UK company hiring in Bulgaria after Brexit: contracts, leave and pay
The people you recruit in Bulgaria work under Bulgarian law whatever your head office does. These are the rules a UK hiring manager meets first.
Four statutory numbers to plan around
A UK company hiring in Bulgaria needs a Bulgarian employer for every person it takes on, either its own company or an employer of record. Since Brexit there is no shared framework to lean on, so the Bulgarian Labour Code, euro payroll and the National Revenue Agency set the rules from the first day.
What Brexit changed for a UK business recruiting in Bulgaria, and what it left alone
For a Bulgarian national who lives in Bulgaria and works from there, Brexit changed very little: they still work under Bulgarian employment law and pay Bulgarian contributions, whoever the client is. What changed is the UK side. A company in Manchester or Leeds no longer shares a single market with the people it recruits in Sofia or Plovdiv, so it cannot treat a Bulgarian hire as a slightly more distant member of its own payroll.
In practice the UK business has to place each person with a Bulgarian employer. Either it forms a Bulgarian company for the purpose, or an employer of record takes the contract. Paying a Bulgarian resident through UK payroll, or calling a full-time team member a freelancer, leaves the Bulgarian employment obligations unmet; under Art. 1(2) of the Labour Code, work done for someone else in this way can only be organised as employment, whatever label the paperwork carries.
The reasons UK firms keep recruiting here have not changed either. In information and telecommunications, gross pay averaged €3,079 a month in April to June 2026, compared with €1,444 for all sectors, according to the National Statistical Institute. Salaries are taxed at a flat 10%. For a UK software or support team, that combination leaves room to hire experienced people without stretching the budget.
The direction of travel also matters. A British citizen who wants to move to Bulgaria to work is now a third-country national. Depending on the role and qualifications, they will need either the EU Blue Card or the single permit, and the application is handled by the Ministry of Interior’s Migration Directorate. Treat such a move as a separate project with its own timetable, and keep it apart from hiring people who already live in Bulgaria.
The Bulgarian contract: what a UK manager will notice first
The first surprise is that the contract has to be finished and registered before the person does any work. The labour contract is signed in writing (Art. 62(1)), it is recorded in the employment register of the National Revenue Agency (NRA, НАП) within 3 days, and the employee receives copies of both the contract and the certified entry before starting. Admitting someone to work without them is a breach in its own right.
Probation is the second point. A trial period (срок за изпитване) may last up to 6 months; on a contract shorter than one year the limit drops to a single month. Until it ends, the side the clause was written for can terminate with no notice. A clause that names both sides gives the employee the same exit as you.
Third, fixed terms are tightly limited. A fixed-term contract can run for 3 years at most and is meant for temporary, seasonal or short-term work, a defined project or cover for an absent employee. If those conditions are not met, the contract is treated by law as permanent, so a UK habit of rolling twelve-month contracts does not carry over.
Working time is set in statute: 40 hours across a five-day week, normally 8 hours a day. Overtime has an annual limit of 150 hours, and the premium is at least 50% for a weekday hour, 75% for a rest-day hour and 100% for an hour worked on a public holiday. Remote work is common for these roles, and it is a matter for the contract: it is voluntary, the place of work is written in, and the employer pays for the equipment, software and internet connection used for the job. A 2024 amendment also lets staff stay offline in their rest time; messages from the employer can wait, unless the contract or a collective agreement has set up contact. Agree overlap hours with the UK office in writing. Each clause is covered in our labour contract essentials for Bulgaria.
Holidays, sickness and family leave in 2026
By law, an employee gets no fewer than 20 working days of paid annual leave (платен годишен отпуск) each year; public holidays sit outside that count. Someone in their first ever job can take leave once they have 4 months of service. Any days still owed at the end of employment become a cash payment, so a balance that is never taken still has a cost.
The 2026 calendar has a few dates a UK team will not expect. Easter follows the Orthodox calendar, with Good Friday on 10 April and Easter Monday on 13 April. 2 January was a one-off day off for the euro changeover. When a holiday other than Easter falls at a weekend, the next working day is free instead, which gave Monday 25 May, Monday 7 September and Monday 28 December as days off this year. Plan release dates and on-call rotas around them.
The cost of sick leave is shared. The first two working days off sick are paid by the company at 70% of the employee’s average day’s gross; the National Social Security Institute (NSSI, НОИ) picks up the rest at 80% of average daily insurable earnings. For the employer, a long illness therefore costs two days of pay plus the work that waits.
Family leave is long and state-funded. A mother has 410 days for each child, starting 45 days before the due date, and the NSSI pays her 90% of her average insurable earnings; the employer pays nothing. A father has 15 days once the baby comes home from hospital and another 2 months that only he can use, at any point until the child is 8. Budget for cover, not for pay.
