Poll: One in Three Bulgarians Say 2025 Was a Good Year for the Country

One third of Bulgarians describe the past year as a good one for the country, while 28% expect the coming year to be better. On a personal level, 35% believe that 2026 will be a better year for them.

These are the findings of a survey conducted by the 'Trend' polling agency on behalf of the daily newspaper '24 Chasa' (24 hours), examining public attitudes towards the outgoing year 2025 and expectations for 2026.

According to the survey, 61% of Bulgarians said they felt happy during 2025 – a figure close to that recorded the previous year. At the same time, 33% described 2025 as a good year for Bulgaria, an increase of nine percentage points compared with last year. Despite this rise, a majority of respondents (53%) still view the year as a bad one for the country.

Personal assessments are more positive. Nearly six in ten Bulgarians (59%) say that 2025 was a good year for them personally, a share similar to that reported at the end of last year. For more than a quarter of adults (28%), however, the past year was a bad one on a personal level. Both national and personal assessments are most positive among young people aged 18–29, who traditionally display higher levels of optimism.

Expectations for 2026 are more pessimistic than those expressed at the end of the previous year. Just 28% believe that Bulgaria is heading into a better year – ten percentage points fewer than a year earlier. At the same time, nearly half of respondents (47%) expect the coming year to be worse for the country, almost double the share recorded last year (26%).

Personal expectations are slightly more optimistic. Some 35% anticipate a better year for themselves, while 29% expect a worse one. Even so, here too there is a marked decline compared with the previous year, when 47% expected a better personal year ahead and only 15% anticipated a worse one.

The Trend survey was carried out between 29 November and 5 December 2025 using face-to-face, semi-standardised interviews conducted with tablets among 1,002 respondents aged 18 and over.