Bulgaria Citizenship by Investment

The threshold is on the record, and it sits in the very provision the authority has removed from the consolidated text. Article 14a(1) of the Citizenship Act, as in force before 1 April 2022, opened three accelerated routes, each with its own figure.

The first was for a person who had held a permanent residence permit for at least one year under Article 25(1)(6) or (7) of the Foreigners Act, and who had to satisfy one of two alternatives.

Either they had doubled their investment on the same statutory conditions, or they had invested a further sum of not less than 1,000,000 leva into the capital of a Bulgarian commercial company for a priority investment project certified under the Investment Promotion Act.

The second was for a holder under Article 25(1)(13), conditional on the investments made and brought into operation being maintained above the minimum threshold for a class A investment certificate throughout that year, as confirmed by the Ministry of the Economy.

The third was for a holder under Article 25(1)(16), who had to increase the investment on the same conditions to at least 1,000,000 leva and, as a result, create a minimum of twenty new jobs for Bulgarian citizens.

These figures must be read within their scope: the Citizenship Act fixed only the uplift required to convert a residence permit into citizenship, while the base threshold for obtaining permanent residence sits in the Foreigners Act, a separate instrument. Both provisions were repealed on 1 April 2022

The consolidated Law on Bulgarian Citizenship published by the Ministry of Justice no longer contains any investment route to naturalisation.

The two articles that once carried it, Article 12a and Article 14a, now stand in the text marked "repealed", by the Act amending the Law on Bulgarian Citizenship promulgated in State Gazette No. 26 of 2022.

The repeal spared no pending file: paragraph 7 of the transitional provisions of that amending Act provides that proceedings under the repealed Articles 12a and 14a which had not concluded when the amending Act entered into force are terminated.

The same 2022 amendment also repealed point 4 of Article 22(1) and Article 32a(2), the satellite provisions of the same mechanism

The repeal does not stop the clocks already running against those naturalised under the old route.

The first clock, maintaining the investment: a person naturalised under the repealed Article 14a(1) must maintain the investment for at least two years from the date of naturalisation.

One naturalised under the repealed Article 12a(1) for at least one year; and in the case under point 3 of the repealed Article 14a(1), the jobs created must be maintained as well.

The second clock, reporting changes: on any change in the facts and circumstances relating to the investment that grounded the naturalisation, the person must notify the competent body that certified the investment within fourteen days and produce documents proving the change.

The third clock, the limitation on revocation: naturalisation may be revoked only until ten years have elapsed from the acquisition of Bulgarian citizenship, except where the facts concern the person participation in terrorism, and provided the person does not become stateless.

On processing, a proposal to revoke naturalisation is decided within three months, cut to one month where the facts concern terrorism or a final conviction under Articles 114a to 114t of the Criminal Code — that one-month limb introduced by the amendment promulgated in State Gazette No. 61 of 2025, in force from 31 January 2026

After the route closed, the Law still maintains a three-way monitoring loop over those naturalised through it. The Ministry of Justice sends the competent body that certified the investments the list of persons who acquired Bulgarian citizenship on the basis of the repealed Articles 12a and 14a.

That body is obliged to notify the Minister of Justice in return of every established change in the investment leading to a failure to meet the maintenance obligation.

And once the maintenance period ends, that same body must carry out control and report the result to the Minister of Justice, who may require information from the State Agency for National Security.

The grounds for revocation fall into three groups: having used data established by a court to be untrue; having concealed data which, had they been known, would have been grounds for refusal; and having failed to notify a change under Article 32a

The family provision here has an unusual structure, and the crux is that the spousal route was locked to the principal applicant choice. There were two paths.

The first, under Article 12a(1), was the broad one: a person granted a permanent residence permit under Article 25(1)(6), (7) or (8) of the Foreigners Act — or as a family member of such a person — could acquire citizenship on meeting the general conditions in Article 12(1), points 1, 2, 3 and 4.

