Bulgaria's parliamentary election has handed former president Rumen Radev and his Progressive Bulgaria coalition a breakthrough result, with preliminary and near-final counts showing the bloc on track for an outright majority and the clearest mandate any single political force has won in years. The result marks a sharp break from the fragmentation that has defined Bulgarian politics since 2021.
The Central Electoral Commission said Progressive Bulgaria won 44.6 percent of the vote, while DW reported a 44.7 percent share with 96 percent counted. Either way, the gap to the nearest rivals was large. Boyko Borissov's GERB trailed at 13.4 percent, and the reformist PP-DB bloc followed close behind. AP reported that Borissov conceded defeat and congratulated Radev, while European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen publicly welcomed the result and said she looked forward to working with him.
The scale of the victory matters as much as the margin. DW said the result would give Progressive Bulgaria an absolute majority in the 240-seat parliament, the first party to do that on its own since 1997. That would end years of stop-start coalition politics in which no government lasted long enough to stabilize the country's agenda. The previous conservative cabinet collapsed in December after anti-corruption protests drew large crowds into the streets.
Radev campaigned on cleaning up what he calls an oligarchic model of governance. He has built a reputation as a sharp critic of entrenched corruption and of politicians tied to powerful business interests. At the same time, he is widely seen as sympathetic to Russia and skeptical of military support for Ukraine. That tension defined the campaign: supporters saw him as the only figure strong enough to break the old system, while critics worried he could drag Bulgaria off its pro-European path.
The numbers from both reports suggest that voters wanted more than another fragile coalition. AP described the result as a mandate for change after years of turmoil. DW said the vote was also a rejection of the old parties, with support for GERB and other established forces falling sharply. It also reported a broad crackdown on vote-buying, including seizures of more than 1.2 million euros and hundreds of suspected offenders detained before polling day.
Radev now faces the harder part of turning a protest victory into durable government. He will need to pass a 2026 budget, address inflation and maintain enough support for any major judicial or constitutional changes that require a two-thirds majority. Even so, the election has already changed the political map. For the first time in years, Bulgaria appears to have produced a single dominant force rather than another uneasy coalition, and that may be the clearest sign yet that the country's voters were ready to try something else.
That result also leaves open the bigger question of whether a victory built on protest can survive the work of governing. Parliament numbers, budget votes and coalition discipline will decide whether the mandate becomes durable change or another short political cycle.
The election outcome also suggests that voters may accept a larger break with the past if it promises longer-term stability.
