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Every fact here comes from a document that was opened and read. Nothing was added from memory and nothing was rounded off to sound better.
But part of this history rests on thin ground: closed archives, tabloid interviews from 2004–2006, one or two academic studies. Where that is the case, we mark it on the spot instead of smoothing it over.
- Medium confidenceRests on a single source, on a retelling, or on an interview whose original we could not open.
- Low confidencePublished only because it is widely cited — and the weak point is named immediately.
- CaveatHere the sources contradict each other, or a widely repeated story is inaccurate. The box matters as much as the event.
Numbers we could not reconcile
- Arrests at the first Sofia Pride, 2008: about 60 (Reuters, on the scene, same day) versus 88 (Bulgarian Wikipedia, uncited).
- Defendants in the 1964 trial: 28 (Gruev, Pachkova) versus 26 (other retellings).
- Sofia Pride 2022: 12,000 (ILGA-Europe) versus “nearly 15,000” (the organisers themselves).
- The penalty under the 1896 law: six months (BHC, 2001) versus five years (Pisankaneva, 2005).
- The years of the group trials: Gruev gives 1974 in one paragraph and 1973 in another — in the same article.
Before the modern state9th–10th century
Criminalisation is not a Bulgarian invention. It arrived as a translated book.
9th–10th century, under Tsar Simeon (893–927)
The Ecloga, translated into Slavonic
The earliest text in Bulgarian law imposing criminal liability for same-sex acts is the Byzantine Ecloga, translated into Slavonic in the reign of Tsar Simeon. Title 17, text 38 prescribes death by the sword for both partners, with pardon for a passive partner under 20.
The 9th-century “Law for Judging the People” contains no such provision. And the Ecloga punishes the same-sex act more severely than rape or debauchery, for which the perpetrator’s nose was cut off.
In other words: the harshest norm came from outside, with Byzantine church law. Not from anything indigenous.
Medium confidence
The Kingdom of Bulgaria1878 – 1944
The first modern Bulgarian penal law states exactly what it costs to be a man who sleeps with men. Women are not mentioned — not because they were allowed, but because the legislator could not imagine them.
The first penal law after Liberation
The Penal Law, in force from 1 May 1896, criminalised sexual acts between men over 16. The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee’s 2001 legal study quotes the provision verbatim.
The law speaks only of men. Sex between women is not addressed at all. That silence repeats across the whole twentieth century — and it is why we know so little today about lesbian life in this period.
For male homosexuality (pederasty) between persons older than 16 years of age, as well as for sodomy, the punishment is confinement to a dark cell for 6 months.
Penal Law (1896), quoted in the BHC legal study, 2001 Caveat
The sources disagree about the penalty. The BHC (2001) and Pachkova’s own text (2022) say six months; on the same page, however, Pachkova quotes Pisankaneva (2005), who says the old law prescribed five years. We publish six months, because the BHC’s legal analysis is the most careful of the three — and we leave the discrepancy visible.
1940 – 1944
The first persecutions — under the Filov government
The historian Mihail Gruev notes that until 1944 the “general democratic framework” of government prevented systematic repression, and that the first persecutions of “people with unnatural sexual attractions” came under the Filov regime, 1940–1944.
Medium confidence
The People's Republic1944 – 1989
This is the part that is usually missing. Not because it did not happen, but because the archive is closed and the people who could tell it are no longer alive.
11 January 1945 and 8 October 1946
Lists and camps — before any statute
Decree No. 8 of 11 January 1945, signed by Interior Minister Anton Yugov, legitimised “labour-educational hostels” — that is, camps. In 1946 the “Law on the Labour Mobilisation of Idlers and Loiterers” (State Gazette 43, 8 October 1946) began to be applied to homosexuals as well.
Yugov sent a special instruction to militia units and mayors: detailed lists were to be drawn up not only of the “morally decayed” but explicitly of “homosexuals or those alleged to be such”. Gruev cites the archive: AMVR, f. 1, op. 2, a.e. 16, l. 16–22.
Hold on to this. The persecution began before any law named them, through the law on idlers. Gruev writes that this contingent supplied “a considerable part of the future camp inmates and prisoners”.
Article 176: the explicit ban — including for women
The Penal Law of 1951 (Gazette of the Presidium of the National Assembly, no. 13 of 13 February 1951), together with the 1952 Criminal Procedure Code, created the framework under which homosexuals were tried. Where the act was committed by force or by abusing a position of dependence, the penalty was two to five years.
Because the text speaks of “sexual satisfaction” and not only of intercourse, it covered women too. Pisankaneva stresses that this is precisely what distinguished it from comparable laws in other socialist states. A 1956 amendment introduced a heavier penalty where the act involved a person under 14.
For sexual intercourse or sexual satisfaction between persons of the same sex the punishment is deprivation of liberty of up to 3 years.
