Bulgaria’s Private Equity Market: From Momentum to Maturity

Overview

Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026, completing the formal accession process that began with the country’s entry into the Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II) more than five years earlier. Because the Bulgarian lev had been pegged to the euro under a currency board for over 25 years, the practical shift was largely technical rather than economic, but its effects are still notable. Full Eurozone membership brings with it a degree of regulatory scrutiny, reduction in currency-related costs, and closer institutional alignment with the euro area which reinforce the stability needed to draw sustained private equity (PE) interest to the country. Together with Bulgaria’s accession to the Schengen area and a marked acceleration of the country’s energy transition, euro adoption opened the market further to Europe and gave the past year its distinct dynamism. Geopolitical developments tempered that momentum, however, and underpinned a more cautious approach by investors.

The past 12 months delivered Bulgaria’s first PE bank buyout, with Advent International’s acquisition of TBI Bank reaching completion at a disclosed value of EUR300 million, the country’s largest transaction of the year. Battery storage also attracted strong PE interest, led by Blackstone’s EUR250 million equity investment in Bulgaria-based Sunotec to back the company’s European solar and storage expansion. Across several sectors, investors showed a clear appetite for consolidation, actively seeking a suitable local platform to build on through further bolt-on acquisitions rather than standalone targets. On the regulatory side, foreign direct investment (FDI) screening now extends closing timelines across a much broader range of deals than merger-control clearance alone. Deal sizes remain modest next to some other countries in the region, though broadly in line with peers such as Croatia and Slovenia.

Developments

New entrant

The local active sponsors in Bulgaria, BlackPeak Capital, Invenio Partners, Eleven Ventures, LAUNCHub Ventures and BrightCap Ventures, were joined in the last year by a new entrant – Croatia’s Provectus Capital Partners. It launched operations in Bulgaria in May 2025 and closed EUR162.5 million for its second South-East Europe buyout fund in October 2025. In July 2026, the fund agreed to buy a majority stake in Haelan, a Bulgarian healthcare group, from Invenio Partners.

Deal value

Invest Europe’s 2025 Central and Eastern Europe Private Equity Statistics places Bulgaria’s PE/venture capital (VC) investments in 2025 closely in line with Croatia, but behind Hungary, the Baltic states and the region’s larger markets. Notably, the reported total appears not to capture Advent International’s EUR300 million acquisition of TBI Bank, the country’s largest disclosed transaction of the period. Adding that single deal back would lift Bulgaria into the upper half of the regional ranking, a reminder of how much even one large transaction can change statistics in a market of this size. Even so, excluding the potential large deals, organic, fund-backed investment into Bulgarian companies remains thin by regional standards, with one genuinely large deal capable of offsetting otherwise modest average growth-equity and fund-formation activity.

Sector focus

Renewable energy, IT, financial services and real estate remain the four sectors to watch, with healthcare appearing additionally as an emerging focus. Financial services delivered the largest PE transaction on the market (the acquisition of TBI Bank), renewable energy sharpened specifically into battery storage, and healthcare moved from an emerging theme to a genuine focus following the Haelan platform sale. IT remains active but on a smaller scale, without any headline deals.

Fund formation

BlackPeak Capital’s second fund, Invenio Partners’ third fund and Provectus Capital’s second fund are all fundraising at the same time, together giving Bulgaria/South-East Europe a wider and deeper set of active GPs than a year ago.

Regulation

FDI screening and a new merger-control call-in power of the national antitrust authority are both new since the second half of 2025, adding an extra layer of regulatory review of deals, including those in strategically sensitive sectors such as energy.

Sector Focus

Renewable energy and battery storage

Bulgaria closed out the top five EU markets for new battery storage capacity in 2025, according to SolarPower Europe’s European Battery Market Outlook 2026–2030 report, with 2.7 GWh of connected capacity and the highest growth rate in Europe at +1,061% year-on-year. Much of that growth traces back to RESTORE, the government’s Recovery and Resilience Plan grant scheme for standalone battery storage. A second call under the scheme, ranked in December 2025, awarded EUR117 million in grants to 31 projects, adding more than 4,000 MWh of capacity, matched by EUR440.6 million of investor co-financing, close to four euros of private money for every euro of state support, and a sign of how investable the asset class has become.

