How to Make Friends in Sofia: 10 Ways to Meet People

Sofia is known for people who seem reserved at first and stay friends for years once they know you. For a visitor or a newcomer, the trick is to go where meeting strangers is the reason everyone came. These are the 10 ways I would use to make friends in Sofia, with when each one runs, what it costs and who it suits.

Is it easy to make friends in Sofia?

It is easier than it looks. Bulgarians can come across as reserved with strangers, and friend groups in Sofia tend to be tight and long-standing. Once someone invites you in, though, the friendship tends to stick, and Bulgarians are generous hosts.

English is common among younger people and in the center, so a night out with locals in their twenties or thirties rarely needs a word of Bulgarian. A few Bulgarian phrases, starting with zdraveyte for hello, still earn a warmer welcome than any icebreaker.

The best ways to meet people in Sofia at a glance

10 ways to make friends in Sofia

I have ordered these from the fastest way to meet a crowd on a weekend trip to the slower ways that suit someone staying a month or more.

1. Join The Original Sofia Pub Crawl

The Original Sofia Pub Crawl is the quickest way I know to go from knowing nobody in Sofia to having a group for the night. It meets on Friday and Saturday nights at the Palace of Justice, and €20 covers 4 bars, drinking games, local guides and the club at the end.

The crowd is international, a mix of solo travelers, backpackers, couples and groups of friends, and everyone speaks English. The guides are local Bulgarians who spend the night getting people to mingle, and the drinking games do the introductions for you. On my night on the crawl, the people who had come alone were already hanging out in groups by the second bar.

Its route takes in basement bars and little hidden spots you would not find on your own. You can book a place on the crawl's own site.

2. Stay in a social hostel

A hostel with a common room does half the work before you even leave the building. Hostel Mostel, in a renovated 19th-century building about 0.7 km from the center, is the most social of the best hostels in Sofia, with dorm beds from about €7 a night, a communal kitchen and an outdoor terrace where solo travelers find people to explore with.

Bla Bla Hostel on Iskar Street is the most central option, around the corner from some of the city's best bars, with a 24-hour reception and a shared kitchen where people meet before going out. In either one, the easy move is to ask who is heading out that evening.

3. Go to a Sofia Meetups international mixer

Sofia Meetups is a community run by two hosts, one Bulgarian and one Portuguese, who have hosted international mixers in Sofia for five years. It has more than 1,600 members from more than 40 nationalities.

At the door you get paper icebreakers: prompt cards, a human bingo sheet and a match-me tag. The mixers move between central bars and clubs: the next dates are Saturday 14 November 2026 at Club Gramophone, 28 November at J.J. Murphy's and 12 December at Bar Road 66. Most nights are free, and anyone 18 or older can come.

4. Practice a language at the Friday language exchange

Every Friday from 6 PM, Meet People Social runs a free social and language exchange at I Came Alone Pub, at 112 Knyaz Boris I Street in the center. Ask the staff for Meet People Social if you cannot spot the group. You buy your own drink or food, and that is the only cost.

Meet People Social also runs WhatsApp and Discord groups. From the exchange, there is time to reach the 8:30 PM crawl at the Palace of Justice the same evening.

5. Book a dinner with strangers on Timeleft

Timeleft is an app that matches you with a small group of strangers for a meal. In Sofia it runs dinners on Wednesdays and Fridays at 7 PM, with four to six people matched to you by a personality quiz, and a coffee on Saturdays at 3 PM. You book alone, the app picks the restaurant and the group, and you just show up.

You need a Timeleft subscription to book, and you pay for your own food and drinks at the restaurant. Bookings close 13 hours before each event. In October 2026, Timeleft had 407 bookings in Sofia.

6. Sign up for a Sofia Expats event

Sofia Expats organizes occasional events for expats and locals. Recent ones include a social picnic in Borisova Gradina and a social brunch, both for €3, and a meet-and-talk night at a bar that drew about 100 people.

Spots are limited: the brunch had 8 and the picnic 20, and the picnic sold out. The Monday newsletter lists what is coming up. I'd sign up if you are moving to Sofia rather than visiting, because a table of 8 makes it easy to talk to everyone.

7. Join a bench party in the City Garden

From May to September, a lot of locals start the night outside. They buy cans of beer from a klek, the little shops in basement windows where you stoop to order, for about €1 to €2 a can, then sit on the benches of the City Garden by the National Theatre, the Crystal Garden or the park around NDK.