Article 176 of the Penal Law, 1951 1959 – 1962
Lovech and Skravena
In 1959 most camps — Belene, Persin, Bobov Dol — were closed and some internees were transferred to the new labour-educational camp at Lovech, women to Skravena. It operated until 1962.
Among those isolated there without term and without sentence — as “hooligans”, “thieves, swindlers, drunkards, debauchees and other incorrigible non-labouring elements” — were “not a few representatives of the homosexual contingent”.
Caveat
Be careful how this is retold. No source we opened gives a number of gay men sent to Lovech, and none says Lovech was a camp for homosexuals. The documented claim is narrower: gay men were swept into an undifferentiated category of “asocials”, and some ended up in Lovech and Skravena. That is part of the cruelty — as Popova notes, dissolution into that mass “denies the homosexual existence as such”.
Medium confidence
1961, 1964, 1973/1974 and 1981
Four group trials against the cultural elite
Gruev writes of four group trials against members of the cultural elite accused of being “limp wrists” — in 1961, 1964, 1974 and the last in 1981. All were preceded by serious “prophylactic work” by State Security.
Caveat
Later in the same article Gruev writes that the next group trial after 1964 took place “in 1973”. Pachkova, citing him, gives 1961, 1964 and 1973. We cannot smooth this over: the best scholarly source on the subject contradicts itself. Hold at least four trials — 1961, 1964, the mid-1970s and 1981.
Medium confidence
1962 – 1963
Petlyovden — and why this is not “the first Pride”
According to State Security reports used by Gruev, in 1962 and 1963 performers from the Sofia Operetta staged a procession from the Central Mineral Baths to Gorna Banya — carrying a bucket of Vaseline, sitting down without trousers, eating simit and picking up deliberately scattered roasted chickpeas. Gruev reads it as the appropriation of Petlyovden (2 February) as a “guild” holiday, at a moment when the old ritual meaning had already dissolved.
In English this is often retold as “Bulgaria’s first Pride parade, 1963”. It was not. It was a subcultural happening, not a rights demonstration. And it is far more interesting than the myth.
In the same years, in the early 1960s, “vaseline” and “vaselinko” entered Bulgarian slang as words for a gay man; Gruev cites a dictionary of Bulgarian slang.
1964
The round-up and the group trial
After the procession was declared “a bright and undisguised manifestation against the people’s power”, the regime organised a group trial — of 28 people, according to Gruev and Pachkova. Before it, on the orders of Interior Minister Diko Dikov, a mass raid was mounted in Sofia and across the country. Those detained included the journalist Atanas Svilenov, the lyricist and impresario Vasil Andreev, the actor Georgi Partsalev and the poet and translator Borislav Georgiev. Those convicted received two to five years, served under a light regime, working in the brickworks by the South Park.
The only Bulgarian sexologist of the day, Dr Todor Bostandzhiev, appeared as expert witness and argued that homosexuality was a mental illness — and therefore a mitigating circumstance.
The investigation reached more highly placed figures, which forced the purge to be limited; some defendants were removed from the dock because of their social standing. After the trial, a large board with photographs of prominent “persons with unnatural manifestations” was hung in the Central Baths, so that citizens could recognise them.
Caveat
The number of defendants differs: Gruev and Pachkova say 28; English Wikipedia and the tabloid Blitz say 26. Gruev himself is candid that for the detail he relies on interviews in the tabloid Show of “doubtful reliability”, plus material he may legally cite only as “personal archive”.
Medium confidence
after 1964
Hormones
Vasil Andreev, one of the convicted men, told the magazine Show that experiments were carried out on the prisoners to “fix” them by injecting male hormones. Among those subjected to it was the ballet dancer known by the stage name Zhanet.
There is no cure for homosexuality or for communism.
One of the men subjected to hormone “treatment”, as recounted by Vasil Andreev Caveat
There is a second account — in an English-language article from 2021 — describing a two-arm protocol: one group injected with testosterone, another with oestrogen, shown images of men and then given an emetic; and a survivor who attributed a later pituitary adenoma to it. We could not trace that account to an archival or scholarly source. It is a survivor’s testimony relayed by an outlet, and should be read exactly that way.
Medium confidence
1968
The doctors ask: take this out of the code
Dr Todor Bostandzhiev prepared a submission to the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, co-signed by professors Shipkovenski, Sharankov and Zaimov, calling for homosexuality to be removed from the list of crimes in the code then being drafted.
Gruev also records that the drafting group sent one of its members, the future professor M. Palikarski, to interview men convicted of homosexuality serving light sentences in the brickworks at Novi Iskar.
Caveat
This is known from an interview with Bostandzhiev himself in the magazine Show in 2006 — retrospective testimony four decades later, not an archival document.
Medium confidence
Decriminalisation — over a year before Stonewall
The Criminal Code was promulgated in State Gazette 26 of 2 April 1968 (corrected in gazette 29 of 12 April) and entered into force on 1 May 1968. It abolished the general offence of consensual same-sex acts. The BHC puts it plainly: “With the adoption of this code, homosexuality was decriminalized for the first time in modern Bulgaria.”
