Local elections in Bulgaria were held on 29 October 2023. Mayors and municipal councillors across the country were elected.
The elections to Bulgaria's municipal councils are conducted via proportional representation with an open list preferential voting system.
The mayoral elections take place within the context of a majoritarian two-round system. The first round of the elections will be held on 29 October. If no candidate in a given constituency manages to gain 50% of the vote, a runoff election will be held for that constituency in the second round on 5 November.
Voting is officially mandatory, but in practice there is no punishment for failing to vote and the law itself isn't strictly enforced.
Voters further have the option to vote against all proposed candidates.
The 2023 Sofia mayoral election took place as part of BulgariaâÂÂs local elections, with the first round held on 29 October 2023 and a runoff on 5 November 2023. Voters in BulgariaâÂÂs capital elected a new mayor to succeed long-serving incumbent Yordanka Fandakova from GERB who had held the office since 2009.
The main candidates were
Other candidates included nominees from Revival, Blue Sofia, and ITN, but none advanced to the runoff.
Opinion polls for Mayor of Sofia
No candidate secured an outright majority in the first round, leading to a runoff between the top two finishers. In the runoff on 5 November, Vasil Terziev won with 48.2 % of the vote, narrowly defeating Vanya Grigorova, who received 46.9 %. The victory margin was one of the tightest in recent Sofia elections. A small share of voters (about 4.9 %) chose the âÂÂI do not support anyoneâ option.
TerzievâÂÂs win marked a political shift in Sofia, ending nearly two decades of dominance by the conservative GERB party in the capital.
According to Central Election Commission the number of people who voted on 29 October totaled 2,713,979 or 44.94% of eligible voters. The turnout was 49.76% in the 2019 local elections. The invalid ballots in the 29 October, 2023 elections totaled over half a million, including 412,711 ballots for municipal councilors, 94,195 for municipality mayor (down from 128,204 in 2019) and 34,235 for mayoralty mayor.
In general, GERB had the strongest showing throughout the country, although the party failed to make it to the second round in the capital.
Overall, GERB won 11 regional towns, PPâÂÂDB won four, and the Bulgarian Socialist party won three. Of the largest four cities, PP-DB won in the capital (Sofia) and Varna while GERB won in Plovdiv and Burgas.