Bulgaria’s year ended in unexpected political turmoil, as nationwide protests triggered the resignation of the ruling coalition three weeks before the country’s planned adoption of the euro as its official currency on January 1, 2026.
At first glance, the defining event of 2025 in Bulgaria would be exactly what happened as the year drew to a close.
Yet the significance of these protests, possibly the largest since the 1990s, extends far beyond the fall of a government led by GERB with the backing of DPS-New Beginning, the latest political vehicle for power-hungry tycoon Delyan Peevski.
DPS-New Beginning is an offshoot of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, DPS, which largely controlled the vote of the Turkish minority until it split in September 2024 between Peevski’s party and the less prominent Alliance for Rights and Freedoms of Ahmed Dogan.
Peevski, who is ethnic Bulgarian, still claimed to represent Turks and Roma, but both communities have turned out in significant numbers in the latest protest wave, marking a repudiation of decades of DPS policy.
For the first time in 35 years, a foundational political assumption in Bulgaria – that minority identity can and must be mediated through a single ethnic party – has been publicly challenged.