That is over a year before Stonewall. Remember it the next time someone tells you all of this was imported, recently.
Caveat
The date “1966”, which circulates in English, is not supported by any statutory source we opened. The operative legal date is 1 May 1968; 1966 refers at most to the drafting debate.
1968 — the same code
But Article 157 remained, and criminalised visibility itself
Decriminalisation is not equality. Article 157 kept a separate offence for same-sex acts committed by force, threat, or abuse of a position of dependence or supervision — one to five years plus public censure. Separate paragraphs covered minors, public conduct, and same-sex acts for material gain; for the last of these the court could additionally order compulsory internal exile.
Gruev’s assessment: some formulations changed, but the maximum penalties remained the same as in the 1951 law. He calls what was left a “sword of Damocles”. The BHC adds that on a broad reading the public-conduct offence caught “two men holding hands while walking”.
So: from 1968 you could be gay at home. You could not be gay outdoors. That would last another 34 years.
…whoever performs homosexual acts openly and in a scandalous manner, or in a manner apt to incite another onto the path of perversion.
Article 157(3) of the Criminal Code as enacted in 1968 1968 – 1989
“Recruited on the basis of compromising material”
Gruev’s central finding is that the surviving provisions of Article 157 became a convenient means of blackmail for State Security against hundreds of people determined to keep their orientation secret. They were then forced to carry out some of the dirtiest tasks assigned to them, “not infrequently in relation to their own close friends and relatives”. In the files of many of them one reads the phrase “Recruited on the basis of compromising material”.
State Security also used its own taxonomy, gathered from informers inside the group: “window displays” (the visible), “grenades” (the concealed), “magi” (the uncertain). Through the 1970s and 1980s a Specialised Group for Combating Immoral Crimes monitored named places: the Central Baths, the toilets in front of Sofia University, the Doctor’s Garden and Solunska Street, Plovdiv railway station, the changing rooms on Varna beach, the baths at Hisarya and Krasnovo.
Gruev also describes police-organised beatings of gay men around public toilets, later assigned to trainees at the Interior Ministry and CSKA martial-arts schools as “live” practice, and a shooting in 1972 aimed at one of the attackers, after which a captain took his own life.
Caveat
This part rests partly on material Gruev may cite only as “personal archive” — because of the Classified Information Act and the Personal Data Act — and partly on the memoir of the former investigator G. Dilkov-Lorda, “Cop-Killer” (1996). He is explicit that his evidence base is thin and partly tabloid.
Medium confidence
1951 – 1988
What the textbooks said
In 1963 Dr Bostandzhiev created Bulgaria’s first sexology clinic within the Institute of Neurology and Psychiatry; in 1972 the group around him became the Institute of Sexology, with a parallel centre in Plovdiv.
In the 1950s “pederasty” or “uranism” was classed among “disorders of the will”, following the Soviet model. The standard 1973 psychiatry textbook for medical students placed it under “sexually perverted psychopathies” — while noting, for the first time, that its aetiology was disputed. By the 1988 psychiatry manual, whose section on sexual disorders was written by Bostandzhiev, Bulgarian medicine had moved close to international positions.
For comparison: the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1973; the World Health Organization removed it from the ICD only in 1991.
In parallel, Petar Dimkov’s “Bulgarian Folk Medicine”, republished and expanded in 1977, told parents that “the most harmful of all things for the soul and the body are onanism, pederasty and lesbianism”, and prescribed sourdough poultices, a salad of raw onion and parsley, and vegetarian wine.
The “illness” frame is both what condemned them and, in 1964, what reduced their sentences. The two travel together — which matters to anyone who hears the word “treatment” today.
The age of consent is equalised — for the first time
Until 1986 the age at which consent removed criminal liability for a same-sex partner was 18. The 1986 amendment lowered it to 14 — equal with the heterosexual threshold.
For the first time since the modern Bulgarian state was founded, the law measured with one measure. It would hold for eleven years.
The transition1989 – 2007
After 1989 nothing changed automatically. The discriminatory provisions fell one by one, between 2002 and 2006, largely because someone had set them out in black and white for a European audience.
Gemini — the first organisation
BGO Gemini was established on 9 September 1992 and became the country’s first membership-based national LGBT organisation.
It was seriously active as a representative organisation between 2001 and 2004: in 2003 it worked with other organisations on the adoption of the anti-discrimination law, in 2004 it organised Bulgaria’s first LGBT conference, and in 2006 Sofia hosted the 28th ILGA-Europe annual conference. Gemini also ran HIV and STI prevention work, and from 1 June 2005 campaigned for statutory recognition of de facto cohabitation — for same-sex and different-sex couples alike.
The organisation ceased operations at the end of 2009 / beginning of 2010.