Payroll, contributions and tax, with a costed Sofia example
Bulgarian payroll runs in euro, monthly, with one flat income tax rate. The lev gave way to the euro at the start of 2026, so a UK business funds payroll by converting sterling to euro and the salary in the contract is fixed in euro. Your sterling cost will move with the exchange rate even when the payslip does not.
Tax codes do not exist, and an ordinary employee has no tax-free personal allowance. The employee pays 13.78% in social security and health contributions, and 10% income tax is charged on what remains. The employer adds 18.92% for a software hire born after 1959, taking an assumed work-accident rate of 0.4% for software work. Both shares are capped by the monthly insurable ceiling: €2,111.64 for January to July 2026, €2,300 for the rest of the year. Each month’s tax and contributions are paid to the NRA together; the cut-off is the 25th, one month on.
Our reference case is a Sofia developer earning €40,000 gross, or €3,333.33 in each of twelve months. Because that salary is above the ceiling in every month, employer contributions for 2026 come to about €4,972.46 and the total employer cost to approximately €44,972.46. The developer’s net pay for the year is about €32,740.57. To see when each payment falls, read our EOR timeline for Bulgaria.
A bonus is treated as pay, but the ceiling is monthly, so an employee already above €2,300 that month generates no more contributions on it. Each January, the employer squares up the previous year’s income tax for staff who had no other employer at the year end, with 31 January as the deadline. With a flat rate and no allowances, the employee rarely owes or gets back anything, and usually has no return to file.
Compared with a London salary for similar work, the gross figure is usually the headline difference. The on-cost is the second: around 12.4% at this pay level, because the ceiling caps contributions while the salary keeps rising.
Ending employment and protecting your business after someone leaves
Dismissal needs a reason taken from the Labour Code’s own list. Notice on a permanent contract starts at 30 days; the contract may extend it, though never past 3 months, and the same length binds the employee who resigns. Pay in lieu of the notice not served is allowed.
Compensation depends on the reason. Closure, staff reduction or a reduced workload entitle the employee to gross pay for the time they are out of work, up to 1 month, unless more was agreed. Where the employer proposes ending the contract by mutual consent and the employee accepts, at least 4 months’ gross pay is due. Our article on termination notice in Bulgaria sets out each ground and payment.
Restrictive covenants work very differently. A clause barring a leaver from joining a competitor has no force here. That has been the position of the Supreme Court of Cassation since 2010, because such a clause cuts across the constitutional right to choose one’s occupation. UK businesses that rely on restrictive covenants at home should move their protection into confidentiality and trade-secret obligations, which can survive the end of employment.
Intellectual property in code is easier. Copyright Act Art. 14 vests code and databases written as part of someone’s duties in the employer, unless the contract expressly says otherwise. Most UK clients still restate the point in the contract so nobody has to look it up.
Staff who will mostly work from home raise their own questions on equipment and costs; see how Bulgarian law handles remote work.
Setting up a Bulgarian company or using an EOR: how to choose
If you expect to build a large Bulgarian team and keep it for years, setting up your own EOOD (ЕООД, a single-member limited company) can make sense. You need €1 of capital and an entry in the Commercial Register, which the Registry Agency maintains. Registration alone pays nobody: the company also needs a bank account, an accountant keeping double-entry books and its own NRA employer registration before salaries can go out.
For one hire, or a handful, an employer of record is usually quicker to start. Under that arrangement your chosen candidate signs a Bulgarian labour contract with Employer of Record Bulgaria, we run the monthly payroll, and you set their work and their goals. Our fee for each person runs from €599 per employee per month, invoiced apart from the salary and the employer contributions.
Before you pick any provider, ask how it handles the register entry, what its contracts say about probation and IP, and who deals with a sick note at 8am on a Monday. There are more prompts in what to ask when picking an EOR in Bulgaria.
One last point for UK teams: if someone on a Bulgarian contract will spend long stretches working from the UK, raise it early. Tax and social security for time spent working abroad need to be checked case by case, and it is far easier to plan than to unwind.
Frequently asked
Q01Can a UK company employ someone in Bulgaria directly from its UK payroll?
Q02Do Bulgarian citizens need a visa to work for a UK company from Bulgaria?
Q03Is the Bulgarian salary paid in pounds or euro?
Q04Are post-employment non-competes enforceable in Bulgaria?
Q05How much paid holiday does a Bulgarian employee get?
Send us the role and we will map the first month.
Tell us the job, the euro salary you have in mind and when you want the person to begin. We come back with the cost and the steps.