Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: Shutterstock Although there are still ten months left until the Eurovision Song Contest, the contest management is already working diligently and moving towards choosing the city that will host the contest, which is coming to Bulgaria for the first time.
As we recently published here, four cities are competing in a kind of internal tender in Bulgaria for the right to host the historic competition for them: Sofia, Varna, Plovdiv, and Burgas.
According to leaks to the Bulgarian media and captions that appeared during reports on the subject on Bulgarian television, the decision has apparently already been made and, unsurprisingly, the host city will be the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia.
Hosting the contest is considered a major economic engine and a great opportunity for the host city to present itself to the world. According to official figures, this year, the Eurovision Song Contest held in Vienna brought almost 200,000 tourists to the Austrian capital in one week, twice the number of tickets sold for all shows and rehearsals.
Historically, this is a common decision, as countries hosting Eurovision for the first time usually do so in their capital city. This was the case in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2012, Lisbon, Portugal in 2018, and of course Jerusalem in 1979.
The official announcement of the city that will host Eurovision will be made after the conclusion of discussions between the Bulgarian Broadcasting Authority BNT1 and the management of the European Broadcasting Union and is expected to be published next month, August 2026.