Medium confidence
1993 – 1998
How many people were actually prosecuted under Article 157
The BHC published National Statistical Institute data on persons prosecuted under Article 157: 10 in 1993, 20 in 1994, 18 in 1995, 12 in 1996, 18 in 1997 and 37 in 1998. All were men.
All were prosecuted under the first three paragraphs. Not a single person was prosecuted for public or “scandalous” homosexual acts, or for homosexual prostitution. Article 157 cases were about 7% of the volume of the debauchery chapter and under 1% of all prosecuted persons.
The visibility offences almost never reached a courtroom. That does not mean they were not working: a threat does not have to be used in order to do its job.
The inequality is restored
The legislator raised the threshold again: same-sex acts with persons under 16 became prohibited, while the heterosexual threshold stayed at 14. The inequality abolished in 1986 was reinstated — and would stand for five years.
This is why the convenient sentence “the unequal age of consent, in place since 1968, was abolished in 2002” should not be repeated. The real sequence is: 18 from 1968, 14 from 1986, 16 from 1997, 14 from 2002.
October 2001
The Helsinki Committee describes the damage
The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee published Boyko Boev’s legal study on the position of homosexuals in Bulgarian legislation, recommending the repeal of exactly those provisions that would fall a year later. It was written for a Council of Europe audience and in the context of EU accession.
It remains the best single source on the legal position before 2002.
Visibility stops being a crime
The act amending the Criminal Code did two things. It returned the age of consent to 14 — equal. And it repealed the paragraph on homosexual acts performed “openly and in a scandalous manner”.
The second is almost never mentioned in English-language summaries, and it is the more important of the two. On 27 September 2002 — 34 years after “decriminalisation” — the public visibility of same-sex intimacy stopped being a crime in Bulgaria.
Gemini claims the change came at its initiative; the policy driver was most likely the BHC report of the previous year.
The Protection Against Discrimination Act
The act was drafted in 2003 and entered into force on 1 January 2004. It transposed EU Directives 2000/43/EC, 2000/78/EC and 2002/73/EC and established the Commission for Protection against Discrimination, alongside a three-instance civil claim route.
Sexual orientation is one of the protected grounds — because of the Framework Directive, which covers employment. That is why Bulgarian protection is still strongest at work.
Medium confidence
2003 – 2005
Bilitis — and the seven names
In 2004 several gay and bisexual women formed an informal group, out of which Bilitis was born — the first LGBTI organisation led by women and focused on women’s needs and rights. The founder, Monica Pisankaneva, chose the name.
Court registration required personal details. Of more than 20 women who had been meeting in a self-help group since 2003, only 7 gave their names. The rest did not consent to being made public.
That last fact is history, not a footnote: in 2004 most of the founders could not put their signature to a lesbian organisation.
In August 2005 Bilitis ran the first activist summer camp for lesbian and bisexual women in Varna — 15 participants. Out of it grew the Sofia LGBT Art Fest, today the Sofia LGBTI Community Fest.
March FOR equality
The first documented public gathering of non-heterosexual people in Bulgaria took place on 17 May 2005, for the International Day Against Homophobia. It was organised in Sofia by Gemini under the name “March FOR equality”.
Caveat
About 500 participants are reported. That figure comes from a Dnevnik article of the same day, cited in an encyclopaedia entry, but the article itself was not opened. If it is right, the march drew several times the attendance of the first Sofia Pride three years later — which is exactly why we do not publish it as settled.
Low confidence
The last expressly discriminatory paragraph falls
The paragraph punishing same-sex acts for material gain — with possible additional compulsory internal exile — was amended in 2002 and 2004 and finally repealed by an amendment promulgated in State Gazette 75 of 12 September 2006, in force from 13 October 2006.
From then on the code contains no provision punishing something merely because it is same-sex. Article 157 itself, however, remains — see the last entry in this chronology.
November 2007
Azis’s billboards are taken down
Dnevnik reported that Boyko Borisov, then mayor of Sofia, had ordered the removal of billboards showing Azis with his partner. Gemini responded with an open letter.
Medium confidence
Visibility2008 – 2026
Eighteen years between a hundred people behind a police cordon and ten thousand without a single incident — and then a law banning the subject in schools. This part of the history does not run in one direction.
The first Sofia Pride — and the petrol bomb
About 100 people marched across central Sofia to protest against discrimination. Reuters, filed the same day: riot police detained about 60 far-right extremists who threw a petrol bomb and tried to break up the march; others hurled eggs and some carried clubs. No one was hurt.
The Orthodox Patriarch called the march “immoral and sinful”. The Chief Mufti called homosexuality a disease. The Socialist prime minister Sergei Stanishev said he did not like “the manifestation and demonstration of such orientations”. The day before, Amnesty International had urged the authorities to provide adequate security.