This is the most local way to meet people in Sofia, and it costs almost nothing. The groups move on to the clubs around midnight. Of Sofia's parks, the City Garden is the easiest to reach from anywhere in the center.

8. Sit at the bar in a small neighborhood bar

Hambara, the candlelit bar behind an unmarked door on 6th September Street, and One More Bar on Tsar Ivan Shishman Street, with its garden in summer, are both easy places to strike up a conversation on your own.

Sit at the bar rather than at a table, and ask the bartender what to order. The side streets around Tsar Shishman and Graf Ignatiev hold most of the best bars in Sofia within a 15 minute walk, so if one is quiet, the next is close.

9. Go to a jam session or a small jazz bar

Music rooms are an easy place to meet people, because everyone is there for the same thing. On Sundays, Swingin' Hall on Dragan Tsankov Boulevard runs a jam session. Jazz Bar on Sv. Kiril i Metodiy Street has live sets on Fridays in a room so small that you sit a few meters from the band, and the break between sets is an easy time to talk.

Covers are about €5 or less. For the full spread of live music in Sofia, from rock bars to the jazz club on Vazrazhdane Square, Thursday to Saturday give you the most choice.

10. Hike Vitosha with new friends

Hiking and skiing in the mountains are among the most popular pastimes in Sofia, and Vitosha starts about 15 km from the center. The highest point, Cherni Vrah, is 2,290 m, and without a car you take metro line 2 to Vitosha station, then bus 66 up to Aleko hut at 1,810 m.

A weekend walk is the natural second meeting with people you met at a mixer or in your hostel. The easy trail from Aleko to Kamen Del takes under 2 hours, and the hike up Vitosha Mountain gives a group something to talk about besides where everyone is from.

How Bulgarians make friends

Most of Bulgarian etiquette comes down to greetings, toasts and accepting food, and these six customs come up as soon as you start meeting locals.

• The handshake. A firm handshake with eye contact is the normal greeting at a first meeting. A kiss on each cheek is for friends and family, so wait until you are one.
• Yes and no. A side-to-side head shake usually means yes and a nod means no. Listen for da (yes) and ne (no) instead of trusting the gesture.
• The toast. Say "nazdrave", clink with everyone and look each person in the eye, because looking away is bad luck.
• The rakia. Rakia comes cold with the salads and is sipped between bites. Knocking it back like a shot marks you as a tourist.
• The invitation. Accept the second helping and at least a sip of the first toast. Refusing everything reads as cold.
• Name days. Many Bulgarians celebrate their name day as much as their birthday. If a new friend is called Georgi, Ivan or Nikola, saying "Chestit imen den" on the right day goes a long way.

Staying safe when you meet strangers

The center stays busy late into the night, and the one trap to know about is aimed at people who are open to new friends.

Meeting people through a crawl, a hostel, a mixer or an app gets around the problem, because the venue is public and someone else picked it. The crime that touches visitors is mostly petty, and Sofia is safe at night as long as you watch your bag in a crowd and take a licensed taxi home.

A week of meeting people in Sofia

If you have a week in Sofia and want to leave with friends, this is the plan I would follow. The Sofia Meetups mixers only run on some Saturdays, so check the date first.

Seeing the same people at a second event is when strangers start to feel like friends, so go back to whatever worked. With a group behind you, a table at one of the chalga clubs in Studentski Grad is within reach, and the clubs of Sofia's nightlife run until 5 or 6 AM.

Which way suits you

• On a weekend trip. The pub crawl on Friday, a hostel bar on Saturday.
• Moving to Sofia. Sofia Meetups, Sofia Expats events and the Friday language exchange, where the same people come back.
• Not a big drinker. Timeleft dinners and coffees, the language exchange and a Vitosha hike.
• Over 35. Timeleft, the mixers and the jazz rooms suit you better than a hostel party.
• Into music. The Sunday jam at Swingin' Hall and Friday nights at Jazz Bar.

Skip the party options if:

• You do not drink. The crawl and the bench parties run on beer and shots, so start with Timeleft and the language exchange instead.
• You are in Sofia from Sunday to Thursday only. The crawl runs on Friday and Saturday, and the language exchange on Friday.