Enery commissioned a 150 MW/601.8 MWh battery system at Nova Zagora in March 2026, one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe, and Blackstone made a EUR250 million structured equity investment in Bulgaria-based solar and storage developer Sunotec in April 2026. The solar and wind development that drove investment in the past few years is now shifting towards acquisitions of operating, grid-connected storage assets, where strategic buyers increasingly compete alongside financial sponsors.

Financial services

Advent International’s purchase of TBI Bank closed in April 2026, the first bank acquisition by a PE fund in Bulgaria in many years and Advent’s second financial-services investment in the country in the last two years. The near two-year path from announcement to closing is a useful benchmark for how long a regulated-sector PE deal currently takes. Non-bank consumer lending, digital credit and niche fintech (invoice financing, e-wallets, SME credit scoring) remain areas that funds are watching for their asset-light, cross-border models, and the TBI closing itself is likely to encourage other sponsors to take a closer look at Bulgarian financial services targets over the next year or two.

Technology

Bulgaria’s tech sector split into two growth stories over the past year. On the venture side, satellite manufacturer EnduroSat raised USD104 million in October 2025 from Riot Ventures, GV, Lux Capital, Shrug Capital and the European Innovation Council Fund, coinciding with the opening of its new Sofia Space Center and building on an earlier EUR43 million round led by Founders Fund in May 2025.

On the growth side, Bulgaria-founded fintech Payhawk passed USD100 million in annual recurring revenue in July 2026, making it the first Bulgarian company to reach what Bessemer Venture Partners calls “Centaur” status, a milestone held by roughly 250 private software companies worldwide. Centaur-stage companies are a sign of growing market maturity and feed growth-equity and buyout pipelines for PE funds.

At the same time, IT-services consolidation continues along the buy-and-build pattern seen in 2025 with Codery’s acquisition of Devision, backed by Silverline Capital. The February 2026 transposition of the EU’s NIS2 cybersecurity directive widened compliance obligations to data centres and several other previously uncovered sectors, which is likely to add to diligence requirements on tech deals going forward.

Healthcare

Strategic buyers have driven healthcare consolidation in Bulgaria for some time, from Bulfarma’s acquisition of Sofia’s Serdika Hospital in May 2025, to Phoenix Bulgaria’s (BENU) lease of 47 Medea pharmacies later that year and Synevo’s integration of the Status laboratory network in January 2025.

What is new over the past 12 months is a PE-owned platform entering that consolidation. Croatia’s Provectus Capital Partners agreed to buy a majority stake in Haelan – Integrated Healthcare, Bulgaria’s largest outpatient network, together with a paediatric clinic and two hospitals. The seller, Invenio Partners, built the platform over several years and stays on as a minority partner. It is the buyer’s first Bulgarian investment, following its Sofia office opening in May 2025 and the EUR162.5 million first close of its second buyout fund that October. With PE owners in place, Haelan is well positioned as a base for further bolt-on acquisitions, and the deal stands as the clearest evidence yet that a Bulgaria-based healthcare platform can be built, held and sold to another regional sponsor.

Consumer and retail

BlackPeak Capital’s investment in Serbian chain Kafeterija and Invenio/Accession Capital Partners’ acquisition of Romanian chain 5 to go, both made in 2025, matured further this year. Kafeterija completed its first bolt-on acquisition (Novi Sad’s Loft chain) in January 2026. Both deals point to the same underlying pattern that Bulgaria and the wider region can serve as a platform for cross-border consumer expansion, not just a standalone target market.

Manufacturing and real estate

Export-oriented manufacturing remains a quiet but steady target category, helped by continued nearshoring across Europe. In real estate, global capital keeps rotating towards data centres and logistics, but Bulgaria’s own colocation market is still modest and not predominantly PE-driven.

Logistics and e-commerce fulfilment

Transaction activity in logistics increased over the past year, but most of it was strategic consolidation rather than fresh PE deployment. BlackPeak Capital made an exit from euShipments.com, a Bulgarian-based e-commerce logistics and fulfilment platform that reported EUR50 million revenue in 2025 and operates 15 fulfilment centres across South-East and Eastern Europe, selling its stake to Austrian Post in March 2026. The deal closed BlackPeak Capital’s long-term growth equity partnership with the company and marks the first disclosed full-cycle PE exit in Bulgarian logistics. Although logistics remains a sector where deal volume is real and growing, driven by e-commerce demand and real estate investment in warehousing and fulfilment infrastructure, PE funds are still more visible as platform-builders than as active buyers.