Caveat
The numbers are disputed and we will not pretend otherwise. Reuters, on the scene and on the day: about 60 detained, roughly 100 marchers, at least one petrol bomb. Bulgarian Wikipedia: several hundred attackers and 88 arrested — uncited. English Wikipedia: 120 participants and 70 arrested before the march, attributed to the same Reuters story, which does not say that. Use the Reuters account.
The murder of Mihail Stoyanov
Mihail Stoyanov, a 25-year-old medical student, was beaten to death in Sofia’s Borisova Garden on the evening of 30 September 2008. For almost two years no one was detained. In June 2010 police arrested Radoslav Kirchev and Aleksandar Georgiev, who told investigators they had been part of a group of five that “cleansed” the park of gay men; investigators found indications of at least ten further attacks.
His mother, Hristina Stoyanova, has said publicly that she does not know whether her son was gay. He was killed because his attackers took him for gay. That is why this case sits in the chronology not as a story about a victim, but as a measure of what a criminal code without a hate-crime provision does.
The indictment was filed only in December 2012. On 4 May 2012, as the two-year detention limit expired, there was a citizens’ protest against the delay; in September 2012 the BHC and Amnesty International ran an international campaign. In 2017 the Sofia Appellate Court sentenced Georgiev to 15 years and Kirchev to 6; in 2018 the Supreme Court of Cassation reduced these to 10 years and 4 years 6 months.
Caveat
The chronology and the sentence lengths come from a detailed encyclopaedia article whose individual citations were not opened one by one. Treat the sentences as probable rather than verified.
Medium confidence
2009 – 2012
Pride grows
After Gemini ceased operations, Bilitis took over organising Sofia Pride in 2009. Attendance grew: over 300 in 2009 (27 June), over 700 in 2010 (26 June), over 1,200 in 2011 (18 June), more than 2,000 in 2012 (30 June).
After 2012 the organising committee expanded with the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and the youth organisation Deystvie, and GLAS joined in 2014.
Caveat
The 2009–2012 figures come from encyclopaedia entries and the news reports they cite; those reports were not opened. Treat them as orders of magnitude, not head counts.
Medium confidence
The Interior Ministry still holds a list
The weekly 168 Chasa reported that almost two decades after 1989 the Ministry of Interior still preserved and used an archive of Bulgarians registered as homosexuals. The paper obtained a document from the ministry’s archive and a copy from the Automated Information System stamped “true to the original” by the Sofia City Court, which had been used in a court case against a former MP.
Sources described current and former politicians in the lists, some registered since the 1970s; under the rules, each use of a file by an operational officer had to be recorded. Former interior minister Emanuil Yordanov told the paper such a list was unconstitutional and had to be destroyed. The ministry replied that the archive of homosexuals created by State Security had already been handed to the Files Commission.
The apparatus outlived the regime by twenty years.
2014
GLAS
Simeon Vasilev founded the GLAS Foundation (Gays and Lesbians Accepted in Society) — legal assistance for LGBT Bulgarians facing discrimination, and work on public understanding and acceptance. That same year GLAS joined the Sofia Pride organising committee.
Today four organisations stand behind Pride: Bilitis, GLAS, LGBT Deystvie and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee.
Medium confidence
The first legal gender recognition for an intersex person
The Sofia City Court allowed Paul Naydenov — a Bilitis co-chair and co-founder — to change his documents. It was the first legal gender recognition for an intersex person in Bulgaria.
2018
Rainbow Hub
Bilitis opened Rainbow Hub — the first LGBTI community centre in Bulgaria — in partnership with the GLAS Foundation and the youth organisation Deystvie.
The 10th Sofia Pride that year drew more than 3,000 people and 18 diplomatic missions.
Six thousand — and then silence
The 12th Sofia Pride, on 8 June 2019, drew around 6,000 people.
In 2020 Pride did not take place, because of the pandemic.
The first Pride outside Sofia — and the attack
The first Bourgas Pride was held on 15 May 2021 — the first Pride march outside the capital. Its 40 participants were attacked by hundreds of extremists who threw eggs, stones and smoke bombs and burnt a rainbow flag. Police were present and cordoned off the march, but allowed counter-demonstrators to deviate from their planned route and failed to protect the participants.
On the same day a special church service was held in Bourgas “in defence and support of the traditional Bulgarian family and Orthodox values”.
A second Bourgas Pride followed in July 2022.
Ten thousand, and not one incident
On 11 June, the day before Pride, activists projected rainbow colours onto the Parliament building to demand action on anti-LGBT hate crime, and handed over a petition with 17,000 signatures calling on the authorities to protect Pride.
On 12 June Sofia Pride drew over 10,000 people — and passed with no hostile incidents.
The attack on Rainbow Hub
The community centre Rainbow Hub and the LGBTI-inclusive space The Steps were vandalised several times during 2021. The attacks culminated on 30 October: the presidential candidate and neo-fascist party leader Boyan Rasate stormed into Rainbow Hub with ten others, punched a staff member in the face, and destroyed furniture and electronics. The staff member was Gloriya Filipova of the Bilitis Foundation, who was hosting a transgender support group at the time.
