Bulgaria Against the System: How a Five-Year Political Crisis Turned into a Revolt Against Oligarchic Power

When tens of thousands of people filled the streets of central Sofia in December 2025, chanting “Mafia Out!” and “Resign!”, the protests were no longer about a draft budget, tax policy, or even a single government. What unfolded was the culmination of a five-year collapse of political legitimacy, a moment when a large part of Bulgarian society openly declared that the state no longer represents it.

The resignation of Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov’s cabinet was merely the final act in a much longer drama — one defined by institutional paralysis, oligarchic capture, and chronic political instability that has haunted Bulgaria since 2021.

Five Years of Turbulence: The Anatomy of a Crisis (2021–2025)

The current political crisis in Bulgaria can be traced back to 2021, when the country entered an unprecedented cycle of elections without outcomes.

Between 2021 and 2025, Bulgaria held seven parliamentary elections, a record for the country and one of the highest figures in the European Union. Elections ceased to function as a mechanism for stability and instead became a ritual repetition of unresolved conflict. Three elections in 2021 alone (April, July, November) revealed the structural problem: no party was capable of forming a durable majority, and every coalition proved fragile, transactional, and short-lived.

The December 2021 government led by Kiril Petkov (“We Continue the Change”) briefly raised hopes with its anti-corruption agenda, but collapsed by mid-2022 after coalition partners withdrew support. Subsequent years saw a carousel of caretaker governments, improvised parliamentary alliances, and the unprecedented experiment of a rotating government between ideological rivals — a project that also failed to restore public trust.

By early 2025, Bulgaria had entered a state of permanent governability crisis, where elections no longer promised change and institutions operated on borrowed legitimacy.

The Oligarchic Core: Delian Peevski and the Capture of the State

If Bulgarian public anger has a single human symbol, it is Delian Peevski.

Peevski, a notorious oligarch, media tycoon and politician, leader of the DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) party, is widely perceived as the embodiment of Bulgaria’s “captured state” — a system where formal democratic institutions exist, but real power is exercised through informal networks.

Delyan Peevski has been repeatedly accused of corruption and has been under US sanctions since 2021. His media holding, the New Bulgarian Media Group, controls almost 80% of the country’s print media. In 2013, despite his lack of experience, he almost became the head of the Bulgarian state security service, which caused mass protests. However, this did not prevent him from becoming the main pillar of the shaky GERB-led coalition in 2025, and it was his support that repeatedly allowed the ruling coalition to retain power, despite several votes of no confidence submitted by the opposition.  Peevski has unprecedented political influence in the country, and besides, he openly declared his ambitions to take the prime minister’s chair.

Peevski’s influence has been repeatedly linked to:

• the media landscape,
• the prosecution service,
• judicial appointments,
• and decisive parliamentary votes across governments of different political colors.

In 2021, the United States imposed Magnitsky sanctions on Peevski, accusing him of bribery, influence-peddling, and undermining democratic institutions. The United Kingdom followed with similar measures. Yet domestically, networks linked to Peevski continued to function as kingmakers, supplying votes to governments while remaining formally outside executive power.

For protesters, this paradox — sanctioned abroad, influential at home — became proof that Bulgaria’s political crisis is not ideological, but systemic.

2025: From Budget Dispute to Mass Mobilization

The immediate catalyst for the 2025 protests was the government’s draft 2026 budget, unveiled in late November. The draft budget for 2026, drawn up for the first time in euros (ahead of the planned entry into the Eurozone), provided for unprecedented spending — about 46% of GDP — with salary increases for public sector workers in order to buy the loyalty of civil servants amid the government’s critical unpopularity. This was to be financed by doubling the dividend tax for private businesses and sharply increasing public debt. This, combined with the reluctance to switch to the euro due to the risks of economic crisis, sparked widespread unrest across the country, led by the opposition parties “We Continue the Change” and “Democratic Bulgaria.” Between late November and December 11, demonstrations spread to more than 25 cities, with crowd estimates in Sofia reaching 100,000–150,000 people. The protests quickly escalated from economic demands to political ones, calling for the government’s resignation.

The draft budget was withdrawn by the government, but the protests did not stop. Opinion polls show that more than 70% of Bulgarians support the protests, and almost half demand the government’s resignation and early elections.

The Fall of the Zhelyazkov Government

On December 11, 2025, Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov announced his resignation, acknowledging the loss of public confidence. The following day, Parliament unanimously confirmed the resignation, leaving Bulgaria under an interim cabinet.

President Rumen Radev has begun consultations with parliamentary groups on the formation of a new cabinet. According to constitutional procedures, if none of the parties is able to form a coalition, a temporary government will be appointed and early parliamentary elections will be held. Experts believe that this will most likely lead to new elections — the eighth since 2021 — and further fragmentation of the political landscape.

President Rumen Radev and the “Prime Minister Scenario”

In the vacuum left by collapsing governments, President Rumen Radev has emerged as a central political figure.

A former Air Force general re-elected in 2021 with around 66% of the vote, Radev enjoys one of the highest approval ratings in the country. Although the Bulgarian presidency is formally ceremonial, Radev has increasingly acted as a moral and political counterweight to discredited parliamentary elites.

In early December 2025, he openly criticized the government and supported calls for its resignation. More importantly, analysts have begun discussing a scenario in which Radev, after completing his presidential term, could transition into executive politics, potentially as a prime minister or leader of a new political movement. Such a move could disrupt Bulgaria’s stagnant party system by introducing a figure with broad cross-electoral appeal — something no existing party currently possesses.

Radev himself has fueled speculation by stating that his entry into active politics would come “as a surprise.

Conclusion

Bulgaria’s 2025 crisis is not about one government or one budget. It reflects a deeper exhaustion with a system that promises representation but delivers continuity of power. For many Bulgarians, elections have become symbolic gestures rather than instruments of change. The mass protests signal a shift: legitimacy is increasingly generated in the streets rather than in parliament. Whether this energy will translate into reform or dissipate into another political dead end remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is that Bulgaria can no longer return to the pre-2025 status quo without risking a far more profound rupture between state and society.