Structuring and Regulatory Developments

The two significant regulatory changes expected to be implemented in 2025 are currently fully in force.

FDI screening is fully live

Bulgaria’s mandatory FDI screening regime became fully operational in August 2025 when the Interdepartmental FDI Screening Council responsible for reviewing applications was appointed by the Council of Ministers. Screening applies where a non-EU/EEA investor takes a 10% stake, or invests more than EUR2 million, in a company active in energy, transport, health, communications, critical technologies (AI, semiconductors, robotics) or a handful of other sensitive areas. The review body has 45 days to decide, extendable by 30 days, and non-compliance carries the risk of an administrative fine of 5% of the investment value regardless of outcome, as well as restrictive remedies that can force the investor to reverse or divest the investment entirely.

A new merger-control call-in power sits alongside it

Amendments to the Bulgarian Competition Protection Act, effective since November 2025, entitle the competition authority to require, within six months of closing, a merger-clearance notification for deals that fall below the mandatory thresholds, provided combined Bulgarian turnover exceeds EUR12.5 million and the authority has competition concerns. Three new grounds for an in-depth review were also added, including concerns about a deal’s ultimate ownership or source of financing – this brings FDI-related questions into merger review, which could be a complication for fund structures with complex ownership.

The practical effect of the new regulations is that signing-to-closing periods that used to be 45–60 days on average now more realistically run 90–120 days once FDI or competition review is in play. Both processes run in parallel with no single point of contact, so deal documents increasingly need both sets of conditions precedent, more carefully negotiated efforts language, and, in some cases, break fees to share the new regulatory risk.

Deal terms are adjusting to the uncertainties

Sponsors and sellers across the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region have increasingly turned to earn-outs to bridge valuation gaps and share the risk of a deal taking longer to close or performing differently than expected once regulatory review is factored in. Material Adverse Change (MAC) clauses have also become a more standard feature of CEE transactions than in most Western European markets, reflecting greater sensitivity to regulatory or political adversities at a later stage. Limitation periods for warranty claims are lengthening and liability caps increasing in parallel due to buyers’ demand for protection from regulatory and geopolitical uncertainty.

Pensions funds restructuring

Bulgaria’s pension system has gone through a significant regulatory revision. Amendments to the Social Security Code, passed on 17 March 2026 and effective from 1 January 2027, replace the old single-portfolio model for universal pension funds with a mandatory three-fund structure – ie, dynamic (up to 90% in equities and alternative funds), balanced (up to 55%) and conservative (up to 25%). Each fund will be ring-fenced, with younger savers allocated into the dynamic fund and a right to switch funds every year. Pension companies must also hold capital equal to 2% of net assets under management. Dynamic and balanced pension sub-funds will be allowed materially more exposure to alternative investment funds than the old model permitted, which should feed Bulgarian and regional PE fundraising over time, once pension companies get through operational restructuring by the end of 2026.

Fund Formation: Public Capital, Private Managers

As in 2025, most of EIB/EIF funding in Bulgaria is not direct investment into companies but it is structured as public Recovery and Resilience Facility capital, given to the European Investment Fund (EIF), then deployed through privately managed GPs. That pattern continued at scale. The Recovery Equity Fund of Funds in Bulgaria fed further commitments into Eleven Ventures’, Invenio Partners’ and LAUNCHub Ventures’ latest funds (reportedly up to a combined amount of EUR60 million).

At the same time, BrightCap Ventures closed its second fund at EUR47.5 million (including EUR30 million from the EIF), and the domestic Fund of Funds selected Vitosha Venture Partners II, Morningside Hill II and Bayena Ventures for a combined EUR100 million programme expected to mobilise up to EUR158 million with private co-financing. Of that trio, Vitosha Ventures reached first close fastest and its EUR34 million Fund II closed in May 2026. In July, the firm announced its first ten Fund II investments into AI, robotics, maritime technology, logistics, agriculture, consumer technology, recruitment and systems engineering.