The court sequence: Rasate’s immunity was lifted and he was charged with hooliganism and grievous bodily harm; in June 2022 the Sofia City Court fined him 3,000 BGN for hooliganism but acquitted him of bodily harm, prompting a protest outside the Ministry of Justice on 27 June 2022. On 10 July 2023 the appellate court convicted him of causing light bodily injury: six months’ probation and 2,000 BGN compensation to Filipova. On further appeal he was acquitted again in 2026, the court citing conflicting witness accounts.
Rainbow Hub relocated and reopened in May 2022.
Caveat
The date is frequently confused, including in English-language summaries. The attack was on 30 October 2021. 2023 is the year of the appellate conviction, not of the attack.
A record
The 15th Sofia Pride, on 18 June 2022, was the largest to that date: 12,000 people according to ILGA-Europe.
The 16th Pride, in June 2023, is described in the same annual review only as drawing “thousands” — there is no precise figure.
Caveat
The organisers themselves speak of “nearly 15,000” for 2022, and a Bulgarian LGBT outlet reported “over 12,000”. We publish 12,000, because that is the figure in an independent international review, and we note the organisers’ higher estimate.
The ban in schools
Parliament approved, by 154 votes to 8 with 9 abstentions in the 240-seat chamber, an amendment to the Preschool and School Education Act tabled by the pro-Kremlin party Vazrazhdane. It prohibits “propaganda, promotion and incitement, in any way directly or indirectly, of ideas or views related to non-traditional sexual orientation or determination of gender identity other than biological”.
Georgi Svilenski of the Bulgarian Socialist Party moved to go straight to second and final reading. During roughly three hours of debate, the only person to object was Elisaveta Belobradova: “We are not debating real legislation, but carrying out an act of political campaign.”
Protesters at Nezavisimost Square called it “the law of hate”. In the weeks that followed there was a protest urging a presidential veto (15 August), a group of foreign envoys reaffirmed human rights commitments (16 August), and a pro-Kremlin party began targeting teachers who had opposed the law (22 August).
We are people, not propaganda
The 18th Sofia Pride took place under that slogan — a direct answer to the 2024 law. Six counter-protests were announced and the start was moved from 4pm to 5.30pm for safety. Six outdoor advertising companies refused to display the Pride campaign.
Denitsa Lyubenova, a lawyer with Deystvie, said at the time: “We can no longer rely so much on broad public support” — because of “growing rhetoric that presents LGBTI people and their rights as a threat”.
Sofia Pride 2026
Sofia Pride 2026 was held on 13 June in a festive atmosphere with no reported incidents, alongside a “March for the Family” counter-event endorsed by the prime minister Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria party and attended by the leadership of the Orthodox Church.
Caveat
None of the reports we opened gives an attendance figure for 2024, 2025 or 2026. So there is no number here. We will add one when there is a source.
Where we are now: Article 157 still exists
Article 157 has never been abolished. It is still a stand-alone offence, framed in terms of “sexual intercourse or acts of sexual satisfaction with a person of the same sex”. After amendments in 1982, 2015, 2023 and 2026, paragraph 1 punishes such acts committed by force, threat, abuse of a position of dependence or supervision, or against a person unable to defend themselves — with two to eight years’ imprisonment.
Following the 2026 amendments the protected threshold in paragraphs 3, 4 and 6 is 16. This is not a re-introduction of inequality: in 2026 the general age of consent in Bulgaria became 16 for everyone, across the whole sexual offences chapter. We say so explicitly, because international trackers list “age of consent 16 since 2026” without that context and it is easily misread.
The structural problem does remain: Bulgaria still writes same-sex sexual violence into an article separate from Article 152 (rape). That is a direct legacy of the 1951 and 1968 architecture.
People, and what we know about them
This is the point where most sites dump twenty names and a photograph. We are not going to.
Bulgarian historiography on this is thin and contested. For almost no one in the past is there a first-person statement — there are relatives, biographers, police files and rumour. So every name here carries a label saying exactly what stands behind it. If the label is weak, that is part of the information, not a flaw in the design.
Three well-documented people are worth more than twenty guesses. Especially when the guesses are about people who cannot answer.
The evidence levels
- Said so themselves
- We opened and read a source in which the person speaks about themselves, in their own words.
- Reported to have spoken publicly
- Reference works point to interviews whose originals we could not open. Probable, but unverified by us.
- Documented relationship or documented persecution
- Testimony from someone close, or archival/historical documentation. No statement by the person themselves.
- Asserted by historians and biographers
- A posthumous claim in a book or article. The weakest level we publish at all — and only with a caveat.
Said so themselves
Azis
Vasil Troyanov Boyanov, pop-folk singer
In a long interview in 2017, Azis spoke about himself without hedging. This is unambiguous self-identification — we read the passage in context.
