Easter in Bulgaria

Easter, Velikden or the Great Day, is the biggest feast of the Bulgarian year, known for red eggs, braided kozunak bread and a midnight service that ends with candles carried through dark streets. This guide covers when Bulgarian Easter falls in 2027 and 2028, what happens on each day of Holy Week, what goes on the table and how to spend Easter in Sofia as a visitor.

Easter in Bulgaria at a glance

Bulgaria is mostly Eastern Orthodox, and Easter is the center of the church year, ahead of Christmas. The customs run across Holy Week, from cleaning the house on Monday to the egg fights on Sunday, and they survived even the communist decades, when church life was discouraged.

Easter is also a family holiday. Many Bulgarians leave Sofia for their home towns or for Greece over the long weekend, so the city is quieter than usual until the churches fill on Saturday night.

When is Easter in Bulgaria?

Orthodox Easter is set by the Julian calendar, while Western churches use the Gregorian one. That means Bulgarian Easter usually falls later than Western Easter, anywhere from 4 April to 8 May, and only in some years on the same Sunday.

The gap is five weeks in 2027, the widest of the three years.

Spring starts earlier, on 1 March, when Bulgarians tie on their red and white martenitsa charms, and the bigger festivals in Bulgaria run from the kukeri in January to the Rose Festival in June.

Palm Sunday and Lazarus Saturday

The week before Easter opens with Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday, which Bulgarians call Tsvetnitsa, Flower Day, or Vrabnitsa, Willow Day. There are no palms here, so willow twigs take their place.

From early morning, people queue outside the churches with bunches of flowers and willow. They leave the flowers at the icon of their favorite saint, take blessed twigs home, and weave them into wreaths for the front door and the household icon, as protection against bad luck. For many families the twigs count for more than the service itself.

Palm Sunday is also a big name day. Everyone with a name taken from a flower or a plant celebrates: Margarita, Yavor, Dilyana, Yasen, Zdravko, and the many Tsvetans, Tsvetelins and Tsvetomirs whose names simply mean flower. Almost every family has one, so Palm Sunday ends with name-day parties across the country.

Holy Week day by day

Holy Week has a fixed task for almost every day.

Holy Thursday is the day of the eggs. By tradition they are dyed at dawn, so that the first rays of the sun fall on the first egg, which is always red, for the blood of Christ. While it is still wet, the mother of the house draws a cross with it on the foreheads of the children.

Good Friday is the saddest day of the Christian year. Work stops, and the bells toll for Christ's death until Easter. In church, the more devout crawl three times under a table covered in flowers, which stands for the grave of Christ. Popular belief says it keeps you healthy for the year. The evening service lasts hours, and I'd go to it once if you are here that night.

On Holy Saturday, women go to the cemetery, burn incense at the graves and hand out bread and colored eggs so that the souls of the dead can rest. Then the city waits for midnight.

The midnight service on Holy Saturday

The Easter service starts at about 11:30 PM on Holy Saturday. Earlier that day the Holy Fire arrives from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, flown in on the Bulgarian government's plane, and is driven straight out to churches and monasteries for the night.

The service is slow and solemn, with gold vestments, incense and a choir. Toward midnight the priest leaves the church and goes out into the night, and the congregation follows him. At midnight he lights the first candles from the Holy Fire and calls out "Hristos voskrese", Christ is risen. The crowd answers "Voistina voskrese", indeed he is risen.

From there the flame passes from candle to candle until the square is full of light. By custom everyone walks three times around the church, and then people carry their lit candles home through the streets, trying not to let them go out. Until the early 2000s most families also marked a cross of candle smoke over the front door, a custom fewer keep now that the church is often a long way from home.

In Sofia, the service I'd pick is at Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, one of the largest Orthodox cathedrals in the Balkans. Every parish church holds its own service, and the smaller churches in Sofia, such as St Nedelya and the Russian Church, make a more intimate choice. Easter is the one night of the year when you see them packed to the doors.

Red eggs and egg fights

The egg fight, chukane, is the Easter game everyone plays. Two people each hold a dyed egg and tap the tips together, and the egg that cracks loses. The owner of the last unbroken egg is meant to have a year of good health and luck.

The fights start right after the midnight service, often with the first egg knocked against the church wall. They carry on through Easter Day and the next few days. The first egg dyed on Thursday is kept in the house until the next Easter.

Eggs are also gifts. Families send red eggs and Easter bread to relatives and friends, and one loaf is usually decorated with an odd number of red eggs pressed into the top. Odd numbers run through Bulgarian culture, from the bunch of flowers a guest brings the hostess to the dishes on the Christmas Eve table.

Kozunak, lamb and the Easter table

The Easter meal breaks the Lent fast, which in its strict form means no meat, fish, dairy or eggs for weeks. Bulgarians eat eggs, kozunak and roast lamb at Easter whether or not they kept the fast.

Kozunak

Kozunak is the Easter bread: a sweet, braided loaf, rich like brioche, often with raisins soaked in rum. The dough is started on Holy Thursday, and the loaves are baked on Good Friday or Holy Saturday and served on Easter morning with the red eggs.

Kurabiiki, small sugar cookies, are made for Easter too, and with kozunak they are the Bulgarian desserts you are most likely to be offered in Easter week. If you are not invited into a home, a slice of kozunak with your morning coffee is the easiest way to join in.

Roast lamb

Lamb is the Easter Sunday main course, roasted for the family lunch after the fast. In 1929 Sofia still had an Easter lamb market, where families bought their lamb live before the holiday.

Outside Easter week, the slow-cooked dish I'd order instead is kavarma, a stew of pork, chicken or beef baked in a clay pot and one of the classics of Bulgarian food.

Easter in Sofia for visitors: what is open

Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays, and with the weekend between them Easter makes a four-day break.

Churches are open, and Holy Week is the best time of year to see them full of people and candles. Dress as you would for any Orthodox church: shoulders and knees covered, and hats off for men. Keep your phone away during the services, and step aside for people lighting candles.

For a day out of the city, Rila Monastery is open daily. Its church keeps longer hours from Easter to October, which makes the Easter weekend a good time for the trip.

The weather is usually kind. April highs in Sofia average about 15°C and May about 20°C, though spring can turn wet. For a 2027 trip, early May falls just ahead of the best time to visit Sofia, late May to June, and the parks are already at their best.

Easter greetings and church etiquette

The greeting is yours to use in Easter week too: say "Hristos voskrese" in a shop or a cafe, and the reply is "Voistina voskrese".

Two more Bulgarian phrases cover the Easter table: "blagodarya" for thank you and "nazdrave" for cheers.

Visitors are welcome at every service. Stand at the back or to the side if you are not taking part, light a candle if you like, and follow the crowd when it walks around the church at midnight. If you get an invitation to an Easter lunch, say yes: it is the warmest way to see the holiday, and flowers for the hostess are the gift to bring.

Christmas Eve is a quiet family dinner of meatless dishes, while Easter is loud and public, with crowds in the streets at midnight. For the winter feast, Christmas and New Year in Sofia bring markets, carols and fortunes baked into banitsa.