Bulgaria

Narrative updated for the September 2026 edition.

Bulgaria slips one place to 17th at 5.48 (June: 5.56). Public-sector hosting is good (7.78, 7th): www.president.bg is fully domestic, while Sofia's email runs on Google and the government's on Microsoft. The private-sector pillar fell 0.43 to 7.22 (11th): 51% of the 495 measured .bg domains are hosted outside the EU, 42% on Cloudflare, though only 38% of email leaves the EU, the lowest share in the EU27. Developer density is low (2.58, 18th).

Strengths

• Email mostly in the EU. 62% of the sample uses EU email providers, the best share in the EU27.
• Public sector (7.78, 7th). Domestic hosting by SuperHosting, Vivacom and Evolink leads the private sample.

Weaknesses

• Private-sector hosting drifting (7.22, down 0.43). Bulgaria is among the four countries where the most high-traffic sites moved to non-EU providers since June.
• Two official sites use US email: Sofia (Google) and the government (Microsoft), each rating 0.67.
• Developer density (2.58, 18th).

Outlook

Two email migrations would put Bulgaria's official sites in the perfect-10 group. The private drift is the trend to watch.

Historical context

2020 baseline

In 2020, Bulgaria was a "laggard," focused on establishing basic digital security. It had a foundational legal framework for open source that was yet to be fully implemented.

2024 progression

Bulgaria is consolidating its approach around its 2016 eGovernment Act, which mandates OSS for new government software. The creation of the Ministry of e-Governance in 2021 provides a more focused policy driver, and a partnership with the Budibase project showed its capacity for practical crisis response.

Historischer Verweis

OSOR-Datenblatt (PDF, 2024) — der länderbezogene Open-Source-Politikbericht, der in der zurückgezogenen Säule „Öffentliche Politik“ von EDRIX 1.0 verwendet wurde.