On November 18, 2025, millions of users in Bulgaria and dozens of countries were left without access or with limited access to leading internet platforms due to a large-scale technical outage in Cloudflare's infrastructure. Social networks, streaming services, media sites and numerous online applications, including X, Spotify and a number of Bulgarian resources, were affected.
Cloudflare — a company whose infrastructure serves more than 20% of internet traffic in Europe and the world — confirmed the incident in an official statement. The reason is a combination of errors in routing and server overload during the deployment of a new version of the platform.
Massive 5xx server errors (server errors) were immediately detected, which forced hundreds of administrators and businesses to inform their customers about temporary difficulties.
Specialists remind — such outages are rare, but emphasize the need for more sustainable backup solutions in the modern digitally dependent economy. Within two hours, Cloudflare managed to restore most of the services through emergency corrections and traffic redirection.
Immediately after the problem was localized, Cloudflare customers received a recommendation to look out for updates and possible short interruptions in the coming hours.
Experts believe that the case will accelerate investments in backup mechanisms and will consolidate standards for transparency and control when implementing critical updates in the global internet infrastructure.