Bulgaria Online Gambling Licence 2026: BGN 400,000, 20% Not 25%, and the New Affiliate Regime

The number several guides get wrong

Search for the Bulgarian gambling rate and you will find 25%. Two adviser pages state it plainly, and trade coverage of the 2026 state budget repeated it. The consolidated Gambling Act says something else.

Article 30(4) sets the state fee for a licence for gambling organised online as a one-off BGN 400,000 plus “20 на сто” of the difference between stakes received and prizes paid. Article 30(3) uses the same 20% for land-based lotteries, toto, lotto, bingo, keno and betting. Both clauses still carry the amendment marker “изм. - ДВ, бр. 108 от 2023 г., в сила от 01.01.2024 г.”, and the phrases “25 на сто” and “30 на сто” appear nowhere in article 30.

The reason that matters is the source of the 25% story. It comes from coverage of the 2026 state budget in November 2025. That budget was enacted, and it did amend the Gambling Act: State Gazette issue 69 of 2026 is the 2026 State Budget Act, and it is what inserted the affiliate licensing regime described below. What it did not do is touch the rate. The one instrument most often cited as having raised the charge is the instrument that left it alone.

A 30% figure also circulates. Democratic Bulgaria proposed raising the rate to 30% and nearly doubling operator fees in a National Assembly debate, and the proposal was rejected, as Focus Gaming News reported on 22 July 2026. Read that report in full and it also asserts, in passing, that the rate “was already raised this year from 20 to 25 per cent”. The Act’s own text does not support the aside, and we are citing the report for the rejected proposal rather than for the rate. Checked against the consolidated law a third time: the only “25 на сто” anywhere in the Gambling Act is the definition of a qualifying shareholding, in the additional provisions. So the answer for anyone modelling a Bulgarian book today is 20%, with one caveat worth stating: proposals of this kind recur every budget season and can pass inside a fortnight, which is why this page carries a review date rather than a promise.

Who may hold the licence

Gambling may be organised by commercial companies registered in Bulgaria, in another EU member state, in a state party to the EEA Agreement, or in Switzerland (art. 4(1)(1)). There is no requirement to incorporate locally, which distinguishes Bulgaria from Romania’s representative regime and from the Cyprus rule that a Class B licensee be a Cypriot company or a registered branch.

The company form is prescribed. An online licence goes only to a limited liability company or a joint-stock company with registered shares whose capital is fully paid up at a minimum of BGN 1,500,000, or the equivalent in euro, from 1 January 2026 (art. 4(2), as amended by State Gazette issue 70 of 2024). The same floor applies to casino licences; slot-machine halls need BGN 750,000.

Lottery games other than tombola and bingo are reserved to the state (art. 4(3)) and run through the state enterprise Bulgarian Sports Totalizator (art. 13a). A private lottery product is not on the table, whatever the licence category is called.

Two further balance-sheet tests sit in article 5(1)(5): investments of at least BGN 1,000,000 and funds for organising the game of at least BGN 1,000,000. The funds must be in cash on the operator’s bank account or secured by an unconditional and irrevocable bank guarantee running for the whole licence term (art. 5(6)). Evidence of the investments is filed within six months of the initial licence (art. 5(3)), not before it.

The fee stack

Bulgaria charges a state fee under the Gambling Act rather than a gambling tax in the Corporate Income Tax Act. Operators file a fee declaration with the National Revenue Agency, not a tax return, which is why the charge does not appear where a reader looks for it in a tax guide.

Item	Amount	Basis
Online licence, one-off component	BGN 400,000 (about EUR 204,517)	art. 30(4)
Online licence, variable component	20% of stakes less prizes, monthly	art. 30(4), (8), (11)
Social-responsibility contribution	BGN 60,000 a year per online licence	art. 10a(1)(1)
Paid-up capital	BGN 1,500,000	art. 4(2)
Investments, evidenced within six months	BGN 1,000,000	art. 5(1)(5), 5(3)
Funds, cash or bank guarantee	BGN 1,000,000	art. 5(1)(5), 5(6)
Land-based betting and lottery products	BGN 300,000 one-off, same 20%	art. 30(3)
Casino licence	BGN 300,000 for five years, BGN 600,000 for ten	art. 30(5)
Slot-machine licence	BGN 75,000 to BGN 300,000 by term and town size	art. 30(6)
Affiliate operator licence, from 1 August 2026	EUR 6,000 a year plus 10% of commission	art. 30a
Corporate income tax	10%	Corporate Income Tax Act

The one-off BGN 400,000 is paid into the Agency’s account before the licence certificate is issued (art. 30(10)), so it is a condition of getting the document rather than a cost of applying. The variable part is declared electronically and paid by the 15th of the month following, on the Ministry of Finance form for article 30(8).