He is also the subject of a documented act of state censorship: in November 2007 his billboards showing him with his partner were removed on the order of the then mayor of Sofia. Reuters described him in 2008 as Bulgaria’s “gay idol”.
So God made me a Gypsy, gay, fat — the only thing he did not give me was some terrible illness.
Azis, interview for interview.to, 2017 (translated from the Bulgarian) Caveat
A reference article reports that in late January 2026 he married an American partner in Florida, citing a bTV interview of 30 January 2026. We did not open that interview — treat the marriage as probable, not verified.
Said so themselves
Yordan Slaveykov
writer and theatre director
On 17 June 2016 Slaveykov published a first-person essay on his own blog about living as a gay man in Bulgaria. We read the post. It is taken as his coming out.
The text is also a good historical document in itself: in it he notes that the Criminal Code still had no hate-crime provision, that “being homosexual in Bulgaria is not a crime, by virtue of the Criminal Code of the distant year 1968”, and that eight years after the killing of Mihail Stoyanov the sentences were still not final.
I keep meeting hatred towards me, well or badly concealed, among people I think of as my friends.
Yordan Slaveykov, personal blog, 17 June 2016 (translated from the Bulgarian) Reported to have spoken publicly
Marius Kurkinski
actor and director
According to a reference article citing the newspaper Standart of 5 April 2014, Kurkinski publicly disclosed that he is gay back in the 1990s. In an interview with 24 Chasa on 25 December 2011 he said that “a relationship between me and a woman is impossible. It is important to be honest in this case” — while stating firm disapproval of same-sex marriage and adoption.
If the 1990s dating holds, Kurkinski is plausibly the first prominent Bulgarian public figure to come out. And that he did so while opposing marriage equality is itself historically interesting: it captures the shape of Bulgarian public discourse.
Caveat
We opened neither the Standart article nor the 24 Chasa interview — Standart’s older addresses do not load. The “1990s” dating is medium confidence and should be checked before anyone publishes it as a “first”.
Reported to have spoken publicly
Lucy Diakovska
singer, No Angels
Diakovska is publicly out. The reference article about her cites Bild of 17 October 2007 headlining her own words, an AfterEllen report of 15 October 2008 saying she had come out publicly as bisexual several years earlier and now identified as a lesbian, and Novinite of 21 May 2012 on her plans to marry. In 2012 she took part in VIP Brother with her partner Kameliya Veselinova.
Caveat
We opened none of those three items. That she is out is highly probable; the chronology and the bisexual-then-lesbian sequence, less so. We also note that Diakovska is a contested public figure in Bulgaria for a separate reason: in February 2013 statements she made about Roma people on ARD were publicly disputed as stigmatising.
Documented relationship or documented persecution
Emil Dimitrov
singer, 1940 – 2005
On 23 December 2020, on the 80th anniversary of his father’s birth, Emil Dimitrov Jr told the newspaper Standart: “My father did not parade it, but he always said he was bisexual.” We read the article.
Separately, Gruev describes the lyricist and impresario Vasil Andreev as Dimitrov’s “intimate friend”, and records that the regime intended to detain Dimitrov in the 1964 round-up but he was abroad, “probably warned by sympathisers”. Andreev spent two months in the brickworks in the Ivan Vazov district.
So there is only one sentence that can be written here: his son said publicly in 2020 that his father privately described himself as bisexual. Not “Emil Dimitrov was bisexual”.
Documented relationship or documented persecution
Georgi Partsalev
actor, 1925 – 1989
Partsalev was among those detained in the 1964 round-up ordered by Interior Minister Diko Dikov. That is the documented part.
He never spoke publicly about his sexuality. The claim that he was gay rests on two posthumous Bulgarian biographies — by Pencho Kovachev (2018) and Georgi Toshev (2020). We have opened neither.
We keep that separation deliberately. The persecution is documented. The identity is someone else’s assertion. The man can no longer say anything about it.
Caveat
Gruev’s list of 1964 detainees itself rests on tabloid interviews and on material he can cite only as “personal archive”.
Asserted by historians and biographers
Chavdar Dragoychev
cardiac surgeon, son of Tsola Dragoycheva
Gruev places Dragoychev at the centre of a protected elite: the 1964 investigation reached him, which forced the purge to be limited; and in the 1970s and 1980s his large flat on Tolbuhin Boulevard (today V. Levski) became a gathering place on 2 February for theatre and film directors and well-known figures.
There is no statement by him on the subject. After his death, outlets including 24 Chasa (2016) wrote that he was gay. Reference works note that he never married and had no children — which on its own proves nothing.
Caveat
Gruev’s source for the flat is a tabloid interview from 2006. He also relays, but expressly doubts, a memoir claim that Tsola Dragoycheva went to Brezhnev to protect her son; he thinks it more likely she spoke to Todor Zhivkov.
