Bulgaria’s President Radev resigns, expected to participate in next early parliamentary elections
In a live television broadcast to the nation on January 19, Roumen Radev announced that he would submit his resignation as Bulgaria’s President the following day, a step taken as the country heads to its latest early parliamentary elections, in which Radev is expected to participate with a political project.
Following the December 2025 resignation of the Rossen Zhelyazkov coalition Cabinet and a subsequent failure to attempt to form a new government, Bulgaria is heading to early parliamentary elections in the spring.
In his address, lasting about 10 minutes, Radev repeatedly hit out at the “oligarchy” and the established political parties, which he accused of “betraying” Bulgaria.
Radev said that in the nine years that he had been in office, Bulgaria had progressed in its Europea integration, such as entering the Schengen visa zone and adopting the euro, but the question was why these steps had not provided stability.
Other questions, according to Radev, were why Bulgarians had “stopped voting”, did not trust the media or the courts and why “in European Bulgaria, Bulgarians feel themselves to be poor”.
His speech made reference to young people who had taken part in the late 2025 street protests, with Radev saying that they did not want to leave Bulgaria, and he referred to the “patriotic Bulgarians outside Bulgaria” who, he said, bore Bulgaria “in their hearts”.
In his address, Radev did not directly announce that he was founding a political party, and while reporters were present in the room from which he broadcast, he ended his address without taking questions.
Radev is the fifth democratically-elected President of Bulgaria and the first to resign before the expiry of his term.
After the Constitutional Court accepts Radev’s resignation, vice president Iliyana Yotova will take the oath in Parliament as President, to serve out the remainder of Radev’s second and final terms, due to end in January 2027. This step is provided for in Article 97 (3) of Bulgaria’s constitution.
On taking office as head of state, Yotova would be the first woman in Bulgaria to do so.
With Radev out of office, it will fall to Yotova to appoint a caretaker Prime Minister and decree the date of the early parliamentary elections.
Radev, formerly the commander of the Bulgarian Armed Forces, was first elected President in November 2016 on a socialist-backed ticket and was re-elected in November 2021, on both occasions defeating in runoffs candidates nominated by Boiko Borissov’s centre-right GERB party.
In office, Radev routinely has criticised the governments of the day, apart from those caretaker governments that he appointed on seven occasions.
In a debate ahead of the November 2021 presidential elections, Radev said that Crimea is “Russian” and he has been critical of military aid for Ukraine, calling for a “diplomatic solution”.
Radev also has been critical of Bulgaria adopting the euro as its currency, as it did as of January 1 2026. He has insisted that Bulgaria is not ready for the euro and he mounted a failed campaign for a referendum on postponing euro accession, a campaign that did not take cognisance of the fact that such a referendum would be unconstitutional.
Bulgaria’s constitution requires the President to “embody the unity of the nation” and bars the head of state from leading a political party. Radev’s critics frequently have accused him of doing anything but embody the unity of the nation. His predecessor as head of state, Rossen Plevneliev, has publicly described Radev as “Bulgaria’s first populist president”.
Just before this past weekend, Radev’s close ally Dimitar Stoyanov posted a video of “ordinary folk” pleading with the head of state to “go deep into politics and save the Bulgarian people from this agony”.
The elections in spring 2026 will be the eighth time since April 2021 that Bulgarians elect a National Assembly.
(Photo: president.bg)
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