The line most often missed is article 10a. Every licensee owes an annual social-responsibility contribution for each licence: BGN 60,000 for online betting, BGN 20,000 for casino games and BGN 10,000 for all other games, at the amounts set by State Gazette issue 42 of 2024, in force 19 September 2024. It is declared and paid by 31 March, or within thirty days for a licence granted later in the year. The money enters the Agency’s budget and is transferred in equal halves to the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Health, which funds treatment and prevention of gambling addiction. Missing it is not a late-payment problem; it is a ground for revoking the licence under article 86(1)(14). Advisers still quoting BGN 50,000 are reading the pre-September-2024 figure.

Our cost calculator treats BGN 400,000 and BGN 60,000 as regulator charges and holds BGN 1,500,000, BGN 1,000,000 and BGN 1,000,000 as locked capital, because that money stays with the operator.

Article 6: where the servers sit and what the Agency sees

The substance test is a single cumulative list, and it is unusually specific about infrastructure.

No enforcement administrative measures may have been applied in the five years before the application. The communication equipment and the central point housing the central computer system must sit in Bulgaria, in another EU or EEA state, or in Switzerland. A bank account for stakes and payouts is opened with a bank licensed in that same area and operating in Bulgaria. The central system must register and identify players, and it must store and send the Agency’s server real-time information on concurrent sessions, on each stake and on each payout, registering every transaction online in the Agency’s system.

That last condition is the one that shapes a build. Bulgaria does not ask for a monthly report reconciled later; it asks for a live feed, in the same architectural family as Romania’s ONJN mirror and unlike the Cypriot model, where the backup server sits in-country but the reporting is periodic. A platform that cannot open a transaction-level channel to a regulator is a platform that cannot be licensed here, whatever its certification elsewhere.

Term, renewal and the two-day certificate

A licence runs for a single event, for five years, or for a shorter period if the applicant asks for one (art. 26(3)). Ten-year licences are issued only where investments proven to the Agency in advance exceed the statutory thresholds (art. 26(4)), so the longer term is bought with capital rather than time served.

Renewal is by written request filed no earlier than six months and no later than two months before expiry, granted where there are no effective penalty decrees or enforcement measures (art. 36(1)). That two-month floor is a hard edge: a request filed seven weeks out is out of time.

On timing, the Act gives one deadline and it is not the one applicants want. The licence certificate is handed over within two working days of the executive director’s decision taking effect, once the one-off fee is paid (art. 29(3)); the same rule covers an affiliate licence from 1 August 2026 (art. 29(4)). For the decision itself the Act sets no period at all.

That silence is worth naming, because the published estimates do not agree with each other. Across the seven adviser and consultancy pages reviewed for this entry the figure ranges from two and a half months to twelve, with four to nine months and sixty to ninety days both offered as the realistic answer. None of them says the Act is silent. Treat any single number in that spread as one firm’s experience rather than an entitlement, and plan the funding round on the capital requirement rather than on a promised date.

From 1 August 2026, affiliates need a licence

The August 2026 amendments make Bulgaria one of the few EU states to license affiliate marketing directly. An affiliate operator promoting gambling games needs its own licence, with an annual state fee of EUR 6,000 payable by 31 March, or before the certificate is issued for a licence granted later in the year (art. 30a(1) and (2)). Note the currency: this fee is written in euro while the older fees are still denominated in leva.

The second component is the interesting one. Ten per cent of the performance-based commission is withheld and paid to the Agency by the gambling operator that accrues the commission, and declared by the 15th of the month after accrual (art. 30a(3) and (4)). The operator is the collection agent, so revenue-share deals signed before August 2026 need repapering, not just repricing. Commission income on which the fee has been paid is not recognised for corporate or personal income tax, and a sham transaction concealing such commission attracts 20% instead of 10% (art. 30a(7) and (8)).

