Getting Around Bulgaria: Buses, Trains, Driving and Flights

Bulgaria is a compact country with cheap public transport, and almost every trip starts in Sofia. Intercity buses do most of the work, trains handle the night runs and the scenic lines, and a car opens up the mountains and monasteries. Here is how each one works in 2026, with times and euro fares from Sofia, the driving rules, and which way I'd travel for each kind of trip.

Getting around Bulgaria at a glance

Buses in Bulgaria

The intercity bus is the default way between Bulgarian towns. On most routes it is faster and more frequent than the train, and it reaches far more towns than the railway.

Private companies run the routes, and Union Ivkoni, Biomet, Grup Plus and Etap are the names you will see most on the departure screens. FlixBus runs some of the international routes, including 3 buses a day to Istanbul.

Sofia's bus stations

Most intercity buses leave from Sofia Central Bus Station at 100 Knyaginya Maria Luiza Boulevard, next to the railway station and about 1 km north of the center. Inside are dozens of company ticket windows and a departures screen, and the Central Railway Station stop on metro line M2 is outside.

Serdika bus station stands right next door, and some international and domestic buses use it instead, so check which of the two your ticket names. Some southbound buses, to Dupnitsa, Blagoevgrad and Bansko among them, also leave from Ovcha Kupel bus station in the west of the city, and the direct buses to Borovets go from Yug bus station.

Buying bus tickets

For most routes you can buy at the company window on the day, and some companies also sell online. The coast is the exception in July and August, when the buses from Sofia to Burgas and Varna fill a day or two ahead. Small-town bus stations are slow to take cards, so carry some cash in euros for the window.

On the bus

Seats are assigned, so sit in the one on your ticket. Many station toilets charge a small fee, so keep a few coins. In Veliko Tarnovo, buses arrive at the South bus station outside the old center, and a short taxi ride covers the gap.

Trains in Bulgaria

Trains in Bulgaria are run by BDZ and are slower than the buses on most routes, but a little cheaper. They win in three cases: the night sleepers to Varna and Burgas, the slow scenic lines such as the narrow-gauge railway to Bansko, and short, easy trips such as Plovdiv, Koprivshtitsa or Pernik.

The trains leave from Sofia Central Station, next to the bus station. Tickets are sold on bileti.bdz.bg and at the station windows, and in November 2026 track works add a change to many trains out of Sofia, so read the details of each result before you buy.

Sofia to everywhere: times and fares

For a day trip to Plovdiv, the first buses leave Sofia early in the morning, the last reliable one back runs around 8 PM, and the return seats sell out on Friday and Sunday evenings, so buy the return when you arrive. To Veliko Tarnovo the bus is the clear winner, because most trains stop at Gorna Oryahovitsa, about 10 km away, and leave you to change.

Bansko works well by bus in summer and winter, with direct coaches in about 2 hours 50 minutes. The two places that catch people out are Belogradchik and Melnik: each has a single direct bus a day, so a visit by bus means a night there.

Driving in Bulgaria

Mountain roads are the slow part of driving in Bulgaria: they narrow and twist, and the map's times run long.

The e-vignette

Motorways and most national roads need an electronic vignette, linked to your license plate, with no sticker on the windshield. Buy it on the official bgtoll.bg portal or app before you set off: it activates at once, and since 3 February 2026 there is a one-day vignette for a single day's drive. A car pays €5.30 for a day, €6.60 for a weekend, €10 for a week and €19.90 for a month. The Danube bridges to Romania charge their own separate toll.

Rules that catch foreign drivers

Since September 2025, average-speed cameras time cars between two points, so braking for each camera does not help. The drop from 90 to 50 km/h at every village sign is where I'd watch the speedometer most closely.

Dipped headlights are compulsory day and night, all year. The car must carry a warning triangle, a first-aid kit, a fire extinguisher and a reflective vest, so check all four are in the trunk before you leave the rental desk.

The alcohol limit is 0.5 g/l, and with taxis this cheap I'd never drive after a drink.

Roads, rental cars and licenses

The A1 Trakia motorway runs from Sofia to Plovdiv and on to Burgas, and it is the easiest long drive in the country. The A3 Struma heads south toward Greece past Dupnitsa and Blagoevgrad. The A2 Hemus toward Varna is still unfinished in sections, so part of the drive to the north coast runs on slower two-lane roads, where I'd keep right and let faster cars past.

A small rental car costs about €15 to €25 a day before fuel. An EU license is valid as it is, and drivers from elsewhere should carry an International Driving Permit with their license. Inside Sofia itself I'd leave the car parked: the metro and taxis do the job better.

Where a car makes the difference

Public transport covers the cities and the corridors between them well, and thins out fast beyond them. These are the places where I'd rent a car, or plan around a long wait:

• Rila Monastery, 127 km south, with no regular direct bus from Sofia in 2026.
• The Seven Rila Lakes, where the chairlift above Panichishte is a 1.5 to 2-hour drive away, against a bus to Dupnitsa plus a taxi of about €15 without a car.
• Buzludzha, where no bus or train climbs to the monument.
• The wine country, since Bulgarian wine regions are best seen a winery at a time.
• The Rhodope villages and the small towns south of Burgas, where the buses thin out.

For the far northwest, Belogradchik's rocks are about a 3-hour drive against a single afternoon bus.

Domestic flights

Bulgaria Air flies Sofia to Varna 2 to 3 times a day in about 50 minutes, and there are flights to Burgas too. Varna's airport sits 8 km west of the center. With the airport transfers at both ends, I'd fly only on the long coast runs in summer, where the alternative is a 6 to 7-hour bus ride.

Ride-sharing and taxis

Ride-sharing in Bulgaria runs mostly through Facebook groups, where drivers post their trips and spare seats, and BlaBlaCar is not widely used here. A shared ride depends on someone driving your way on your day, so I'd treat it as a backup to the bus.

Uber left Bulgaria in 2015, and Bolt offers only scooters and bikes, so taxis come from licensed companies such as TaxiMe, Yellow! and OK Supertrans, ordered through their apps or by phone.

Getting around inside the cities

In Sofia the center is walkable, and the Sofia metro covers the airport, the railway and bus stations and the south end of Vitosha Boulevard for €0.80 a ride, with card taps capped at €2 a day. Plovdiv and Varna are smaller and mostly walkable, with city buses for the longer hops. After the last metro, around midnight, licensed taxis in Sofia ordered through an app are the way home.

Crossing the borders from Bulgaria

Bulgaria has been a full Schengen member since 1 January 2025, so the borders with Greece and Romania have no routine passport checks. Serbia, North Macedonia and Turkey are outside Schengen, with full checks both ways.

For Thessaloniki the bus is the only direct way without a car, since no train has run there since about 2018. The Sofia to Istanbul night train clears the Turkish border at Kapitan Andreevo, and the daily train to Bucharest crosses the Danube at Ruse.

Which way for which trip

On the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, some buses from Sofia run on past Burgas to Nessebar, Sunny Beach or Sozopol, so you can often skip the change in Burgas. For a week or more, the mix of buses and a few days with a car is how I'd plan a Bulgaria itinerary that takes in both the cities and the mountains.