The following list of banks in Bulgaria is to be understood within the framework of the European single market and European banking union, which means that Bulgaria's banking system is more open to cross-border banking operations than peers outside of the EU.
European banking supervision, which Bulgaria joined in 2020 in anticipation of its euro adoption in early 2026, distinguishes between significant institutions (SIs) and less significant institutions (LSIs), with SI/LSI designations updated regularly by the European Central Bank (ECB). Significant institutions are directly supervised by the ECB using joint supervisory teams that involve the national competent authorities (NCAs) of individual participating countries. Less significant institutions are supervised by the relevant NCA on a day-to-day basis, under the supervisory oversight of the ECB. In Bulgaria's case, the NCA is the Bulgarian National Bank.
As of , the ECB had one Bulgarian bank in its list of significant institutions:
Of the four largest banks in Bulgaria, the other three are subsidiaries of euro-area banking groups (see detailed list below):
As of , the ECB's list of supervised institutions included 17 Bulgarian LSIs.
Of these, three were designated by the ECB as "high-impact" on the basis of several criteria including size:
The 14 other Bulgarian LSIs were as follows:
As of , one banking group established outside the European Economic Area had a branch in Bulgaria:
ÃÂll amounts are in EUR thousand.
The first modern credit institution in what is now Bulgaria was the of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, in activity from 1878 to 1899. A number of former Bulgarian banks, defined as having been headquartered in present-day Bulgarian territory, are documented on Wikipedia. They are listed below in chronological order of establishment.