Bulgarian citizenship by descent: who qualifies, how to get a Bulgarian passport, and the Dobruja case

Bulgarian citizenship by descent is open to anyone who has a Bulgarian parent, grandparent or great-grandparent. Your own place of birth does not matter, so a descendant born in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Germany qualifies in exactly the same way as someone born in Sofia. Your ancestor’s place of birth does not matter either: a Bulgarian grandparent born in Ukraine or in Romania counts just the same. You do not need to live in Bulgaria, there is no language exam, and you keep your current citizenship. What the application does require is documentary proof, in the form of official records that show your ancestor’s Bulgarian origin and connect him or her to you.

Who qualifies for Bulgarian citizenship by descent?

The rule is set out in Article 15 of the Bulgarian Citizenship Act. It allows a person who is not a Bulgarian citizen to acquire citizenship if he or she is “of Bulgarian origin”. Paragraph 2 of the same article defines how far back this goes: you must prove kinship with at least one ancestor of Bulgarian origin up to the third degree. In practice the degrees work like this:

• first degree: your father or mother;
• second degree: a grandfather or grandmother;
• third degree: a great-grandfather or great-grandmother.

One such ancestor in the direct line is enough. Aunts, uncles, cousins and other side branches of the family do not give the right, because they are not your direct ancestors.

Two further conditions apply. You must be of full age when you file, and you must not have been convicted by a Bulgarian court of an intentional crime. Beyond that, the law exempts applicants of Bulgarian origin from the other conditions of ordinary naturalisation, which means there is no requirement of residence, income, a language exam or giving up another citizenship. The full set of rules is explained article by article in Bulgarian nationality law explained.

Is Bulgarian origin the same as Bulgarian citizenship?

No. The law looks at a person’s origin, not at whether they held a Bulgarian passport, and this has two consequences.

The first is that birthplace does not decide the case, whether it is yours or your ancestor’s. A descendant born in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany or Australia, whose grandparent was born in Ukraine or in Dobruja, qualifies on the same terms as the grandchild of someone born in Plovdiv.

The second is that a grandparent who held Bulgarian citizenship but was not of Bulgarian origin does not open this route. A parent’s Bulgarian citizenship is a separate ground in the same article, and it applies to parents only.

What documents prove Bulgarian origin?

Article 15(2) asks for official documents issued by Bulgarian or foreign authorities that show the ancestor’s name and how he or she is related to you. In practice, the file is usually built from the following:

• birth, marriage and death records for each generation, linking the ancestor to you, whether they were issued in Bulgaria or in any other country;
• records that name the ancestor as Bulgarian, such as civil registers, passports, military papers and school records. In records from Ukraine or Moldova, this is usually the “nationality” field of a Soviet-era certificate;
• parish registers and records of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which Bulgarian law also accepts as proof of origin;
• a court decision establishing Bulgarian origin.

If your parent was a Bulgarian citizen when you were born — for example, a parent born in Bulgaria who later emigrated — you may already be Bulgarian by birth. Bulgarian nationality law explained covers this situation.

Documents issued by Bulgarian community associations abroad are not accepted as primary proof, because the provision that allowed them was repealed in 2021. They can still support your case if the file is sent to the Advisory Council, which is described below.

The strongest evidence is an original record made at the time of the event. A certificate re-issued much later is also accepted, but a first record that names the ancestor as Bulgarian carries more weight, because it was made by the authorities of the time.

A separate certificate of Bulgarian origin is no longer needed. Until 15 March 2021, applicants first had to obtain a certificate from the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad. That step has been abolished, and the documents now go directly to the Ministry of Justice in Sofia.

What if no record says “Bulgarian”?

This happens often, and it does not mean the case cannot proceed. When the documents leave a question open, the Ministry of Justice may ask for more documents within 14 days, or it may refer the file to the Advisory Council at the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad. The council has two months to give its opinion. Among the things it considers are whether you speak Bulgarian, whether you identify as Bulgarian, whether you belong to a Bulgarian community abroad, whether your family comes from a place that was once part of the Bulgarian state or of the Bulgarian Exarchate (the autonomous Bulgarian Orthodox Church of the Ottoman period), and whether your ancestors had traditional Bulgarian names.

If the file contains no documents at all showing kinship with an ancestor of Bulgarian origin, the proceedings are terminated.

What are the benefits of a Bulgarian passport?

Every Bulgarian citizen is also a citizen of the European Union. In practice this brings:

• the right to live, work, study and run a business in any of the 27 EU countries, without a work permit;
• Schengen membership: Bulgaria’s air and sea borders opened on 31 March 2024, and its land borders on 1 January 2025;
• the euro, since Bulgaria joined the eurozone on 1 January 2026;
• a Bulgarian ID card, which on its own is enough to travel across the EU.

The list of countries that Bulgarian passport holders can visit without a visa changes from time to time, so it is best to check it for your actual travel date rather than rely on a fixed number.

It is equally useful to know what the application does not require:

• no residence in Bulgaria, whether before, during or after the process;
• no language exam, although there is a short interview in Bulgarian;
• no giving up your current citizenship, because Article 3 of the Act allows dual citizenship.

How do you get Bulgarian citizenship by descent?

The process moves through six steps.

