Confirmed: Bulgaria is again heading to early parliamentary elections
Bulgaria is heading to its latest early parliamentary elections after, on January 16, a third parliamentary group refused a mandate to seek to form a government.
Between 2021 and 2024, Bulgaria held seven parliamentary elections – in April 2021, July 2021, November 2021, October 2022, April 2023, June 2024 and October 2024.
In December 2025, the coalition government headed by Rossen Zhelyazkov, which had taken office in January that year, resigned in response to massive street protests in Bulgaria and abroad, against corruption and abuse of power, and in particular against Borissov and Magnitsky Act-sanctioned Delyan Peevski, seen as holding sway over the government while formally not participating in it.
This set in train the constitutional process by which the head of state offers a succession of three mandates to seek to form a government, first to the largest parliamentary group, then to the second-largest and finally to a group of the president’s choice.
On January 12, Borissov’s group refused the mandate, as did We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria on January 14.
President Roumen Radev chose to hand the third mandate to the Ahmed Dogan loyalists of the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (ARF), which has 19 MPs in the 240-seat National Assembly, making it joint sixth with the Bulgarian Socialist Party – United Left.
Radev’s remarks at the January 16 ceremony made it clear that he had chosen ARF as a rebuke to Peevski, who took over the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, ousting its founder Dogan.
On January 15, ARF parliamentary group leader Khairy Sadakov told reporters that his group would decide what to do with the mandate, though on December 18, during consultations with Radev, Sadakov had said that forming a government in this Parliament would be “impossible”.
On January 16, Sadakov told Radev: “Our parliamentary group authorised me to return the third exploratory mandate unfulfilled, in order to realise with all our joint efforts fair, free, transparent, democratic elections”.
“We are going to elections,” Radev responded.
Radev must now choose a caretaker Prime Minister from a list set out in amendments in 2023 to the constitution, and set a date for parliamentary elections.
