Bulgaria's Parliament Confirms Rumen Radev as PM 124-70, Ending Five Years of Snap-Election Churn

Bulgaria's National Assembly elected Rumen Radev as prime minister on 8 May 2026 by 124 votes to 70 with 36 abstentions, installing the first single-party majority government in Sofia since 1997. Radev's Progressive Bulgaria won 131 of the 240 assembly seats in the 19 April 2026 snap election on about 44.6 percent of the vote, with turnout around 50.7 percent (the highest since April 2021). Other parties returned included GERB-SDS (about 39 seats), We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (about 37), the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (about 21) and Revival (about 12).

President Iliana Iotova had granted Radev the first governing mandate on 7 May. The vote drew a line under a prolonged crisis that produced eight parliamentary elections between April 2021 and April 2026; the immediate predecessor, the conservative government of Rosen Zhelyazkov, resigned on 11 December 2025 amid mass anti-corruption protests and a contested 2026 budget that would have raised taxes. Radev, a 62-year-old former fighter pilot, had stepped down from the presidency in January 2026 to seek the more powerful premiership; his cabinet drew heavily on figures from the seven interim governments he appointed as president.

Outlets noted that despite the majority, analysts raised early doubts about governance and the concentration of power.