1. Check the line. The first task is to identify the ancestor and the records that connect him or her to you.
2. Book a filing appointment. Appointments are booked only on the Ministry of Justice portal publicbg.mjs.bg, and the queue is public and the same for everyone. As of August 2026 it was about two years long. For this reason it makes sense to book as soon as you know the line exists, and to collect the remaining documents while you wait.
3. Prepare the file. The application form, the declarations and a short autobiography are written in Bulgarian. Every foreign document is translated into Bulgarian by a licensed translator, and most foreign documents also need an apostille, the international certificate that confirms a public document is genuine. Documents issued in another EU country, such as Romania, are exempt from the apostille under EU Regulation 2016/1191, but they still need a translation.
4. File in person and give the interview. You file in person at the “Bulgarian Citizenship” Directorate, 5 Aksakov Street, Sofia, or at a Bulgarian consulate. The interview in Bulgarian is held on the same day and usually lasts no more than a quarter of an hour and is usually friendly: it is enough to know your own biography and your Bulgarian family line, the main dates of Bulgarian history, national holidays and well-known historical figures. You then receive an incoming number and a PIN. It is important to keep both, because they are the only way to follow the case online.
5. Checks and the decree. The Ministry of Interior and the State Agency for National Security give written opinions, the Citizenship Council reviews the file, the Minister of Justice makes a proposal, and the President signs a decree granting citizenship. Unlike some other countries, Bulgaria has no citizenship oath.
6. Certificate, ID card and passport. You receive the citizenship certificate in Sofia or at the consulate. You then register an address, obtain a personal number (EGN, the Bulgarian equivalent of a national ID number), and apply for the ID card and the passport in a single visit. The details are in how to get a Bulgarian passport and identity card.

How long does it take?

The law gives the Minister of Justice nine months to make a proposal for applicants of Bulgarian origin. This covers only the ministry’s own part of the process, however, and the other stages add to it. In practice, as of August 2026, the timeline looks like this:

Stage	Time
Waiting for a filing appointment	about 2 years
From filing to the presidential decree	usually 2–3 years
Certificate, EGN, ID card and passport	1–2 months
Total	about 4–5 years

These figures describe the current pace rather than a fixed date, because the checks and the length of the queue do not depend on the applicant.

Born in Romania, Bulgarian by origin: the Dobruja case

Dobruja is the land between the lower Danube and the Black Sea. Its northern part, around Tulcea and Constanța, has belonged to Romania since 1878. Its southern part, made up of the counties of Durostor and Caliacra and known in Romania as the Cadrilater, has a more complicated history:

• before 1913 it belonged to Bulgaria;
• from 10 August 1913 to 7 September 1940 it was part of Romania, apart from the Bulgarian occupation of 1916–1918;
• under the Treaty of Craiova of 7 September 1940 it returned to Bulgaria, where it remains today.

The treaty also provided for a population exchange. Bulgarians from the Tulcea and Constanța counties moved south, and Romanians from Durostor and Caliacra moved north.

Because of this history, a family with roots in Southern Dobruja may have two routes open to it.

The Bulgarian route. If the ancestor was of Bulgarian origin, Article 15 applies in the same way as anywhere else. A birthplace in Dobruja during the Romanian period does not change this, since what counts is a record naming the ancestor as Bulgarian. Southern Dobruja was part of the Bulgarian state before 1913, and this is one of the factors the Advisory Council considers when a file is referred to it. Civil status records issued by Romanian authorities come from an EU country, so they need a translation but no apostille.

The Romanian route. People born or living in Southern Dobruja between 1913 and 1940 were Romanian citizens. Those who stayed after the region passed to Bulgaria lost Romanian citizenship through no choice of their own. Article 11 of Romania’s citizenship law (Law 21/1991) allows such former citizens and their descendants up to the third degree (children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren) to apply to regain it. How Article 11 differs from Article 10 is explained in Article 10 or Article 11. Ethnicity plays no role on this route: an ethnic Bulgarian who was a Romanian citizen counts as a former Romanian citizen. Since 2025 the law also requires most applicants to know Romanian at level B1, as explained in the B1 requirement and the 2027 deadline.

Can you have both? Bulgaria allows dual citizenship, and Romania lets you keep a foreign citizenship when you regain Romanian citizenship. At the same time, one EU citizenship already gives the same rights to move and work across the EU. In practice, the choice of route depends on the documents your family has and on whether you are prepared to learn Romanian.

Families from Northern Dobruja are in a different position, because that region never left Romania. Their situation has to be assessed family by family.

Common mistakes

• Collecting the documents first and booking later. The appointment queue is the longest part of the process, so the booking should come first and the documents can be gathered while you wait.
• Relying on family memory without a record. Knowing that the family has Bulgarian roots is a good starting point for the search, but the origin itself has to be proved by an official record.
• Following the pre-2021 procedure. Instructions that begin with a certificate from the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad describe the procedure as it was before 2021, when that step still existed.

More on Bulgarian citizenship

• Bulgarian nationality law explained — the Citizenship Act article by article
• How to get a Bulgarian passport and identity card — from the decree to the documents
• Bulgarian or Romanian citizenship by descent — two EU routes compared
• Proving Bulgarian origin — which records work and where to find them
• Bessarabian Bulgarians — history and two routes to EU citizenship
• Southern Dobruja 1913–1940 — Bulgarian and Romanian citizenship for families from the Cadrilater
• How long it takes and how to check your case status