Last updated: September 2026

What currency does Bulgaria use now?

The euro. Bulgaria joined the euro area on 1 January 2026, becoming its twenty-first member, and euro banknotes and coins entered circulation the same day. Lev and euro cash both worked for one month, and from 1 February 2026 euro banknotes and coins became the sole legal tender.

The European Central Bank marked the day with a statement from its President, Christine Lagarde: "I warmly welcome Bulgaria to the euro family and Governor Radev to the ECB Governing Council table in Frankfurt. The euro is a powerful symbol of what Europe can achieve when we work together" (European Central Bank, 1 January 2026). The Bulgarian National Bank joined the Eurosystem the same moment, and its own banknotes-in-circulation pages now describe the euro series rather than the lev.

That makes the lev one of the newest additions to the list of retired European currencies covered on our page about currencies that no longer exist, and the euro side of the story is on our history of the euro banknotes.

When did Bulgaria issue its first banknotes?

In 1885. The Bulgarian National Bank was established in 1879 as a state-owned deposit and merchant bank without the right to print money. The law and charter of 1885 restructured it, widened its independence and granted it the privilege of note issue, and in that same year it put the first Bulgarian banknotes into circulation.

The bank's own research puts a month on it. The statistical series for total banknotes in circulation begins in October 1885, when the BNB was granted the exclusive privilege to issue gold-backed banknotes. Under the BNB Act of 1885 those notes had to be covered by gold holdings at a ratio of one third, and the bank was obliged to redeem them into gold on demand (Kalina Dimitrova and Martin Ivanov, Bulgaria: from 1879 to 1947, Bulgarian National Bank).

The first Bulgarian notes were not an instant success. Although effective gold coverage was well above the minimum, public confidence in the banknote was very low and people were averse to holding them, keeping a vivid memory of the devalued Ottoman paper money known as kaime. The lev itself had arrived a little earlier, introduced as legal tender in 1880 with coins minted to Latin Monetary Union standards, and the years from 1880 to 1887 are remembered as a period of monetary chaos before foreign silver coins were finally demonetised.

What did Bulgarian banknotes look like under the kingdom and the socialist state?

Two very different worlds. Kingdom-era notes were split between gold-backed and silver-backed issues and tracked Bulgaria's repeated attempts to hold a metallic standard, while the socialist state put political portraits and industrial scenes on its paper.

The monetary record explains the split. Gold-backed convertibility was suspended between 1899 and 1902, with only silver convertibility allowed, which is why Bulgarian catalog listings separate notes marked zlato, meaning gold, from the silver-backed issues. The lev was de facto on gold from 1906 to 1912, convertibility was suspended in 1912 under war force majeure, and 1915 to 1923 was a fiat-money period with war and post-war inflation. In 1928 the BNB became a pure central bank under the aegis of the League of Nations, entering the gold-exchange standard, before exchange controls arrived in 1931 (Dimitrova and Ivanov, Bulgarian National Bank).

The socialist period starts in 1947, when private banks were nationalised, the banking system was rebuilt on the Soviet model and the BNB became a monobank, a structure that lasted until the end of the 1980s. The notes changed with it. The 1951 state note issue puts Georgi Dimitrov at left with the arms at right and railroad construction on the reverse, watermarked BNB with hammer and sickle, printed by Goznak (PMG World Paper Money Price Guide, read September 2026).

What happened in the 1996 to 1997 crisis and the 1999 redenomination?

Bulgaria's banking system collapsed and prices ran away. The IMF records that a banking crisis had been smouldering since at least 1995 and deteriorated badly in 1996, with banks accounting for about one third of Bulgaria's banking system shut down, and that, on an annual basis, inflation soared to almost 500 percent in January 1997 and surpassed 2,000 percent in March.

The answer was a currency board, announced when a new government took office in the spring of 1997 and introduced on 1 July 1997, with the lev fixed first to the German mark and from 1999 to the euro. It worked quickly: the IMF reports annual inflation down to 13 percent by mid-1998 and to 1 percent by the end of 1998 (Anne-Marie Gulde, The Role of the Currency Board in Bulgaria's Stabilization, IMF Finance and Development, September 1999).

Bulgaria's episode is severe by any normal standard, but it sits nowhere near the top of the historical table: the crises on our page ranking every hyperinflation reached monthly rates that make the Bulgarian figures look modest. What it did leave behind is a run of large-denomination 1990s lev notes, the pattern you also see on our Turkey and Greece hubs.

Why Bulgaria redenominated the lev in 1999

Two years later the country cleared the zeros the crisis had added. Under Article 1 of the Law on Redenomination of the Bulgarian Lev, the lev was redenominated as of midnight on 5 July 1999, and a thousand old leva were exchanged for one new lev, with all other prices revalued at the same rate of 1,000 to 1.

The mechanics were unusually gentle. The Bulgarian National Bank issued Regulation No. 24 of 26 April 1999 covering the exchange, and from 5 July 1999 it put a new issue into circulation: banknotes of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 leva and coins of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 stotinki. The law set a six-month period of parallel circulation, old notes were exchanged without any restrictions, and no time limit was fixed. Uptake was fast: 13 percent of banknotes and coins in circulation by value were exchanged in the first week, 36 percent by the end of July and 60 percent by the end of August (Bulgarian National Bank, Annual Report 1999).

That is why collectors use the abbreviations BGL and BGN: the annual report defines BGL as the national currency before redenomination and BGN as the one after it. Our list of currency redenominations puts the Bulgarian case alongside the others, and it is one of the tidier examples, achieved without a deadline for the public.

