Bulgaria is still one of the cheapest countries in the European Union to spend a week in, and that has not changed with the euro. What will change for contest week is accommodation, and only accommodation. Everything else — buses, coffee, dinner, a taxi across town — costs what it costs in May in a Bulgarian coastal city, and that is not much.
Here is what that means in practice.
Money basics
Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026 at the fixed rate of 1.95583 lev to €1. The lev stopped being legal tender on 1 February 2026, though the National Bank still exchanges leva banknotes and coins for euro free of charge, without limit and without a deadline.
For a visitor in 2027 this simply means: prices are in euro, cards work everywhere they would elsewhere in the EU, and there is no exchange booth to hunt for. If you are reading an old guide that quotes prices in lev, divide by roughly two.
What things actually cost
These are ordinary Burgas prices in 2026, not contest-week prices:
| Item | Roughly |
|---|---|
| City bus ticket, bought on board | €0.80 |
| E-ticket with 45 minutes of transfers | €0.61–0.66 |
| Night bus | €1.00 |
| Coffee in a normal café | €1.50–2.50 |
| Beer in a bar, half litre | €2–4 |
| Lunch, a main course in a normal restaurant | €7–12 |
| Dinner for two with wine, decent place | €40–60 |
| Taxi across the city | a few euro |
| Supermarket shop for a day, per person | €8–12 |
None of these will rise dramatically in contest week. Restaurants near the arena will be busy and may drop to a limited menu; the fish restaurants in Sarafovo and the tourist strips in Sozopol and Nesebar will charge summer prices because in May they are opening for the season anyway.
Accommodation: the number that will move
This is where your budget is decided. Burgas has around 225,000 residents and an accommodation stock built for July and August. In mid-May the city normally has plenty of empty rooms and low prices. In mid-May 2027 it will have nine sold-out shows in a 15,000-capacity arena, plus delegations, press and production crews who booked long before you.
Two consequences worth planning for:
- Prices will not follow the usual May pattern. Any figure you find from a previous May tells you nothing about this one.
- The scarce thing is not price, it is proximity. Izgrev and Slaveykov — the two districts within a ten-minute walk — have limited stock and will clear first at any price.
We publish a price index tracking median and average nightly asking prices for the 10–16 May window, town by town, from the listings on this site. It is honest about its own limits: a town needs at least three priced listings before its figures are shown publicly, because a "median" over one listing is just that listing's asking price wearing a statistic's clothes. It tracks what owners are asking, not what guests end up paying, and it does not scrape prices from booking sites.
A realistic weekly budget, per person
Assuming two people sharing, arriving Sunday and leaving the following Sunday, and excluding tickets and flights:
- Frugal — a room in Meden Rudnik or a coastal town, buses everywhere, supermarket breakfasts, eating out once a day: roughly €45–65 a day.
- Comfortable — an apartment in Lazur or the centre, a mix of buses and taxis, eating out twice a day, drinks in the evening: roughly €80–120 a day.
- No compromises — a flat within walking distance of the arena, taxis when you want them, restaurants without checking the price: €150+ a day, mostly driven by the room.
Contest tickets, when they are announced, sit on top of all of this. At recent contests the Grand Final has been by some distance the most expensive ticket and the preview shows the cheapest, often by a factor of several — see the tickets page.
Where the budget quietly leaks
- The midnight taxi you did not plan for. After a show that empties 15,000 people at once, a ride home from a town 25 km up the coast is not a bus fare.
- Booking a cheap room far out and then paying to get in and out of town twice a day. Work out the transport cost for the whole week before congratulating yourself on the nightly rate.
- Non-refundable bookings made before you have a ticket. Book cancellable, then commit. This is the whole argument of the tickets page.
- Airport transfers at odd hours. Line 15 runs roughly 06:00 to 23:00. Outside that, it is a taxi.
Booking direct
Everything listed on BulgariaRest is booked with the owner directly — there is no booking fee and no commission in the middle, which on a week's stay is a real difference rather than a slogan. It also means the terms are whatever you agree with them, so ask about cancellation in writing before you pay a deposit.