Bulgaria Adopts the Euro as 21st Member of the Euro Area
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The European Central Bank (ECB) recently announced that Bulgaria officially adopted the euro, becoming the 21st Member State of the European Union to use the single European currency.
In a post published on January 1, the bank said that the euro officially entered into circulation in Bulgaria on the first day of the new year. It added that the move came after a formal decision was made in July 2025, which also announced the official conversion rate of 1.95583 Bulgarian lev per 1 EUR.
The European Central Bank President, Christine Lagarde, commented on the adoption of the euro, welcoming Bulgaria to the euro family, and Governor Radev to the ECB.
“The euro is a powerful symbol of what Europe can achieve when we work together, and of the shared values and collective strength that we can leverage to confront the global geopolitical uncertainty that we face at the moment,” she added.
Commenting further, the ECB said that the move marks a historic milestone of Bulgaria’s official adoption of the euro by lighting up its main building in Frankfurt, thus symbolizing the integration and unity of more than 358 million Europeans who use the euro as their currency.
Bulgarian Central Bank Joins The Eurosystem
As Bulgaria joined the euro area, its central bank, the Bulgarian National Bank (Българска народна банка), became part of the Eurosystem and its Governor got to join the Governing Council of the ECB.
Furthermore, the Bulgarian National Bank became a full member of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, even though the country has been part of the close cooperation framework since October 2020.
With that being the case, the ECB is currently responsible for supervising four significant institutions in the country and overseeing 17 less significant institutions. Among its supervisory tasks, the ECB is also in charge of licensing banks and assessing the buyers of qualifying holdings in all banks.
Finally, as of January 1, 2026, the Bulgarian market has also joined the Eurosystem’s TARGET service, which ensures the free flow of cash, securities, and collateral across Europe.
The announcement explained that these services include T2 (for settling payments), T2S (for settling securities), TIPS (for settling instant payments), and ECMS (for collateral management of Eurosystem credit operations).
With that said, it is worth noting that settlements in euros in T2S and TIPS have been possible in Bulgaria since 2023 and 2024, respectively.
