Bulgaria: company start-ups plunge 31 percent – but insolvencies fall too
In the third quarter, 7,968 new companies were registered in Bulgaria, 31 percent fewer than a year earlier. At the same time, insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings fell by 22.1 percent.
Symbolic image · Photo: Sami C / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Fewer and fewer new companies are being founded in Bulgaria. From July to September, 7,968 new legal entities were registered, according to data from the National Statistical Institute (NSI) reported by the portal Business.dir.bg. That was 31 percent fewer than in the third quarter of 2025; in the second quarter, the decline had been 9.2 percent. Compared with the previous quarter, with 11,334 new registrations, the figure fell by 29.7 percent.
At the same time, fewer companies ran into trouble: in the third quarter, 791 firms entered insolvency or bankruptcy proceedings or were declared insolvent. That was 22.1 percent fewer than a year earlier, after a 17.7 percent decline in the second quarter. Compared with the previous quarter's 966 cases, the number fell by 18.1 percent. According to the report, trade including vehicle repair remained the leading sector in both categories, accounting for 84.4 percent of new registrations and 90 percent of insolvencies.