Bulgarian nationality law explained: the Bulgarian Citizenship Act in plain English

Bulgarian nationality law is contained in a single statute, the Bulgarian Citizenship Act (Закон за българското гражданство). It was promulgated (officially published) in State Gazette No. 136, Bulgaria’s official journal, of 18 November 1998. It came into force on 20 February 1999 and was last amended in June 2026. The consolidated text, which combines the Act with all its amendments, is published by the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice.

The Act recognises three ways of becoming Bulgarian: by origin, meaning through a Bulgarian parent at birth; by place of birth; and by naturalisation, meaning citizenship granted later in life on application. Citizenship through a Bulgarian grandparent or great-grandparent belongs to the third group. It is a form of naturalisation, but one from which most of the usual conditions have been removed.

Citizenship by origin: a Bulgarian parent

Article 8 is brief: a Bulgarian citizen by origin is anyone with at least one parent who is a Bulgarian citizen. Article 9 extends this to people whom a Bulgarian citizen has recognised as their child, and to people whose descent from a Bulgarian citizen has been established by a court.

This is citizenship from birth, so a person in this position does not need to naturalise. He or she is already a Bulgarian citizen and only needs to confirm it with documents. For that purpose the Ministry of Justice issues a certificate of citizenship on request within 30 days; the certificate is valid for one year (Article 39).

Citizenship by place of birth

Being born in Bulgaria is not enough on its own. Under Article 10, a person born on Bulgarian territory becomes Bulgarian only if he or she does not acquire another citizenship by origin. A child born in Bulgaria to two foreign parents is therefore not Bulgarian. Article 11 adds that a child found in Bulgaria whose parents are unknown is treated as having been born there.

Naturalisation: the general rule

Article 12 sets the conditions for ordinary naturalisation, the route open to foreigners with no Bulgarian ancestry. On the day of the application the person must:

1. be of full age;
2. have held permanent or long-term residence in Bulgaria for at least five years;
3. have no conviction by a Bulgarian court for an intentional publicly prosecuted crime, and no pending criminal proceedings for one, unless rehabilitated (a publicly prosecuted crime is one that the state prosecutes on its own initiative, and rehabilitation means that the conviction has been legally cleared from the person’s record);
4. have income or an occupation to live on in Bulgaria;
5. speak Bulgarian;
6. be released from his or her other citizenship, or be released by the time Bulgarian citizenship is acquired.

The last condition does not apply to everyone. Spouses of Bulgarian citizens, citizens of EU and EEA countries and Switzerland, and citizens of countries with which Bulgaria has a reciprocity treaty do not have to give up their citizenship (Article 12(2)). Article 13 also shortens the residence period to three years for certain groups, among them people who have been married to a Bulgarian citizen for at least three years.

Naturalisation by Bulgarian origin: Article 15

Article 15 is the provision behind Bulgarian citizenship by descent. It allows a person who is not a Bulgarian citizen to naturalise without conditions 2, 4, 5 and 6 of Article 12 if he or she:

1. is of Bulgarian origin;
2. was fully adopted by a Bulgarian citizen; or
3. has a parent who is a Bulgarian citizen or died as one.

Of the six general conditions, only two therefore remain for these applicants:

• full age (condition 1);
• no conviction by a Bulgarian court for an intentional crime (condition 3).

The conditions that are lifted are the ones hardest to meet for someone living abroad: residence in Bulgaria, income, a Bulgarian language exam and giving up another citizenship.

Who counts as “of Bulgarian origin”

The Act defines a person of Bulgarian origin as one with at least one ascendant who is Bulgarian (Supplementary Provisions, § 2). An ascendant is a direct ancestor: a parent, grandparent, great-grandparent and so on. Article 15(2) then sets how far back the line may go and how it is proved. You file official documents issued by Bulgarian or foreign authorities showing kinship with at least one ascendant of Bulgarian origin up to the third degree, which means a parent, grandparent or great-grandparent. The documents must name the ancestor and show how he or she is related to you.