A family member was therefore not a dependant riding on the principal file but someone holding a residence permit in their own name and taking the ordinary naturalisation route.

The second path, at Article 12a(2) and added only in 2021, was reserved for a spouse, and while faster it carried two hard conditions.

First, the spouse must have held a permanent residence permit for not less than three years before the date of the naturalisation application.

Second, and this is decisive: the other spouse must already have naturalised under Article 14a(1), meaning they had taken the route of doubling the investment or committing a further million leva.

If the principal applicant took the slower route, the spouse lost this path entirely. The Act provided no separate route for parents or siblings.

Both provisions were repealed on 1 April 2022, and section 7 of the repealing Act terminated all proceedings still pending under them

A person granted citizenship under this programme receives the Bulgaria passport, so the figure in this cell is the figure for that passport itself.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Bulgaria passport reaches 190 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

This programme no longer exists, and the whole Bulgarian Citizenship Act contains not one instance of the word-stems for tax — meaning no tax provision attaches to naturalisation at all, neither in the original text nor in the transitional provisions.

Both provisions creating the programme now carry a repeal note: Article 12a is marked repealed by State Gazette No. 26 of 2022, and Article 14a is marked as enacted by State Gazette No. 16 of 2013 and repealed by State Gazette No. 26 of 2022.

Transitional provision 7 of that amending law closes the door on pending files too: proceedings not completed under the regime of the two repealed articles are terminated. But the most telling part of this record is what survives for those already naturalised, because their obligations did not end with the programme.

Transitional provision 8(1): a person naturalised under repealed Article 12a or 14a is obliged, within fourteen days of any change in the investment-related facts and circumstances on which naturalisation was based, to notify the competent authority that certified the investment and to submit documents evidencing the change.

Paragraph 2 states the sanction, and it is heavy. The naturalisation may be revoked where the person fails to notify, or fails to maintain the investment for at least two years in the case of Article 14a(1), or at least one year in the case of Article 12a(1).

In the case of Article 14a(1)(3) the number of jobs created must also be maintained.

Paragraph 3 builds a cross-check: the Ministry of Justice sends the competent authority a list of persons naturalised under the two repealed articles, and that authority must report to the Minister of Justice any change resulting in the investment no longer being maintained.

Paragraph 4: the competent authority carries out checks after the maintenance period expires and reports the results to the Minister of Justice, who may request information from the State Agency for National Security.

The competent authority has been renamed within the statute itself: the Ministry of Economy and the Minister of Economy are replaced by the Ministry of Innovation and Growth and its Minister.

One limit must be held here, because it is easily overstated: the surviving post-naturalisation duty is a duty to report investment data, not tax data.

This is not the tax-reporting motif but a continuing-conditions motif. And a second limit: the statutory tax-residence test for Bulgaria has not been verified at the official sources of the national revenue authority and the Ministry of Finance.

Read this cell within its scope: the Citizenship Act governs acquisition, loss and revocation of citizenship and the post-naturalisation duties of those granted it before repeal; it says nothing about tax, and nothing about whether persons naturalised under the two repealed articles gain or lose any tax treatment.

Because the programme has not existed since State Gazette No. 26 of 2022, no tax regime attaches to this programme at present

A proposal to revoke a naturalisation is made by the prosecutor general; in addition, where the conditions in Article 22 or Article 24 are met, the Minister of Justice may make the proposal himself. Every application and accompanying document must be written in Bulgarian.

On the consequences for a family, Article 23 answers plainly: the revocation of the naturalisation of one spouse does not revoke the naturalisation of the other spouse or of the children — unless they themselves obtained Bulgarian citizenship on the basis of the same untrue or concealed data.

Citizenship files pass through the Citizenship Council at the Ministry of Justice, chaired by a Deputy Minister of Justice, with members drawn from nine ministries and agencies including the State Agency for National Security.

The Council gives its opinion only after written positions have been received from the Ministry of the Interior and from the State Agency for National Security