The step-by-step plan for Bulgaria

In this step you read what you arrange to be allowed to stay in Bulgaria. It comes down to one document: the residence certificate, with your personal number on it.

As a Dutch citizen you need no visa. With your passport or identity card you may be in Bulgaria for three months. If you stay longer, you apply within those three months for a certificate of long-term residence. You do that at the Migration Directorate of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior. It costs 3.58 euros and is valid for up to five years.

That certificate is more than a paper. It gives you your personal number, the Bulgarian number that resembles the Dutch BSN (citizen service number). The bank, the health fund (its regional office) and the traffic police all ask for it. Without that number nothing starts in Bulgaria.

With this step you know where you pay tax and how your healthcare is arranged.

The tax. The tax treaty between the Netherlands and Bulgaria is new, from 2020. It follows the modern rule: pensions, annuities and social security payments may be taxed by the country they come from. So the Netherlands taxes your occupational pension and your AOW, without threshold.

That is why a wage tax exemption doesn't exist here. For many other countries you apply for one, so that your pension fund stops withholding Dutch tax. For Bulgaria you don't need to.

And Bulgaria itself? It doesn't tax pensions. Not its own pensions, and expressly not those from compulsory insurance abroad either. So there's no second tax and nothing to credit. What you pay in the Netherlands is what you pay.

Bulgaria does tax wages, profit and rent from a Bulgarian property. For that there is a flat tax of ten percent: one rate, however high your income.

Healthcare. Bulgaria is a treaty country: a country with which the Netherlands has agreements on healthcare. With a Dutch statutory pension your healthcare goes through the CAK. This is how it works:

• You apply to the CAK for an S1 form.
• With that form you register at the regional office of the Bulgarian health fund.
• You choose a GP, on a form.

After that you have the same care as a Bulgarian insured person.

In this step you choose where in Bulgaria you want to live. The regions differ a lot:

• Sofia has the international schools and the English-speaking doctors.
• Plovdiv is smaller and warmer.
• On the Black Sea, around Varna and Burgas, many Dutch and British people already live.
• In the villages behind it and around Veliko Tarnovo, houses cost a fraction of home.
• The mountains (Rila, Pirin, the Rhodopes) are cold and empty.

Count the language in too. Bulgarian is a Slavic language, written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Outside the cities and the coast it is the only language at the counter. You only read the signs once you know the alphabet.

Go and look in winter. The summers are hot and the winters inland cold. Heating an old village house is then a real cost item.

In this step you see what the move is going to cost. The paperwork is cheap here:

• The residence certificate costs 3.58 euros.
• Your driving licence doesn't need exchanging.
• The registration of the car costs 17.90 euros.

The money sits in other items. The car pays an environmental fee by age and drivetrain. It is highest for a car older than ten years. And if you buy a home, you pay the municipal transfer tax, of up to three percent.

Since 1 January 2026 Bulgaria counts in euros. So the exchange rate has disappeared from the budget.

In this conversation you make sure the whole family is behind the choice. You set down what each of you needs to say yes. And you discuss the language before you choose the place.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you leave behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Agree on three evenings, a week apart:

• Evening 1, why. What do we hope to find in Bulgaria? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What has to be in place for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to go back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Whoever lives in Bulgaria and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually no longer builds up AOW, the Dutch state pension. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. You can insure yourself voluntarily with the SVB. You have one year for that, counted from the moment you're no longer insured. Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on large expenses.

Married, registered or living together? That can make a difference for your partner's residence permit, for co-insurance in healthcare and for inheritance. Check at the registration and at your healthcare further on in your plan what applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four. Tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed routines, such as the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school. Tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, such as their room.
• Teenagers. Involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs the most. Agree how they keep in touch and when they'll see their friends again.

For children at a village school, Bulgarian is the whole day, in another alphabet. How school works, and why you enrol your child in time, is in the article about school with this step.

Who learns the language, and when? For adults who work from home, Bulgarian is a hobby. Whoever goes to Sofia chooses convenience. Whoever goes to the coast or the countryside chooses space, and a language none of you speaks. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and that's exactly the one without colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

With this step you fix your departure date. From here everything counts back.

This journey has two deadlines. You set them off yourself, on the day you or your car enter Bulgaria:

• Within three months of your entry you apply for the residence certificate.
• Within a month of the car's entry you register it.

Put them both in your diary on the day your date is fixed.