Bulgaria in the euro from 2026: final OK from Brussels
The European Union officially approved Bulgaria's changeover to the euro in 2026, becoming the 21st country in the Eurozone.
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The EU finance ministers gave the final green light for Bulgaria to adopt the euro.
As of 1 January 2026, the Balkan country, the poorest in the Union, will abandon its national currency, the lev, in favour of the euro, becoming the 21st country in the Eurozone.
One of the three legal acts approved by Ecofin today concerns the conversion rate between euro and lev at 1.95583 lev per euro, which corresponds to the current central rate of the lev in the Erm 2 exchange rate mechanism.
The country will adopt the euro from 1 January 2026
.Bulgaria will join the euro area from next January. In practice 1 Bulgarian lev is worth a little more than 50 euro cents.
The conversion rate was set as part of the new European Exchange Rate Agreements (ECA II), which the country joined on 10 July 2020. The ECB and the Bulgarian National Bank, it says, agreed to follow the lev's development against the euro on the foreign exchange market until 1 January 2026.
