With more than 97 percent of ballots counted at the time of publication—in an election with more than 50 percent turnout—Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria had taken almost 45 percent of the vote, putting the former president on course for an outright parliamentary majority. Projections from the Central Electoral Commission suggest the party will end up with between 129 and 140 of the 240 seats in Bulgaria’s Narodno Sabranie (National Assembly), leaving Radev with a slim but governable margin above the 121-seat threshold.
Finishing in second and third—each with roughly 13 percent—were Boyko Borissov’s center-right GERB and the pro-EU PP-DB alliance, both of which underperformed. Even further behind were the oligarch-led DPS-New Beginning, with around 6 percent of the vote, and the nationalist Vazrazhdane, with 4.3 percent. The Bulgarian Socialist Party—Radev’s longtime backer—failed to clear the 4 percent parliamentary threshold for the first time in its modern history, collapsing to about 3 percent and out of parliament altogether.
Ordinarily, these smaller parties would matter: If the leading party secured only a plurality of parliamentary seats rather than an outright majority, it would need to cobble together a governing coalition. But with more than 121 seats, Radev and his Progressive Bulgaria can govern alone—the first Bulgarian leader to do so since the Socialists’ 125-seat win in 1994.
“Progressive Bulgaria won decisively,” Radev told supporters at a post-results press conference. “This is a victory of hope over distrust, a victory of freedom over fear, and finally, if you will, a victory of morality.”
But despite his decisive win, his mandate is far less clear. Radev—who served as the country’s (largely ceremonial) president from 2017 until he resigned in January 2026 to run—is a left-wing Euroskeptic populist who opposed the country’s entry into the Eurozone, has criticized sanctions against Russia, and opposed efforts by Bulgaria’s parliament to supply Ukraine with ammunition. But he didn’t campaign on these policies; he ran on a loose anti-corruption platform.
“He has talked about fighting corruption, about winning back the institutions, dismantling the oligarchy,” Vessela Tcherneva, the deputy director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told TMD. “But there is little from him personally in terms of what he wants to do concretely.”
Despite Radev’s decades-long association with the current political system, he recast himself as a leader ready to address the discontent expressed in the recent protests, promising to fight the “mafia state” he claims is the root cause of Bulgaria’s economic woes, without offering specific solutions.
“This vagueness creates space for many potential voters,” Tcherneva added, “all of them coming from different corners of the political spectrum could identify with him.”
That ambiguity also paired well with a politics of exhaustion. “After eight elections in five years,” Heather Conley, a senior fellow of transatlantic security at the American Enterprise Institute, told TMD, “I think the population is just trying to cling to a familiar face that they believe can really change things, even though he’s been, in some ways, part of the apparatus for quite some time.”
The question, then, is how Radev will rule and what he will prioritize: his campaign’s anti-corruption issues, or his long-held political beliefs.
For many outside observers, the most concerning of the latter is his friendliness toward Russia. Radev has been backed throughout his career by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP)—a Moscow-aligned extension of the Soviet Union-era Communist Party—and though he officially condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has echoed Kremlin talking points, and told CNN last year that he was disappointed by the E.U.’s refusal to “recognize the realities on the battlefield.”
During the campaign, Radev promised to work toward resuming the free flow of Russian oil and gas into Europe and told Bulgarian journalist Martin Karbovski that Bulgaria was the “only member state of the European Union that is both Slavic and Eastern Orthodox,” and could therefore be “a very important link in this whole mechanism … to restore relations with Russia.”
In his victory speech, Radev noted that Bulgaria would “make every effort to continue on its European path,” but emphasized that “a strong Bulgaria and a strong Europe need critical thinking and pragmatism,” adding, “Europe has fallen victim to its own ambition to be a moral leader in a world with new rules.”
“I think this [Radev’s] most dangerous position, because it clearly pits Bulgaria against Brussels,” Ruslan Stefanov, a program director at the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD), a Sofia-based public policy institute that tracks election interference campaigns, told TMD. “Radev has already shown that for his political survival, of his political win, he has shown that he’s ready to go against the Eurozone entry.”
Russia has also shown a great willingness to interfere in Bulgaria, which sits across the Black Sea from Crimea, shares a border with Turkey and Romania, and until 2022, relied almost entirely on Russian gas. In March, the CSD released a report on Russian information manipulation in the country, finding that Bulgaria has “one of the most permissive information environments for non-democratic malign manipulation in the EU,” paired with one of the “least prepared institutional responses” to foreign encroachment on its democratic processes.
Dimitar Keranov, a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s European Resilience Program, told TMD that Russian influence has historically been one of the biggest challenges to Bulgarian democratic development.
“Bulgaria was dependent for a long time on energy from Russia, and it has diversified more or less successfully after the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine,” Keranov told TMD. “If the underlying structural problems of Bulgaria continue … you can see things worsen in terms of democratic backsliding [and] in terms of strengthening of Russian influence.”
The risk runs both ways for pushing against the E.U. As a member state, Radev’s government could veto penalties on Russia and support for Ukraine; but Bulgaria also receives roughly 3 percent of its GDP each year directly from E.U. financial assistance, and a fissure with Brussels—of the kind a Radev government could provoke—would hit Bulgarian households hard.
At a rally on Thursday, Radev proclaimed that his party will “be chasing a full majority,” and dismissed any possibility of forming a coalition with GERB, We Continue the Change (PP), or Democratic Bulgaria. But on election night, Radev hedged, telling reporters he would work with the PP-DB coalition on judicial reform.
Radev could, in theory, lead a simple Progressive Bulgaria majority government. But with such a thin margin, the party would need to whip votes constantly to pass legislation, and could have difficulties pushing through more controversial, unpopular measures. If Radev tried to push hard away from the E.U. and toward Russia, for example, the attempt would almost certainly fail—leading to yet another parliamentary crisis before the year is out.
“Bulgaria’s economic interests lie in the West, its security interests lie in the West,” Conley said. “I certainly think other parties, if they form a coalition with him, will stop him from jeopardizing this direction, or we’re going to be back into another election cycle within a timely horizon, if they can’t come to some agreement.”
Emilia Zankina, an associate professor of political science at Temple University Rome whose research largely centers on Eastern Europe and Bulgarian politics, believes Radev’s victory could be short-lived. “I wouldn’t be surprised if in the fall, in November—when we’re supposed to have a presidential election—we simply end up with two in one elections and have a caretaker government until then,” she told TMD. “There have been multiple governments because of the inability of parties in Parliament to reach a stable coalition government.”
As Radev’s center-right opponent, Boyko Borissov, wrote on Facebook: “To win the elections is one thing; to govern is quite another. Elections decide who comes first, but negotiations will decide who governs.”