Bulgaria Emoji

The Bulgarian flag emoji 🇧🇬 shows three horizontal stripes, white, green and red from top to bottom. The tricolour was adopted after Bulgaria's liberation from Ottoman rule in 1878 and written into the Tarnovo Constitution of 1879. White is usually read as peace and freedom, green as the land and its fields, red as the courage and blood of those who fought for independence. It is easy to mix up with Hungary 🇭🇺, which uses the same three colours in a different order, red, white and green. To show the colours without the flag, people line up hearts 🤍💚❤️ or stack squares ⬜🟩🟥, one per line, as a small text flag.

Like every country flag, 🇧🇬 is not one character but two regional indicator letters, 🇧 + 🇬 for the country code BG. Phones and Macs draw the pair as a flag; Windows has no flag pictures in its emoji font and shows the letters BG instead. The flag is still there: paste it into a message and an iPhone or Android user sees 🇧🇬.

The lion 🦁 is Bulgaria's oldest national emblem. The coat of arms shows a crowned golden lion on a dark red shield, held by two more lions, and the national football team is nicknamed the Lions (Лъвовете). Even the old currency carried it: lev is an archaic Bulgarian word for lion. 🇪🇺 belongs here too, since Bulgaria joined NATO in 2004, the European Union in 2007, the Schengen area in 2025 and the euro area in 2026. ☦️ stands for the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the faith of most Bulgarians. The CLDR estimate puts the population at about 6.8 million.

Bulgarian symbols and their meaning: martenitsa, rose, kukeri

On 1 March, Baba Marta Day, Bulgarians give each other martenitsi: little tassels or bracelets of twisted red and white yarn 🧶🧵, with the wish Честита Баба Марта! (Happy Grandmother March!). The red and white ❤️🤍 stand for health and a long life, and 🧓 Baba Marta herself is the moody old woman of folk tales whose temper decides whether March is sunny or snowy. You wear the martenitsa until you see the first stork or swallow 🐦 or a blossoming tree 🌸, then tie it to a branch. There is no martenitsa emoji, so ❤️🤍🧶 is how people write it. The custom was inscribed by UNESCO in 2017 together with the related March traditions of Romania, Moldova and North Macedonia.

The rose 🌹 is the flower of Bulgaria. In the Rose Valley around Kazanlak, between the Balkan Mountains and Sredna Gora, the Damask rose is picked at dawn in May and June and distilled into rose oil for perfume, and Kazanlak holds a Rose Festival every June. 🪻 (the closest emoji to lavender) and 🌻 belong to the same fields: Bulgaria is also one of the world's big growers of lavender for oil and of sunflowers.

In winter, kukeri walk through the villages: men in heavy fur costumes and towering masks 👹 with huge bells 🔔 on their belts, dancing to drive away evil spirits and wake the earth for spring; the Surva festival in Pernik each January is the biggest masquerade 🎭. In the Strandzha mountains, nestinari dance barefoot on glowing embers 🔥 on the feast of Saints Constantine and Helena. Folk costumes carry embroidery 🪡🧵 in deep reds, with geometric motifs that differ from region to region and were believed to protect the wearer. These are the "bulgarian traditional symbols" people ask about, more than any modern logo.

Bulgaria emoji for food and drink

The best-known Bulgarian dish is shopska salad 🥗: tomato 🍅, cucumber 🥒 and peppers 🫑 under a snowfall of grated sirene 🧀, the white brined cheese. White cheese, green cucumber and red tomato are the colours of the flag, which is part of why the salad is treated as a national symbol. Bulgarians eat it at the start of a meal with a glass of rakia 🥃, grape or plum brandy, and the toast Наздраве!

Yogurt 🥛 (кисело мляко, "sour milk") is the pride of the Bulgarian kitchen: its starter culture contains Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus; Stamen Grigorov first described the former in 1905. In summer it becomes tarator 🥣, a cold soup of yogurt, cucumber, dill, garlic and walnuts. Banitsa 🥧 is the breakfast pastry of filo layered with eggs and sirene, and 🍞🧂 is the old welcome: a round loaf with salt offered to guests.

From the clay pot come 🍲 gyuvech stews and 🫘 bob chorba, the bean soup of monastery kitchens. Every autumn families roast peppers 🫑🌶️ and aubergines 🍆 for lyutenitsa and kyopolu and fill rows of jars 🫙 with zimnina, the winter stores. Wine 🍇🍷 has been made here since the Thracians; Mavrud and the Melnik grapes are local varieties. 🫖 stands for mountain tea (мурсалски чай), the herbal tea of the Rhodopes and Pirin.

Bulgarian holidays and the emoji people send

3 March, Liberation Day, marks the signing of the preliminary Treaty of San Stefano in 1878, which envisaged an autonomous Bulgarian principality, and is the national day: 🇧🇬 everywhere. On 14 February wine growers celebrate Trifon Zarezan, pruning the first vines ✂️ and pouring wine over them for a good harvest 🍇🍷. 24 May, the Day of the Saintly Brothers Cyril and Methodius, of the Bulgarian Alphabet, Education and Culture and of Slavic Literature, honours the brothers and the Cyrillic alphabet: pupils carry flowers 💐 to their teachers, and 📜📚 go with the greeting Честит 24 май! 6 September (Unification, 1885) and 22 September (Independence, 1908) are the other national dates.