JEREMIE Bulgaria, the EIF-managed programme that seeded the country’s venture and PE ecosystem back in 2010, was extended through 2035 and relaunched in April 2026 with roughly EUR210 million earmarked for high-tech and scale-up financing. It now holds EUR160 million for reinvestment from recycled repayments, plus a further EUR50 million of recycled EU funds, to be deployed across four priorities:

• scale-up tickets of EUR10 million or more;
• deep-tech transfer in quantum, microelectronics, space and AI;
• new dual-use and defence technologies; and
• infrastructure financing for transport, energy and digital projects channelled through the Fund of Funds.

Bulgaria is also set to become the first Central and Eastern European country admitted to the EIF’s European Tech Champions Initiative.

BlackPeak Capital’s second fund and Invenio Partners’ third fund both blend European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), EIF/REF, private institutional and pension-fund capital. The Croatian entrant’s EUR162.5 million fund, closed in October 2025, adds another active South-East Europe-focused buyout fund to that list, backed in part by the EBRD. Taken together with the new funds of BrightCap Ventures, Eleven Ventures and LAUNCHub Ventures, six Bulgaria/South-East Europe-focused managers were raising or deploying new capital in the same 12-month window – a materially deeper GP bench than a year earlier.

Regional Context: a Record Year for CEE

Bulgaria’s PE activity sits inside a strong regional year. Invest Europe’s 2025 CEE statistics show fundraising of EUR1.87 billion (21% above the prior five-year average), with buyout funds alone attracting EUR780 million and exits reaching EUR1.7 billion, which makes it the second-best year on record, driven by trade buyers acquiring PE-built businesses. A notable shift indicated in Invest Europe’s report is that investors based within CEE supplied 56% of all capital raised by CEE PE funds in the latest period, up from 40% a year earlier and the highest share since 2019, with family offices, private individuals and government agencies as the largest sources. Eurostat data reported for 2025 indicates that Poland, Croatia and Bulgaria all had a real GDP growth by more than 3%, ahead of several larger Western European economies. Faster GDP growth across these three markets gives PE sponsors, on one hand, a prospect of stronger organic growth in portfolio companies during the hold period and, on the other hand, a widening growth gap with Western Europe to sell into at exit.

Bulgaria’s own pattern follows this regional picture with active fund formation and growing domestic LP participation through pension funds and the Fund of Funds. Even though Bulgaria’s contribution to the regional totals remains modest in absolute terms given the size of the market, what has changed is the depth and variety of activity beneath the headline numbers. Sponsors have been active across a broader range of sectors over the past 12 months, with several closed deals rather than pipeline alone. The fund-formation cycle completed within this period sets the tone for continued momentum ahead.

Outlook for the Next 12–24 Months 

Battery storage should keep growing fast, though further renewables build-out will remain contingent on resolving grid capacity and interconnection constraints along the way.

Healthcare consolidation is continuing, and after the Haelan platform sale the next 12–24 months are a reasonable window for a second Bulgaria-based platform deal. The same roll-up logic could be expected to extend to other fragmented, owner-run services categories that are established PE targets in Western Europe but remain largely untouched in Bulgaria, such as dental care, ophthalmology chains, vet clinics and pet care, facility management, education and professional services.

IT-services consolidation should keep producing smaller, more frequent deals, while Payhawk’s Centaur milestone is a reminder that Bulgaria’s PE-backed tech pipeline is now producing assets of significant exit scale.

Data centres are another sector to watch. The national electricity system operator has reportedly received grid-connection requests for close to 9,000 MW of data centre capacity, signalling strong potential investor interest, though real development will depend on the timeframe to first build the generation and grid capacity to support it.

Conclusion

With an increasing number of investors committed to the region and Bulgarian founders now familiar with PE investment processes, Bulgaria is no longer just a market building momentum – it has started building maturity. As a result, renewable energy assets are now attracting significant institutional capital, and a platform changing hands from one regional sponsor to another, which is the type of full-cycle outcome the market should continue producing. Bulgaria has a deeper and more varied GP bench, a euro-denominated economy, and a pension system beginning to open up as a domestic capital source. The developments over the next 12–24 months can be expected to show whether this year’s momentum will sustain a durable pattern.