The Act defines who is caught. An affiliate operator is a person other than the organiser who, under a contract or arrangement, promotes gambling games for commission tied to results, meaning players recruited, deposits, stakes or prizes paid. The same definition excludes a person supplying advertising, media or technical services whose fee is not tied to those results. So a flat-fee media buy sits outside the regime and a revenue share sits inside it, and the dividing line is the pricing model rather than the job title.

Existing partners had a fortnight. Under §35 of the transitional provisions to the 2026 State Budget Act, anyone who held a promotion contract with a licensed organiser on 1 August 2026 had to file a licence application by 15 August 2026, and those contracts stay in force until the licence is issued. The declaration forms for both the affiliate fee and the article 10a contribution were to be approved by the finance minister by 30 September 2026 (§36). An affiliate licence runs on the same terms as any other, for a single occasion, for five years or for a shorter period on request (art. 26(3)), and renewal is requested no later than two months before expiry. Late fees carry statutory interest (art. 30a(10)).

Enforcement follows the money. From the same date the executive director may order suspension or blocking of websites, mobile applications, social-media profiles and video and streaming platforms belonging to affiliate operators who promote gambling without a valid licence (art. 22(1)(9a)), and the Agency supervises affiliates alongside organisers (art. 22(2)). A blocking power that reaches a streaming channel is a different instrument from a domain block.

On scale, the Ministry of Finance is reported to have put the commission flowing to affiliates before the regime at BGN 450 to 500 million a year, untaxed. That figure reaches us through trade coverage of the reform rather than from a ministry publication, so treat it as the order of magnitude that motivated the rules, not as a measured number.

Advertising, after 2024

Since State Gazette issue 42 of 2024 the advertising rules are close to a ban. Gambling advertising is prohibited on radio and television, except broadcasts of the state Bulgarian Sports Totalizator’s draws; in public places including building facades; in print and electronic media including websites; on state and municipal property; and on more than 5% of any outdoor advertiser’s total advertising area. Billboards are allowed only at least 300 metres from schools, universities, community centres, playgrounds and student dormitories, and signage on a licensed venue may not exceed 20% of the facade or 50 square metres (art. 10).

Read together with the affiliate licence and the 10% withholding, the acquisition model Bulgaria leaves standing is narrow, licensed and taxed at the point of commission.

What the market looks like

Agency data reported by the Bulgarian outlet Mediapool put bets placed through the legal online market at BGN 66.9 billion in 2025, against BGN 55 billion in 2024 and BGN 44 billion in 2023. Prizes came to BGN 65.3 billion, leaving roughly BGN 1.6 billion, about EUR 818 million, as the closest available approximation of gross gaming revenue.

Treat the headline with care. Turnover on this measure counts recycled winnings, so it is neither deposits nor revenue, and the figures reach us through a single trade-press reading of data given to a national outlet rather than from a regulator publication. They are held on this site as an estimate, not as verified market data.

The unlicensed share is large enough to explain the enforcement powers. Deputy Finance Minister Lyudmila Petkova put the illegal sector at roughly 40% of the Bulgarian gambling market, as reported in July 2026. Again this is a quoted official rather than a published measurement, but it is the figure the drafters were working to.

Pricing Bulgaria against its neighbours

Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026 at the irrevocable rate of 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN. The Act still states the older fees and the capital floor in leva, so BGN 400,000 is about EUR 204,517 and BGN 1,500,000 about EUR 766,938. Nothing about the burden changed at the conversion; only the arithmetic a reader has to do.

On the comparison table, Bulgaria is the heaviest entry ticket among the European licences on this site and one of the lighter recurring ones. The BGN 400,000 one-off dwarfs Estonia’s state fees or a Cypriot EUR 45,000 two-year licence, and the capital and funds tests lock up roughly EUR 1.8 million before a bet is taken. Against that, the recurring regulator charge is a BGN 60,000 contribution and a 20% rate on gross win, under a 10% corporate rate, in an EU member state with a live transaction feed and no local-incorporation requirement.

That shape suits one kind of operator: a funded group taking a domestic market for ten years, not a startup testing a product. The licence is national, with no EU passporting, and it does not cover Great Britain, where a UK Gambling Commission licence is required.