At Easter 🥚 eggs are dyed red, and family members tap them against each other; whoever's egg stays whole is lucky for the year. The greeting is Христос воскресе! and the answer Воистина воскресе!, eaten with kozunak, the sweet Easter bread. At Christmas 🎄🕯️ the Christmas Eve table holds an odd number of meatless dishes, and on New Year's Eve a banitsa 🥧 is baked with little lucky charms (късмети) hidden inside, one for each guest. On Nikulden, 6 December, the day of Saint Nicholas, patron of fishermen, families eat fish 🐟, and at Enyovden, 24 June, herbs 🌿 are gathered at sunrise, when they are said to be strongest. Bulgarian Christmas wishes read Весела Коледа!, New Year's Честита Нова година!

Bulgaria emoji for places, nature, music and sports

⛪ covers the golden domes of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia and the Rila Monastery in the mountains south of it, a UNESCO site. 🏰 is Tsarevets, the hill fortress of Veliko Tarnovo, capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, or Baba Vida on the Danube at Vidin. 🏛️ is the Roman theatre of Plovdiv, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe, and 🏺 the Thracians, whose painted tomb at Kazanlak and gold treasures fill Bulgarian museums. 🏔️ is Rila and Pirin; Musala, at 2,925 m, is the highest peak in the Balkans. 🏞️ fits the Seven Rila Lakes, 🪨 the red rock towers of Belogradchik, ♨️ the country's hundreds of mineral springs. In summer the Black Sea coast 🏖️🌊 around Varna, Burgas, Sozopol and Nesebar takes over, with dolphins 🐬 offshore; in winter it is ⛷️🏂 in Bansko and Borovets. Brown bears 🐻 and wolves 🐺 still live in the mountains, and flocks of sheep 🐑 graze the Rhodopes.

The horo 💃🕺 is the chain dance that pulls everyone in at weddings and village fairs, often in the asymmetric rhythms Bulgarian folk music is known for. 🪈 is the nearest emoji to the kaval, the shepherd's flute, 🎻 to the gadulka, 🥁 to the tapan drum; the gaida bagpipe has no emoji. 🎶 Bulgarian women's choirs became famous worldwide through Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares.

Football ⚽ peaked at the 1994 World Cup in the USA, where Bulgaria beat Germany in the quarter-final and finished fourth, and Hristo Stoichkov won that year's Ballon d'Or. Many of Bulgaria's Olympic medals 🥇 come from wrestling 🤼 and weightlifting 🏋️, and the rhythmic gymnasts 🤸, the "golden girls", won the group event at the Tokyo Olympics. 🏐 volleyball is a popular team sport, 🎾 is Grigor Dimitrov and ♟️ Veselin Topalov, FIDE world chess champion in 2005.

Bulgarian letters copy and paste: the Cyrillic alphabet and the euro sign €

Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic, and Bulgarians count it as their own: the script took shape in the First Bulgarian Empire in the late 9th century, based mainly on Greek uncial, with some Glagolitic letters. When Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, Cyrillic became the union's third official alphabet, which is why euro banknotes now say ЕВРО next to EURO. The modern Bulgarian alphabet has 30 letters, А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ь Ю Я. Every one is a separate Cyrillic character, even those that look like Latin ones (А, В, Е, К, М, Н, О, Р, С, Т, Х), so copy them from here rather than typing the Latin look-alikes. For the alphabet on its own, with pronunciation, see the Bulgarian letters collection.

Two Bulgarian letters carry sounds of their own: Щ is said "sht", and Ъ is a full vowel, the short "uh" sound heard at the start of България (Balgariya). Ь appears only before О, as in шофьор (driver). The accented ѝ is not a separate letter but is required in one word: ѝ "her" is written apart from и "and". The official Latin transliteration, used in passports and on road signs, writes Ж zh, Ц ts, Ч ch, Ш sh, Щ sht, Ъ a, Ю yu and Я ya. Quotations open low and close high, „like this“ (Windows Alt+0132 and Alt+0147), and dialogue uses the em dash — (Alt+0151).

To type Bulgarian, add the Bulgarian keyboard: on Windows in Settings → Time & language → Language & region, then switch with Win+Space; on a Mac under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources (Bulgarian – Phonetic or Bulgarian – Standard); on phones in Gboard or iOS keyboard settings, then tap the globe key. The phonetic layouts put each letter on the Latin key that sounds alike (Б on B, Д on D), the standard BDS layout follows the old Bulgarian typewriter.

Currency: Bulgaria switched from the lev to the euro € on 1 January 2026, at the fixed rate of 1.95583 leva to the euro. The lev never had a Unicode sign; prices were written with the abbreviation лв. and the code BGN, which answers the common "bulgarian lev symbol" search. Type € with Alt+0128 on Windows or Option+Shift+2 on a US Mac keyboard. Bulgaria's own euro coins 🪙 show the Madara Rider, an early medieval rock relief, on the cent coins, Saint Ivan of Rila on the €1 and Paisius of Hilendar on the €2.