Bulgarian News Agency (BTA)

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), whose Bulgarian name means Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, is Bulgaria’s national news agency. It was established by Order No. 28 of Prince Ferdinand I on 27 January 1898, as a service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religious Denominations, and issued its first bulletin on 16 February 1898, the date on which it celebrates its birthday. BTA has been a member of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) since 17 September 1970, and since 2022 it has hosted the seat of the Association of Balkan News Agencies – Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE), whose Secretary General is BTA’s Director General, Kiril Valchev. In 2025 BTA produced 228,991 news stories, 260,982 photographs and 9,024 video items. It had 388 employees at the end of 2025 and partnerships with more than 50 news agencies.

Media assets

News agency: BTA, which produces news, analysis, commentary and round-ups in Bulgarian and English, photographs, video and, since 2025, podcasts; and the magazine LIK, which resumed monthly publication in 2022.

Network: 46 National Press Clubs, nine of them in other countries and one at Bulgaria’s Antarctic base, and, at the end of 2025, 70 staff correspondents: 61 in Bulgaria, six abroad and three photo correspondents at the press clubs in Belgrade, Bucharest and Skopje.

Digital: the bta.bg website and accounts on nine social media networks.

Ownership and governance

BTA is governed by the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency Act, adopted by the National Assembly on 1 December 2011, which repealed the National Assembly’s decision of 29 June 1994 adopting the agency’s Statute. The Act defines BTA as a national independent information institute of the Republic of Bulgaria and a legal entity funded from the state budget. BTA independently determines the content of its information activity, is independent in carrying out its activities and reports to the National Assembly. The Director General, who manages the agency, is elected and dismissed by the National Assembly for a five-year term and may serve no more than two terms, and may not be a member of a political party or organisation. BTA employees may not hold elected posts in state or municipal bodies or conduct political activity at BTA for or against any political party. The Director General appoints a deputy after a competition. The Act provides for no management board or public council.

Kiril Valchev was first elected Director General on 27 January 2021 with the votes of 105 MPs. On 4 December 2025 the National Assembly unanimously re-elected him, with 170 votes, for a second five-year term, on nominations from GERB-UDF, There Is Such a People and BSP-United Left; his first term expired on 27 January 2026. Evgenia Drumeva has been Deputy Director General since September 2021.

Source of funding and budget

Under the Act, BTA’s revenue comprises subsidies from the state budget, revenue from its own activities, including information services, advertising, sponsorship and rents, donations, and funds under international agreements and programmes, and the Director General organises the drafting of BTA’s draft budget, including its state subsidy, and the execution of and reporting on its budget. Since amendments to the Act published on 9 March 2021, BTA has provided free access to its own information products, with exceptions including commissioned specialised products and archive materials.

In 2023 BTA received net budget transfers of BGN 12,255,030, and its revenue, aid and donations totalled BGN 775,826, of which BGN 723,807 came from sales of information products and services. For 2024 the transfer from the central budget was BGN 11,856,500, with an additional BGN 2 million planned, including for remuneration, to strengthen the capacity and activities of BTA and its correspondent bureaus, which the government released in June 2024; for 2025 the National Assembly planned BGN 15,668,600 for BTA. After an extension law adopted in December 2025, the 2026 State Budget Act, finally adopted on 24 July 2026, allocated BTA EUR 9.76 million.

At the parliamentary culture and media committee in July 2026, Valchev said that BTA had sought a 20 per cent salary increase on top of the 5 per cent rise introduced earlier in the year, to bring pay in line with teachers’ salaries, and that no funds were provided for opening new correspondent offices. In May 2026 the National Audit Office gave an unmodified opinion on BTA’s 2025 financial statements, but found that its payables to suppliers exceeded the permitted level by BGN 441,000 and that its risk management strategy had not been updated.

Editorial independence

BTA describes itself as an agency of the Bulgarian state and society, not a government information service, and states that the main guarantor of its independence is the National Assembly, which defines its budget, elects its head and examines and adopts its report. Under the Act, the Director General submits an annual activity and financial report to the National Assembly by 30 April. Parliament approved the 2024 report unanimously, with 149 votes, on 30 May 2025, and adopted the 2025 report with 153 votes on 9 July 2026.

BTA’s Ethics Code, approved by Valchev on 16 February 2022, commits its journalists not to yield to political or economic pressure or influence, and breaches of the Ethical Code of Bulgarian Media, which forms its first part, are examined by the Commission for Journalistic Ethics of the National Council for Journalistic Ethics Foundation, a self-regulatory body. In July 2026 Deputy Director General Drumeva said that BTA has always worked under written editorial standards. During the campaign for the early parliamentary election of 19 April 2026, BTA ran a dedicated election section and committed to equal opportunities for all parties and coalitions registered with the Central Election Commission.

On 3 September 2026 President Iliana Iotova named Valchev as her running mate in the presidential election of 25 October 2026, and he said that he accepted the invitation not as recognition for himself but for BTA. Valchev also said that he would go on unpaid leave from the following week, temporarily stepping back from his current work at BTA. On 21 September 2026 a nomination committee registered Iotova and Valchev with the Central Election Commission as independent nominees. The Act bars the Director General from party membership and from holding office as an MP, mayor or municipal councillor, but contains no provision on standing as a candidate in an election. AEJ-Bulgaria asked how free BTA’s journalists would feel during the campaign when their director, although on unpaid leave, was one of the candidates, and whether he should have stepped down from his post when his candidacy was announced. BTA continued to describe him as its Director General in its coverage of the candidates. No documented case of government interference in BTA’s editorial line in 2025 or 2026 was identified for this update.

AI and digital policy

BTA adopted written rules on the use of artificial intelligence on 16 February 2026, as part of its Ethics Code. Valchev said that under these rules BTA uses artificial intelligence solely as an auxiliary tool in editorial work without replacing journalists, every item processed with artificial intelligence is subject to mandatory editorial review before publication, the generation of entirely new texts is prohibited, and AI-generated images and video are banned. On 30 March 2026 BTA and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Bulgarian Language signed a partnership agreement under which the Institute will provide BTA with an artificial intelligence model to identify language errors automatically, and BTA will provide archive materials that can be used to train language models. Valchev has also announced plans for news targeted at Bulgaria’s neighbours in Turkish, Greek, Serbian, Romanian and possibly Albanian. BTA is setting up the BTA Institute, a structure intended to offer Bulgarian media the use of artificial intelligence in journalistic work, and in April 2026 it signed a long-term cooperation agreement with the Bulgarian Employers’ Association Innovative Technologies that covers the Institute. In June 2026 Valchev said that he planned to create the Institute as a unit within BTA that year, bringing together the expertise of 17 organisations.

Classification rationale

BTA is classified as Independent State Funded and State Managed (ISFM) because it relies predominantly on state budget financing and its Director General is elected by the National Assembly. The Bulgarian Telegraph Agency Act protects its editorial autonomy and prohibits political activity at BTA for or against any political party, while its Ethics Code commits journalists not to yield to political or economic pressure. The Director General’s candidacy in the 2026 presidential election raises concerns about political neutrality, but sustained government direction of BTA’s editorial coverage was not established for this review.

October 2026