In brief
Bulgarian citizens went to the polls on Sunday to pick their seventh president in a runoff between two presidential tickets. The election employed 11,622 voting machines across 9,373 polling stations and was supported by the CEC’s Elections 360° app and the evideo.bg real‑time portal. Results will be announced within three days, according to the Central Election Commission.
Bulgarian voters went to the polls on Sunday to decide their seventh president in a runoff election between the Andrey Gurov–Georgi Kandev ticket and the Iliana Iotova–Kiril Valchev ticket.
In the first round held on Sunday, 25 October, none of 27 presidential and vice‑presidential candidate tickets secured the majority required to win the presidency outright.
The Iotova–Valchev ticket garnered 34.759 % of the vote while the Gurov–Kandev ticket finished close second with 31.952 %.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 8 p.m., with the Central Election Commission (CEC) allowing voting to continue until 9 p.m. if voters were still waiting to cast their ballots; the same schedule applied to overseas polling stations.
Machine voting was available at 9,373 polling stations, with two machines installed at 2,249 of them. A total of 11,622 voting machines were deployed nationwide.
On 30 July 2026, the National Assembly approved a decision to introduce exclusively machine‑based voting at polling stations with more than 300 registered voters.
The CEC’s Elections 360° application gives voters information about the electoral process, a complete list of presidential and vice‑presidential candidates, an interactive map of polling stations and a machine‑voting simulator, and it allows users to check their polling station address via the Directorate General for Civil Registration and Administrative Services (GRAO) electronic services.
Election‑day activity can be monitored in real time through the evideo.bg portal, while the Elections 360° app provides electronic versions of protocols recording paper‑ballot results, machine‑voting results, and verification counts. The portal also shows results from individual section election commissions by geographical location, including those abroad.
Parliament repealed the limit of 20 polling stations outside diplomatic and consular missions in countries outside the European Union, allowing a broader range of overseas polling locations for the public.
Voters with visual impairments or mobility difficulties can cast their ballots at designated accessible polling stations, which are generally located on ground floors of buildings and provide appropriate accommodations.
According to the CEC, the final results of the runoff will be announced within three days of the election, finalizing Bulgaria’s choice of its seventh president.
