Bulgaria’s government budgets 117 million euro for 2026 presidential elections
At a regular meeting on August 27, Bulgaria’s Cabinet approved a budget of 116 928 000 euro for the autumn presidential elections.
The first round of this year’s presidential elections are scheduled for October 25, with a runoff election to be held on November 1 if no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of the vote in the first round.
These dates were approved by Parliament on July 31.
In contrast to Bulgaria’s spate of early parliamentary elections in the past few years, the 2026 presidential elections are regular ones.
The budget decided on by the Cabinet on August 27 includes provisions for numerous items.
These include the preparation and printing of voters rolls; material and technical support of the election process, including the provision of rooms for counting points and for accepting protocols; the logistical support of district and municipal administrations and the administration of the Cabinet; pay for members of the regional and section election commissions; ensuring voting abroad; ensuring security measures by the Interior Ministry to preserve public order and security; conducting an awareness campaign about the rights and obligations of citizens and the method of voting; ensuring video surveillance activities and video recording of the election process; organizing voting places in public schools, among other items.
The statement said that the government is ready to provide additional necessary funds upon the conclusion by the Central Electoral Commission of contracts for logistics and technical support of special devices for electronic machine voting, as well as for other materials and accompanying activities to ensure machine voting, the creation of a unit for managing machine voting, voting with paper ballots, computer processing of voting data in the elections and the issuance of a bulletin with the election results.
The funds for the preparation and conduct of the presidential and vice-presidential elections will be provided at the expense of planned expenses in the national Budget for 2026, the government information service said.
(Archive photo: president.bg)
