Klas bonus in Bulgaria and the €620.20 minimum wage for 2026

From 1 January 2026 no full-time employee in Bulgaria may be paid less than €620.20 gross a month, and the hourly floor is €3.74. The figure comes from Council of Ministers Decree No. 243 of 13 November 2025, published in State Gazette No. 98 on 18 November 2025.

The decree was drafted before the currency switch, so it was set as BGN 1,213. Converted at the fixed rate of 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN, that lands on €620.20, which is the number every 2026 payslip and contract now uses. Pay in a Bulgarian employment contract (трудов договор) has to be stated in euro from this year, so a contract that still quotes leva for a new hire is out of date.

Most foreign companies hiring in Bulgaria never get close to this floor. A software developer, analyst or account manager will be paid several times over it. The minimum still matters to you for two practical reasons: it acts as a floor for social security contributions, and it is the base against which junior, support and part-time pay is checked. The 2027 minimum had not been set when this article was written, so budget on €620.20 until a new decree appears.

Social security and health contributions in Bulgaria follow gross pay, with a floor: the base cannot drop below the minimum insurable income (минимален осигурителен доход) set for the person’s activity and occupation, or the national minimum wage where no activity figure exists. That rule sits in Art. 6(3) of the Social Insurance Code (Кодекс за социално осигуряване, KSO).

In plain terms, the minimum wage is the lowest base the National Revenue Agency (NRA) will accept for contributions on a Labour Code employee. The activity-based minimums were raised from 1 August 2026, part of the late adoption of the 2026 social security budget. For the self-insured, the floor moved from €550.66 to €620.20 on the same date, bringing it level with the minimum wage.

For a role paid €3,000 a month none of this changes a cent. It only bites where pay is close to the bottom of the scale, where someone works reduced hours, or where an unpaid period sits inside a month. Part-time roles are the most common case: a contract for four hours a day can produce a monthly gross below €620.20, and the contribution base for that person is worth checking line by line. If any of your Bulgarian roles fall into that zone, ask whoever runs payroll to show you the base they are using for contributions, not only the gross figure.

Klas is a mandatory monthly supplement on basic salary that rewards an employee’s recognised length of service. Its full name is the length-of-service bonus (клас прослужено време), and it is set out in Art. 12 of the Regulation on the Structure and Organisation of Wages. Bulgarian employees know it well, and they will look for it on their payslip.

The rule surprises many employers coming from elsewhere because service with previous employers counts. Recognised experience includes earlier work in the same or a similar job for other employers, and work done in other EU member states. A developer who joins you with eight years behind them does not start at zero; they arrive with eight years of klas already earned.

• It arises only after at least one year of recognised service.
• The percentage can change at most once a year, so it steps up on a set date rather than drifting month to month.
• It is paid only for time actually worked under the employee’s main employment.
• It is calculated on basic salary, not on other allowances or bonuses.

That last point is why the split between basic salary and supplements in a Bulgarian contract is more than a formality. Whatever you call the basic salary becomes the base that klas multiplies.

The figure employers and payroll guides almost universally apply as the minimum is 0.6% of basic salary for each year of recognised service, a rate the Council of Ministers sets under Art. 12(6) of the Regulation. A collective agreement or the individual contract can set a higher rate, and some employers do so to reward loyalty. Because that rate is fixed by decree rather than in the Regulation itself, check the current text if a tight budget depends on it.

The arithmetic is simple once the service years are agreed. Multiply the years by the rate, then apply the result to basic salary:

• 5 years of service at 0.6% gives a supplement of at least 3% of basic salary.
• A basic salary of €3,236.25 plus 3% klas comes to €3,333.34 a month, roughly the monthly gross in our €40,000 Sofia example.
• An employee on the €620.20 minimum with 10 years’ service would receive at least 6%, an extra €37.21, for a total of €657.41.

Where people get it wrong is the service count rather than the multiplication. The employer has to collect proof of earlier employment, decide which periods qualify as the same or similar work, and record the figure. Get this settled before the first payroll, because correcting it later means back pay for every month that was short.

Judgement calls come up more often than you might expect. A candidate who spent three years as a QA engineer and four as a backend developer may argue that all seven count as similar work; another employer might accept only four. There is no central database that answers the question for you, so the decision rests on the documents and on a reasonable reading of what the jobs had in common. Write down the reasoning when you decide, because the employee is entitled to ask how their percentage was reached, and a clear record ends most disputes before they start.

Decide first whether the number you quote to a candidate already includes klas. Most international employers think in a single gross figure, while Bulgarian candidates often hear a basic salary and expect klas on top. Agree on one convention and write it into the offer letter, or you will face a gap of several percent on day one.

The cleaner route for a fixed budget is to agree a total monthly gross and derive the basic salary from it, as in the example above. Under that approach a developer with 5 years’ service who agrees €3,333 a month has a basic salary of about €3,236 and a klas line of about €97. Total cost to you is the same as if klas did not exist; it is simply shown as two lines.

Remember the annual step. Each further year of service adds another step to the supplement, so an employee with a flat basic salary still sees their gross rise. Over a three-year hire that compounds into a visible pay increase that nobody negotiated. Factor it into the budget when you plan pay reviews, so a review does not end up double-counting a rise that klas already delivered.

On cost, klas is part of gross pay. It carries the 10% flat income tax for the employee and is subject to social security up to the monthly insurable ceiling of €2,300 that applies from 1 August 2026 (€2,111.64 before that). For anyone already earning above the ceiling, the supplement adds no employer contributions at all. You can see the effect on the full cost picture in what a Bulgarian employee really costs.

Actual pay in Bulgaria sits well above €620.20 for the roles foreign companies tend to hire. The National Statistical Institute put the national average gross wage at €1,444 a month in the second quarter of 2026, and information and telecommunications was the best-paid sector at €3,079 a month.

Those averages give you a sense of scale. A mid-level developer in Sofia on €40,000 a year earns slightly above the sector average, and the minimum wage is about a fifth of that. For roles in customer support or operations the gap is narrower, which is where the minimum, the contribution floor and klas together decide what the payslip looks like.

Overtime is also priced from the employee’s pay, with statutory premiums of at least 50% on working days, 75% on rest days and 100% on public holidays. Klas does not replace any of these. It sits alongside them as a separate line.

One more practical point: when you benchmark a Bulgarian salary against public surveys, check whether the survey figure is basic pay or total gross. Many local job adverts and salary reports quote the full monthly gross, while some internal pay scales list basic salary only, with klas and other supplements added on the payslip. Comparing one with the other can make an offer look 3% to 6% higher or lower than it really is for an experienced hire.

Klas is handled inside the monthly euro payroll that Employer of Record Bulgaria runs for each hire, alongside the Bulgarian contract we sign with them. Before the start date we collect the documents that prove earlier service, agree the recognised years with you and the candidate, and set out basic salary and the supplement in the contract.

The NRA receives notice of the contract no later than 3 days after signature, and before the first working day, and the supplement is applied from the first payroll. Each year we update the percentage on the right date and tell you in advance what the change does to the monthly cost. If a role is ever close to the minimum wage, we flag it when the decree for the next year is published.

If you want to see the whole sequence from accepted offer to the first salary, read our walk-through of the EOR timeline in Bulgaria; for a wider view of the duties an employer of record carries, see the EOR role in Bulgaria. For costs, the pricing page shows our plans, from €599 per employee per month.