Bulgaria votes for president: what Varna voters need to know

Bulgarians voted for president and vice-president on Sunday, 25 October 2026. The Central Election Commission (CEC) registered 27 candidate pairs, and about 6.59 million people were eligible to vote, CEC spokesperson Stoyanka Balova told BNR Radio Varna. In Varna region 408,019 people could vote, 301,357 of them in Varna municipality, Moreto.net reported from CEC data.

How did voting work?

Polling stations were open from 7:00 to 20:00, with a possible extension to 21:00 if voters were still waiting. Under changes to the Electoral Code adopted in August, stations with 300 or more voters use voting machines. Nationally, 11,888 machines were provided for 9,373 polling stations, 2,249 of them with two machines, Moreto.net reported. According to the same report, around 46,000 young people were voting for a president for the first time, and 613 polling stations were opened in 60 countries abroad.

Only Bulgarian citizens aged 18 or over can vote for president. EU citizens living in Varna can vote only in local and European Parliament elections — see our guide to EU citizens’ residence in Varna.

How do you vote on a machine?

The voter receives an access card for the device. After the choice is made, the machine prints a control receipt, which is folded with the text inside and handed to a member of the polling station commission to be stamped. The voter then drops the receipt into the box for machine votes, returns the smart card marked “Voter”, signs the voter list and gets their ID back, Moreto.net explained. Paper ballots are stamped twice.

What happens if a machine breaks down?

If the receipt printer fails, voting at that station stops until a technician fixes it. If the machine cannot be repaired, the station switches to paper ballots: every station has ballots for all registered voters plus a 10% reserve, according to Moreto.net.

Varna region in numbers

According to CEC data reported by Moreto.net:

• 655 polling stations in the region, 413 of them in Varna municipality;
• machine voting in 552 stations, 201 of them with two machines;
• 8 mobile polling stations (two each in Varna, Provadia and Dalgopol; one each in Aksakovo and Valchi Dol).

How high was turnout in the morning?

Turnout was low in the morning. By noon it stood at 5.8% nationwide (385,092 voters), the CEC said, according to BTA. The highest figure was in Vidin (8.12%) and the lowest in Kardzhali (2.56%). In Varna, turnout at 11:00 was 5.47%, the regional election commission said. By noon, 20 machines had stopped working because of technical problems and the affected stations switched to paper ballots, BTA reported.

What happened next?

No candidate won in the first round, so Iliana Yotova and Andrey Gyurov meet in a runoff on 1 November 2026. Final turnout, first-round estimates and how the runoff works are in our runoff report. Varna Pulse reports results only from official CEC data and does not take sides in the election.