Bulgaria's planning regions will drop from six to four on 1 January 2027. Burgas will join a new Eastern region along with Varna, under a bill from the regional development ministry to change the Regional Development Act.

Under the new map, Burgas splits from Stara Zagora. Right now the two are both in the Southeast region, along with Sliven and Yambol.

The borders of provinces and municipalities won't change. All 28 provinces stay, none will close, and no new provincial administrations will open. Only the way they're grouped into NUTS 2 regions changes.

The Eastern region will cover six provinces: Dobrich, Varna, Shumen, Burgas, Sliven and Yambol. The Northern region will have 11: Vidin, Montana, Vratsa, Lovech, Pleven, Gabrovo, Veliko Tarnovo, Targovishte, Ruse, Razgrad and Silistra. The Southern region will have 10: Sofia province, Pernik, Kyustendil, Blagoevgrad, Pazardzhik, Smolyan, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora, Haskovo and Kardzhali. Sofia municipality will become its own separate Sofia region.

The current six regions — Northwest, North Central, Northeast, Southeast, South Central and Southwest — will disappear. Right now, at the top NUTS 1 level, the country is split into two zones; from 2027 the whole country becomes one single region. Provinces stay as the NUTS 3 level.

The European Commission has written the new structure into Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/195, and the NUTS 2027 classification has now been finally adopted.

The Northern, Eastern and Southern regions will each get an integrated territorial development strategy. For the Sofia region, the integrated development plan of Sofia municipality will do the job of a regional strategy instead. The new plans cover 2028 to 2034.

The regional development councils will also be reshuffled, with one for each of the four new level-2 regions. The councils for the Northern, Eastern and Southern regions will include the provincial governors and representatives from the municipalities. The Sofia council will include the governor of Sofia province, the mayor of Sofia municipality, the head of the Sofia municipal council, and the mayors of the city's districts.

The change is meant for EU statistics, EU funding and regional development — it is not a new administrative setup. Eurostat uses the NUTS 2 level specifically when it compares how regions are doing economically, and for part of the money under cohesion policy. The regrouping changes the statistical baseline that will be used to measure the gaps between regions going forward.