Euro payroll in Bulgaria: what changed on 1 January 2026

Since 1 January 2026, every Bulgarian payroll figure is in euro. Salaries, contributions, withheld income tax, thresholds and payslips all switched from leva to euro, with 1.95583 BGN fixed as the value of one euro, and the lev has no further role in a 2026 payroll run except as a reference for older records.

For an employer, the changeover was mostly a question of units rather than of rules. The contribution rates did not move: in 2026 the employer still pays 18.92% and the employee 13.78% for a standard Labour Code hire, and income tax is still a flat 10%. What changed was the currency in which every amount is calculated, declared to the National Revenue Agency (NRA) and paid out.

The year then added a second, unrelated change. Bulgaria’s social security budget for 2026 was adopted only at the end of July, and it raised the monthly contribution ceiling from 1 August. So 2026 payroll has two layers to it: a new currency from January and new thresholds from August. This post walks through both, in that order, and closes with a checklist for employers who run or buy Bulgarian payroll.

For foreign companies the change is mostly good news. Many already budget and report in euro, so a Bulgarian salary no longer needs converting before it can sit in a group budget, and a cost estimate made today will not drift with an exchange rate between offer and first payday.

The switch happened in a few fixed steps. These are the dates that mattered for anyone paying staff in Bulgaria:

• 1 January 2026: the euro became Bulgaria’s currency at 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN.
• 2 January 2026: a one-off non-working day, set by the Council of Ministers to support the changeover.
• 31 January 2026: dual circulation ended, and the lev stopped being legal tender.
• 1 August 2026: a new contribution ceiling of €2,300 replaced €2,111.64.
• 8 August 2026: the compulsory display of prices in both leva and euro ended; from 9 August only euro prices are required.

The Ministry of Finance euro portal summarises the end of the dual-display period in its announcement on evroto.bg. For payroll the earlier dates matter more: from the first pay run of 2026 onward, amounts are calculated and paid in euro, and since the end of January cash in leva can no longer be used to settle anything.

One small sign of how complete the switch is: the European Central Bank’s daily reference rates no longer list the lev at all. There is no floating rate to watch and no conversion margin to budget for. Old lev amounts convert at the fixed rate, and that is the end of it.

From 2026, pay in a Bulgarian employment contract must be stated in euro. Salaries are still normally quoted as a gross monthly amount, so a new offer simply reads, for example, “€3,333.33 gross per month” where a 2025 offer would have shown leva.

For staff hired before 2026, it is worth checking that every document the payroll depends on now reads in euro: the contract and any annexes, internal rules on pay, bonus letters and allowance policies. Payroll calculations follow those documents, and a leva figure left in an internal pay rule can cause confusion months later when a bonus or allowance falls due.

Percentage-based items carry across without effort. The length-of-service supplement (клас прослужено време, “klas”) grows by a percentage of basic salary with every year of recognised experience, so once the basic salary is in euro, the supplement is too. Our guide to the klas bonus and the 2026 minimum wage explains how it is calculated and what counts as recognised experience.

Payslips themselves are now euro documents from top to bottom: gross pay, each fund’s contribution, the 10% tax and net pay. Employees who joined before 2026 may still think of their salary in leva for a while. Showing the old lev figure next to the euro amount on an internal summary, once, can save a round of questions, but the payslip and the bank transfer are in euro.

Recruitment has caught up quickly. Candidates now compare offers in euro, and published salary data is in euro too: in NSI figures for April to June 2026, a Bulgarian employee earned €1,444 gross a month on average, against €3,079 in information and telecommunications. Quoting a gross monthly euro figure in your offer makes it easy for a candidate to set it against those numbers and against offers from other employers.

Every statutory payroll threshold for 2026 is expressed in euro. The ones employers meet most often are:

• National minimum monthly wage: €620.20 from 1 January 2026, previously set as BGN 1,213; minimum hourly wage €3.74.
• Maximum monthly insurable income: €2,111.64 from January to July 2026, the former BGN 4,130 carried over from 2025, then €2,300 from 1 August 2026.
• Highest monthly employer contribution from August: 18.92% of €2,300, or €435.16 per employee.

The first two show how the conversion worked in practice. BGN 1,213 divided by 1.95583 gives €620.20, and BGN 4,130 gives €2,111.64. The August ceiling of €2,300 was the first contribution cap set as a round euro figure by a budget law, published on 28 July 2026. The National Social Security Institute explains the August changes in its notice on insurable income from 1 August 2026.

