Bulgaria's election winner Rumen Radev receives mandate to form government

SOFIA - Bulgaria's President Iliana Iotova offered election winner Rumen Radev the mandate to form a new government as prime minister on Thursday after his Progressive Bulgaria comfortably won a parliamentary election last month, the eighth in five years.

The eurosceptic former fighter pilot's party won 44.6% of the vote in the parliamentary election on April 19, giving it a majority of seats in the 240-seat legislature.

After receiving the mandate, Radev outlined his future cabinet, which is expected to be approved by the parliament on Friday.

Radev stepped down from Bulgaria's largely ceremonial presidency in January to run in the April parliamentary election after mass protests over corruption and rising living costs forced out the previous government in December.

PB's victory, the single biggest vote haul in a generation, will enable Radev to head Bulgaria's first single-party government in nearly three decades, a boost to political stability after repeated elections.

Velislava Petrova-Chamova and Galab Donev will take over as foreign and finance ministers in the new cabinet, which will have to swiftly pass a new budget, set a debt ceiling to ensure payments for pensions and salaries and recover missed EU funds.

(Reporting by Alex Alex Lefkowitz, writing by Angeliki Koutantou and Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Alex Richardson and Peter Graff)

Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.

This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 10:32 AM.