Bulgaria Votes in Presidential Runoff: Why the Role Matters

Bulgarians are heading to the polls today, Sunday 1 November 2026, to elect the country’s seventh president in a runoff vote after no candidate won an outright majority in the first round on 25 October. The two tickets competing are Andrey Gurov and Georgi Kandev, and Iliana Iotova and Kiril Valchev. In the first round, the Iotova–Valchev ticket received 34.759% of the vote, while Gurov–Kandev came a close second with 31.952%.

Polling stations across Bulgaria opened at 7:00 a.m. and will close at 8:00 p.m., although voting may continue until 9:00 p.m. if voters are still waiting to cast their ballots, according to the Central Election Commission. The same opening and closing hours apply to polling stations abroad, in local time. Machine voting is available at 9,373 polling stations across the country, with two machines installed at 2,249 of them. A total of 11,622 voting machines are being used.

While many Bulgarians view the presidency as largely ceremonial, the office holds significant powers that become crucial in times of political difficulty. The president can appoint a caretaker government when parliament fails to form a cabinet, as happened repeatedly during the political instability that began in 2021. In that period, caretaker cabinets appointed by the president managed energy supplies and organised one election after another. The president can also ask the Constitutional Court to review laws, appoint four of its twelve judges, and must sign decrees for the prosecutor general and the heads of the supreme courts. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces and chair of the Consultative Council for National Security, the president plays a key role in national security discussions.

Because the president is the only official directly elected by all Bulgarian voters, the office carries a unique democratic legitimacy. The outcome of today’s runoff will determine who holds these powers for the next five years.