 Bulgaria had been trapped in the deepest political crisis of its post-communist history, holding election after election as no stable majority could be assembled. The core fault line ran between Borisov's long-dominant GERB and the anti-corruption reformers of PP-DB, with Peevski's DPS and the nationalists complicating every arithmetic. The 2026 election was triggered when the Zhelyazkov government resigned in December 2025 amid anti-corruption protests. The decisive new factor was Rumen Radev: hugely popular after two terms as a critical, reform-minded president, he stepped down to enter party politics directly, and his new vehicle absorbed much of the public appetite for a clean break.
Bulgaria elects its 240-seat unicameral National Assembly (Narodno Sabranie) by proportional representation from 31 multi-member constituencies, with a 4% national threshold applying equally to single parties and coalitions. Seats are allocated by the largest-remainder method using the Hare quota. The prime minister, elected by the Assembly, leads the government; the directly elected president is a largely ceremonial head of state who nonetheless appoints caretaker governments — a power that became central during the years of instability. A majority requires 121 of the 240 seats.
Progressive Bulgaria (PB), Radev's new formation, ran as a broad anti-corruption, pro-European force promising to end the cycle of instability. GERB-SDS remained the establishment centre-right party built around Boyko Borisov. PP-DB, the reformist bloc led by Asen Vasilev, had been the chief challenger to GERB through the crisis years. DPS, drawing on the ethnic-Turkish electorate and now controlled by Delyan Peevski, and the nationalist Revival completed the main field. The fragmentation of these forces had been the very reason no government could hold; Radev's breakthrough cut through it.
The 2026 result was less a routine swing than the collapse of a years-long stalemate. Voters exhausted by repeated elections and by competing anti-corruption claims rallied behind a single, trusted figure, giving PB a majority that none of the established parties had been able to win. GERB's slump and the reformers' decision to run separately from PB left the new party with a clear field on the reform vote.
With an outright majority — the first since 1997 — Progressive Bulgaria was able to form a government without the fragile multi-party bargains that had collapsed so often before. Radev was designated prime minister and his cabinet was approved by the Assembly in May 2026, with PP-DB lending support to a stable pro-European majority.
The new government's priorities are the agenda that the years of instability had stalled: completing Bulgaria's full accession to the Schengen area (land-border controls were lifted in January 2025), preparing for adoption of the euro, and judicial and anti-corruption reform. After seven elections in five years, the central question is simply whether a single-party majority can finally deliver a full, stable term.
The pivot of the election was Rumen Radev himself. Elected president in 2016 and re-elected in 2021, he spent two terms as an outspoken critic of GERB and of the political establishment, and during the years of deadlock he repeatedly appointed the caretaker governments that kept the state running. Constitutionally unable to seek a third presidential term, he resigned in January 2026 to contest the election directly, betting that his personal standing could succeed where the fragmented reform parties had failed. The gamble paid off spectacularly, though it also concentrates the hopes of the reform electorate in a single figure.
Bulgaria publishes results province by province through the Central Election Commission, and the map can be clicked to see each of the 31 constituencies in detail. The familiar geography of Bulgarian politics — GERB's strength in parts of the centre and west, the reformers' lead in Sofia and the larger cities, the DPS vote concentrated in the mixed south-east and among the diaspora, and Revival's nationalist pockets — was overlaid in 2026 by Progressive Bulgaria drawing support broadly across the country, which is what allowed it to convert a plurality of votes into an outright majority of seats.
Central Election Commission of Bulgaria (Tsentralna Izbiratelna Komisiya, CIK) — cik.bg.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.