Asserted by historians and biographers
Ferdinand I
prince and tsar of Bulgaria, 1861 – 1948
A modern Bulgarian historian (Aleksandar Zlatarski, 2008) writes that Ferdinand was bisexual. The same reference entry immediately qualifies it: “according to contemporaries his interest in women predominated”, citing Stephen Constant’s biography.
So: his sexuality was the subject of talk in his lifetime and of historical writing afterwards. There is no self-description in the public record that we found. We opened neither book.
Which is why we will not call him “Bulgaria’s gay tsar”. That is precisely the kind of claim this page exists to handle differently.
Who we do not list, and why
- Names that circulate online only because someone added a category tag to an encyclopaedia article — Vaska Emanuilova and Emil Chakarov, for example. The text of those articles contains no claim on the subject at all, let alone a source. A tag is not evidence of anything.
- There are other public figures whom reference works describe as having spoken openly about themselves, but the interviews they cite were not ones we could open. We will add them once we have read the interview itself — not before. Not because we doubt them, but because the rule of this page is that the source is read before the name is written.
- Rumours, anecdotes and tabloid “revelations” with nothing behind them. A large share of Bulgarian writing on this subject is exactly that.
- And most importantly: we out no one. Not the living, and not the dead, where there is no document. The state has already made lists of names. We are not going to make another one.
The silence in the archive
Both principal Bulgarian studies on the subject open by conceding that the field barely exists. Gruev, writing in 2006: “In Bulgaria the retrospective study of the various kinds of sexuality is in its infancy. In practice it has not taken place.”
He also writes that legal restrictions — the Classified Information Act and the Personal Data Act — force him to cite part of his source base only as “personal archive”, and that much of the rest consists of tabloid interviews of doubtful reliability. And that he treats only male homosexuality, because of “the almost complete absence of sources on lesbianism in the period”.
The second substantial Bulgarian-language treatment — Petya Pachkova’s article in NotaBene 58 (2022) — reproduces the same documents from an openly revisionist standpoint: it puts “socialism” in scare quotes and calls the development of LGBT rights after 1989 “the legitimation and stimulation of homosexuality”. We cite it only for the documents it reprints, never for its interpretation.
The absence of sources is not evidence that there were no people. It is evidence that somebody made sure there would be no trace.
What the record shows
- In 1945 and 1946 the state ordered lists to be drawn up.
- In 1951 it wrote a separate article, applying to women as well.
- In 1964 it mounted a round-up, tried twenty-eight people — twenty-six by other accounts — and hung a board of photographs in the Central Baths.
- From 1968 to 2002 it kept an offence in the code that made visibility a crime.
- As late as 2010 the Interior Ministry still held a register of people recorded as homosexual.
- In 2024 parliament banned the subject in schools by 154 votes to 8.
Between those dates are people whose names we will never learn. Not because they did not exist, but because they were careful — and because, in the circumstances, being careful was the right decision. The silence in the archive is not emptiness. It is the mark left by pressure, the way a dent is the mark left by weight.
So if anyone tells you this is new, a fashion, or something that arrived from outside: the oldest punishment for a same-sex act in Bulgarian law was translated from Greek more than a thousand years ago. We have been here from the beginning. The only new thing is that some of us now say it out loud.
Sources
Every line above rests on something in this list. The BHC’s 2001 legal study and the texts of the Criminal Code are first-hand documents — the entire legal section stands on them. Where an encyclopaedia article is listed, it means we read the article and its citations but could not open the underlying source; those places are marked in the text too. Pachkova’s study is cited only for the documents it reprints.
- Boyko Boev, “Bulgarian legislation about homosexuals” (legal study)
- Mihail Gruev, “Homosexuality in Bulgaria, 1944–1989”
- Criminal Code — consolidated text in force
- Criminal Code — archived capture showing the amendment history of Article 157
- Petya Pachkova, “Homosexuality in Bulgaria”, NotaBene 58 (cited only for the documents it reprints)
- Biserka Borisova, “A secret list of gay men at the Interior Ministry”
- Anna Mudeva, “About 60 arrested at Bulgaria’s first gay parade”
- History of the Bilitis Foundation
- About Sofia Pride
- ILGA-Europe, Annual Review 2022 — Bulgaria
- ILGA-Europe, Annual Review 2023 — Bulgaria
- Protest after parliament approved the law against “LGBTI propaganda” in schools
- Sofia Pride 2025: “We are people, not propaganda”
- Interview with Vasil Troyanov Boyanov (Azis)
- Yordan Slaveykov, “(One more) storm in a parade cup”
- Emil Dimitrov Jr: “My father was bisexual”
- Sofia Pride — encyclopaedia article (used as an index, not as authority)
- The murder of Mihail Stoyanov — encyclopaedia article
- Protection Against Discrimination Act — encyclopaedia article
- Ferdinand I of Bulgaria — encyclopaedia article
- Marius Kurkinski — encyclopaedia article (we did not open the interviews it cites)
- Lucy Diakovska — encyclopaedia article (we did not open the items it cites)