Not everything has been rewritten yet. Some amounts fixed in older laws are still printed in leva in the consolidated texts; the fines for breaching the Labour Code’s contract and registration rules are one example, still shown as BGN 1,500 to 15,000 per breach. Those amounts are read in euro at the fixed rate, but how fines are converted and rounded is a point to confirm with counsel rather than calculate yourself.

The same caution applies to older internal documents. A pay policy written in 2023 that refers to an allowance “of BGN 100”, for instance, still works after conversion, but the converted figure will be an awkward number of euro and cents. It is worth restating such amounts as round euro figures the next time the policy is reviewed, so that managers and employees see the same number the payroll uses.

For anyone earning above the ceiling, August 2026 brought a visible change to net pay. More of the same salary became insurable, so both sides paid more in contributions, and the employee’s tax base shrank slightly as a result.

Take the Sofia developer we use across this site, paid €40,000 gross a year (12 × €3,333.33). From January to July, monthly net pay was €2,738.11 and the monthly employer cost €3,732.86. From August, net pay fell to €2,714.75, a drop of €23.36, while employer cost rose to €3,768.49. Over the full year the employer cost comes to about €44,972.46 and net pay to about €32,740.57.

Two lessons follow for budgeting in euro. A year in which the ceiling changes needs two monthly cost lines, one for each period, not one figure applied twelve times. And employees above the ceiling will notice a lower net amount in August without any change to their gross pay, so a short note to them in advance saves a lot of questions.

Payroll records from 2025 and earlier stay in leva, and they are still needed for things like the average pay that sickness and maternity benefits are based on, or for showing an employee’s pay history. When you compare pay across the changeover, convert the old amounts at 1.95583 and nothing else; any other rate will produce a false raise or cut.

Benefits are where the two currencies meet most often. Maternity pay from the National Social Security Institute, for example, is worked out from what the mother earned and was insured on across the 24 months before the leave, so a claim made in 2026 rests partly on months that were paid and declared in leva. The NSSI makes that calculation, not the employer, but it is one reason the old records have to stay complete and readable. Keep the 2025 payslips and declarations exactly as they were filed; do not restate them in euro.

The annual tax reconciliation shows the split neatly. The reconciliation an employer made for 2025, due by 31 January 2026, covered a year paid in leva. The one for 2026, due by 31 January 2027, will cover a year paid entirely in euro. Monthly contributions and withheld tax for each 2026 month are settled in euro on the standard monthly deadline (the 25th, one month in arrears), following the monthly cycle that our walk-through of Bulgarian payroll sets out.

Whether you run payroll yourself or buy it in, these are the points to confirm for every Bulgarian employee in 2026:

• every contract, annex and internal pay rule states pay in euro;
• payroll software calculates, declares and pays only in euro;
• the January to July and August to December ceilings are applied to the right months;
• no full-time salary sits below the €620.20 minimum wage;
• staff above the ceiling were told why August net pay dropped;
• year-on-year pay comparisons use the fixed rate of 1.95583.

At Employer of Record Bulgaria, the developer, analyst or manager you select is employed by us under a Bulgarian contract that states pay in euro, and we run their payroll in euro, with withholding and contributions paid to the NRA each month. The contract, the monthly payroll cycle and the year-end reconciliation are all part of what our Bulgarian EOR service includes. Still weighing up providers? Ask how each of them handled the January changeover and the August ceiling; the list of questions to put to any Bulgarian EOR is a good place to start.

Q01What exchange rate converts old lev salaries to euro?+

A.The fixed rate of 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN. Use it for every conversion, including comparisons with pay records from 2025 and earlier.

Q02Can Bulgarian salaries still be paid in leva?+

A.No. Dual circulation ended on 31 January 2026, so leva no longer settle any payment, and pay in an employment contract must be stated in euro from 2026.

Q03How much is the 2026 minimum wage once converted from leva?+

A.€620.20 a month and €3.74 an hour from 1 January 2026, the euro equivalent of the BGN 1,213 originally set.

Q04Did contribution rates change with the euro?+

A.No. In 2026 the employer still pays 18.92% and the employee 13.78% for a standard hire, assuming a 0.4% work-accident rate. What changed in August was the ceiling, from €2,111.64 to €2,300 a month.

Q05Why did some employees get lower net pay in August 2026?+

A.Employees earning above the ceiling had more of their salary made subject to contributions when it rose to €2,300. On a €40,000 salary, that meant €23.36 less each month.