Imagine Daniel, who lives in Toronto, and whose great-grandfather’s birth record gives his nationality as Bulgarian. Daniel’s file would consist of that record and the birth records of his grandparent, his parent and himself, which together show the line from the great-grandfather to Daniel.

Since 15 March 2021 no separate certificate of Bulgarian origin has been needed, because the paragraph that required it, Article 15(3), was repealed.

When the documents leave a question open

Sometimes the documents establish the family line but do not settle whether the ancestor was Bulgarian. Article 29 sets out what happens in that situation. The Minister of Justice may ask for additional documents within 14 days, or ask the Advisory Council at the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad, the government body responsible for Bulgarian communities outside the country, to establish the applicant’s origin. The council gives its opinion within two months. It considers whether you speak Bulgarian and whether you identify as Bulgarian, and also whether at least one of the following applies: you belong to a Bulgarian community abroad; you come from a place that was once part of the Bulgarian state or of the Bulgarian Exarchate, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church organisation of the Ottoman period whose dioceses reached beyond today’s borders; or your ancestors carried traditional Bulgarian names.

If an Article 15 application is filed with no documents of kinship at all, the proceedings are terminated (Article 29(5)).

The full application process, from gathering the records to the decree, is described in our guide to Bulgarian citizenship by descent.

Children

• Article 17. Children under 14 acquire Bulgarian citizenship when their parents, or the surviving parent, acquire it. They also acquire it when one parent acquires it and the other is already a Bulgarian citizen. Children aged 14 to 18 acquire it on the same terms if they ask for it.
• Article 18. A child under 14 with one Bulgarian-citizen parent may become a citizen without meeting the Article 12 conditions, provided both parents give written consent. The consent of a parent who has been deprived of parental rights is not needed. A child aged 14 to 18 may become a citizen on the same terms if he or she wishes.

This matters for families where only one parent applies. If only one parent acquires citizenship and the other is not Bulgarian, Article 17 does not apply; once that parent has become a citizen, Article 18 is the route for the child.

Does Bulgaria allow dual citizenship?

Yes, although the Act approaches the question from the Bulgarian side. Under Article 3, a Bulgarian citizen who is also a citizen of another state is treated only as a Bulgarian citizen whenever Bulgarian law applies, unless a law provides otherwise. In practice, Bulgaria does not ask applicants of Bulgarian origin to give up their current citizenship. Inside Bulgaria, the authorities deal with you as a Bulgarian and not as a foreign national.

Whether your other country allows you to keep its citizenship is a separate question, and it is decided by that country’s own law.

Refusal, termination and revocation

• Refusal. An application is rejected if there are serious grounds to regard the applicant as a threat to public order, public morals, public health or national security (Article 19).
• Duty to report changes. While the application is pending, you must inform the Ministry of Justice within one month of any change in the facts relevant to it, and file proof of the change (Article 32a).
• Revocation. Naturalisation can be revoked within ten years if it was based on false data established by a court, on facts that were concealed and would have led to refusal, or on a change that was not reported (Article 22). Revocation is not allowed if it would leave the person stateless, that is, without any citizenship at all.

Who decides

Articles 33 to 36 set out the chain of decision, which passes through three stages:

1. The Citizenship Council at the Ministry of Justice reviews the application after receiving written opinions from the Ministry of Interior and the State Agency for National Security.
2. The Minister of Justice then makes a proposal to the President. For applicants of Bulgarian origin the time limit for this is nine months from the application, or from the date on which any irregularities in the file were corrected. The time limit is suspended while the council waits for additional documents, for up to three months.
3. The President of the Republic grants citizenship by decree, an official act signed by the President. The decree takes effect on the day it is issued.

There is no citizenship oath in Bulgarian law, so no ceremony is needed for the decree to take effect.

What the Act does not say

The statute sets out rules rather than waiting times. The nine months in Article 35 cover only the minister’s part of the work, not the whole process. As of August 2026 the full process, from booking a filing appointment to receiving the passport, takes about four to five years, and most of that time is spent in the queue for an appointment. The individual steps are described in our guide to Bulgarian citizenship by descent.