BULGARIA
The following shows a line chart of the opinion polls conducted
from June 2026 until the 2026 Presidential Election.
Bulgaria elects its head of state directly. The presidency is largely ceremonial, but the office carries real weight in a fragmented political landscape: the president appoints caretaker governments when coalition talks fail, leads the armed forces and holds a veto over legislation. Parliament can override that veto with a majority of all its members.
The vote on 25 October 2026 is the first presidential election since 2021. In that contest Rumen Radev and running mate Iliana Iotova won a second term, taking 49.4% in the first round (turnout 40.5%) before prevailing in the runoff. Radev has since moved into party politics and is now Prime Minister, which leaves Iotova as the incumbent. She is backed by the governing Progressive Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Socialist Party and several smaller parties, and is the clear frontrunner in the polls.
Her main challenger is Andrey Gyurov, an independent supported by PP–DB. Kostadin Kostadinov of the nationalist Revival party, Radostin Vasilev (MECh), Ivelin Mihaylov (Velichie) and Ivan Hristanov, an independent backed by Edinenie, round out the field of 27 candidate tickets. No candidate has ever won a Bulgarian presidential election in the first round, so a runoff on 1 November is likely.
The president and vice president are elected together on one ticket for a term of five years, with a limit of two terms. Candidates must be Bulgarian citizens by birth, hold no other citizenship, be at least 40 years old and have lived in Bulgaria for the previous five years. Tickets can be nominated by parties and coalitions or by initiative committees of independents.
Each voter casts one vote for one ticket. Since 2016 the ballot also includes a “None of the above” option. A ticket is elected in the first round if it receives more than half of the valid votes and more than half of all registered voters have taken part. Otherwise the two best-placed tickets meet in a runoff one week later, and the one with more votes wins. Voting is also possible abroad and, in many polling stations, by voting machine.