Who is on the last Bulgarian lev banknotes?

The final lev family, launched on 5 July 1999 and extended afterwards, is a portrait gallery of Bulgarian writers, scholars and statesmen. The Bulgarian National Bank publishes each portrait with the subject's dates printed on the note itself, which makes the series unusually easy to identify.

The lineup runs from a medieval saint to a nineteenth-century travel writer: Sveti Ivan Rilski, 876 to 946, on the 1 lev, backed by the main church of the Rila Monastery; Paisios of Chiliandar, 1722 to 1773, on the 2 leva, backed by the crowned lion rampant from Hristofor Zhefarovich's Stemmatographia; the painter Ivan Milev, 1897 to 1927, on the 5, backed by fragments of his paintings; Dr Petar Beron, 1799 to 1871, on the 10, backed by facsimiles of his scientific journals and a telescope; Stefan Stambolov, 1854 to 1895, on the 20, backed by the National Assembly building and sculpture from Sofia's Orlov Most and Lavov Most; the poet Pencho Slaveykov, 1866 to 1912, on the 50, backed by facsimiles of his works and a silhouette of the poet Mara Belcheva; and the author Aleko Konstantinov, 1863 to 1897, on the 100, whose face carries a facsimile of the frontispiece of his travelogue Do Chikago i Nazad (Bulgarian National Bank, security features of Bulgarian circulating banknotes).

Bulgarian banknote series at a glance

Periods, issuers and portraits below come from the Bulgarian National Bank's own publications and from the catalog where noted.

What happened to lev banknotes at the euro changeover?

They came out of circulation but not out of reach. Lev and euro cash both worked for one month from 1 January 2026, and euro banknotes and coins became the sole legal tender on 1 February 2026. The lev notes themselves remain exchangeable, and the Bulgarian National Bank has set no end date.

The ECB sets out the arrangements. Commercial banks and certain post offices in Bulgaria exchanged lev notes free of charge until 30 June 2026 and continue the service at least until 31 December 2026, although they may charge for it. At the Bulgarian National Bank, lev banknotes and coins can be exchanged indefinitely, without limits and free of charge, at the head office in Sofia and at the offices of Cash Service Company AD in Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas, Varna and Pleven. Other euro area central banks also exchanged lev notes between 1 January and 2 March 2026 (European Central Bank, Bulgaria joins the euro area).

The bank publishes a running list of lev banknotes withdrawn from circulation whose exchange period has not expired, and it doubles as the checklist for the final series: 1 lev of 1999, 2 leva of 1999 and 2005, 5 leva of 1999, 2009 and 2020, 10 leva of 1999, 2008 and 2020, 20 leva of 1999, 2005, 2007 and 2019, 50 leva of 1999, 2006 and 2019, and 100 leva of 2003 and 2018 (Bulgarian National Bank).

What are old Bulgarian banknotes worth?

The gap between the early kingdom notes and everything since is enormous. Nineteenth-century Bulgarian gold-backed notes are among the harder central European issues to find in any grade, while the socialist and modern notes survive easily.

The catalog makes the point bluntly. In the 1885 to 1889 gold issue, the 100 leva zlato is listed in two signature varieties: Pick A3a, Tenev and Tropchiev, at $6,000 in Good 4, $13,000 in Fine 12 and $25,000 in Very Fine 20, and Pick A3b, Karadjov and Tropchiev, at $7,000, $14,000 and $26,000 in the same grades. The face is blue-grey and ochre with arms at left and a seated woman and child at right, and a floral spray on the back (PMG World Paper Money Price Guide, read September 2026).

Specimens turn the ladder upside down at the other end of the timeline. The 1951 issue 25 leva is catalogued at $2 in Uncirculated 60 as an ordinary issued note, while the same note with the red obrazets specimen overprint, Pick 84s, is catalogued at $600 in that grade. Our pages on specimen notes, what determines banknote value and Pick numbers explain why. Catalog values are a reference point, not a quote.

How do you start collecting Bulgarian banknotes?

Start with the final lev series. Seven denominations, portraits printed with their dates, every issue year documented by the Bulgarian National Bank, and the whole family just retired, which is the moment a modern series stops being change and starts being a set.

Build it by issue year rather than by denomination. Several values exist in three separate issues, so a 20 leva of 1999, one of 2007 and one of 2019 are three different notes with the same portrait, and the BNB's withdrawn list is the authority on which years exist. After that, the 1990s crisis notes are the cheapest way into a genuine inflation story.

Learn the grading ladder before you spend. Grades run from Uncirculated down through AU, XF, VF, F, VG and G, and the certified market uses a 1 to 70 scale: see our banknote grading guide and graded versus raw banknotes. How to store banknotes covers the rest.

Where can you buy Bulgarian banknotes?

Buy from an established dealer that authenticates every note, documents where it came from, and stands behind it in writing. Prices far below every other seller, vague sourcing and no returns are the signals to walk away from.

Planet Banknote sources notes direct from mints, central banks and authorized distributors rather than reselling anonymous lots. Browse the current selection through the banknotes by country directory, where availability changes with what has been sourced, and see third-party certified pieces in the graded banknotes selection. Our guide to buying world banknotes safely and how to collect world banknotes cover the rest.

Planet Banknote is a family-owned dealership in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 2021. Every note is sourced direct from mints, central banks, and authorized distributors, inspected through our Planet Banknote Verified process, and ships with a free Certificate of Authenticity. US orders ship free via USPS Priority, and every order includes a free bonus gift.