When Bulgaria won the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, the immediate question was where the 2027 contest would be held.
Sofia seemed the obvious choice. Bulgaria’s capital has the country’s largest international airport, the biggest hotel market and a larger arena. It also has Eurovision experience, having hosted the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in 2015.
Instead, the contest is heading to Burgas. “Where?!” I heard my mother ask me on the phone yesterday. Yes, mama. On a piece of paper, that is the less obvious choice. But let me explain, okay? In practice, it says quite a lot about what Bulgaria wants Eurovision 2027 to be.
Burgas has a relatively new arena, an established tourism industry and access to the wider hotel infrastructure of Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast. More importantly, it offers something Sofia can’t: a host city where the sea and its full glory is part of the setting rather than a day trip away.
Sofia has the infrastructure, Burgas has the landscape
Sofia would have been the straightforward logistical option. Its airport has considerably more year-round international connections, while the capital naturally has a larger pool of hotels, restaurants and other services.
Burgas is a different proposition. It’s more of a specialised tourist destination, with known international operators such as Jet2Holidays and TUI selling several holidays in the region. The city and its surroundings are used to dealing with seasonal international tourism. Alongside large-scale oil production, this is what the entire economy largely relies on.
That could prove useful in 2027, when Eurovision arrives just ahead of the main summer season. But there is another reason the choice is very, very interesting and understandable.
Eurovision as a showcase
Host cities inevitably become part of the Eurovision broadcast. Viewers see them in interviews, postcards, social media content and coverage from the delegations and fans.
In Sofia, that would mean presenting the country Bulgaria through its capital: its architecture, history, nightlife and proximity to the mountains.
Burgas gives Bulgaria a different visual storybook. For a country looking to actively attract visitors, that is, of course, significant. Eurovision will put Burgas and the surrounding coast-hotspots (Nessebar, Pomorie and Sozopol) in front of an audience that may never have considered visiting Bulgaria before. Many people – just like my mum – will never even have heard of the Burgas coast.
Okay, I hear you. Whether that actually moves and translates into more tourists is another question. Eurovision can create a sort of awareness, but turning that awareness into future bookings is a big if. Still, the opportunity is there.
All in all, it is difficult to imagine that tourism was not part of the thinking behind choosing the beauty of a coastal city.
A different Eurovision experience
There is both a practical and ‘vibes‘ difference for the fans who actually make the trip.
A Eurovision visit to Sofia would be a city break centred around the contest. In Burgas, it can be combined with a few days on the coast.
Fans could spend the afternoon by the sea, head into the city for Eurovision events, watch a show at Arena Burgas and continue the evening afterwards. That is not necessarily better than Sofia, it is simply different. In terms of atmosphere, Burgas is much more like ‘Bangaranga’ than Sofia.
And it could influence the way Eurovision feels outside the arena.
Fan zones, outdoor events and cultural programming have become an increasingly important part of hosting the contest. In this last decade, it is more and more important what happens outside the arena. Burgas has the advantage of having a waterfront and public spaces that lend themselves naturally to that kind of activity.
Of course, the arena still has to work. Even more than just work.
Arena Burgas opened in 2023 and has a concert capacity of around 15,000. It is significantly smaller than Sofia’s main arena (with a capacity of 17.000), but comfortably large enough to meet Eurovision’s recommended venue requirements. The newer state of the art building may also offer advantages when it comes to staging a television production of this scale.
The bigger logistical question is accommodation and transport. Burgas has a substantial tourism infrastructure, but it does not have Sofia’s year-round connectivity. Eurovision will therefore put the city’s existing infrastructure under considerably more pressure than normal.
It’s going to be mayhem for the average Eurovision fan to find a room. The market is much smaller than in Sofia or Varna, so it’s a case of grabbing whatever you can.
That will be one of the more interesting things to watch once preparations properly get underway.
And the same goes with the world of air travel. For example, I live near Amsterdam and there’s no direct flight to Burgas from Schiphol Airport at the moment of writing this piece. The same goes for Paris’ Charles de Gaulle, Bruxelles’ Zaventem and Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport.
The nearest alternative airport would be Varna, which doesn’t have a huge range of destinations either and is a 2 hour bus trip away. Sofia is a 5 hour plus trek. It’s not an easy place to get to. Will airlines jump in? What will Air Bulgaria do? Broaden their reach
Happily ever after?
For Bulgaria and broadcaster BNT, the success of Burgas 2027 may not necessarily end with the Grand Final. The vision is much bigger.
The longer-term question is whether people who discover the city through Eurovision will come back.
Will fans extend their trip? Will viewers watching from home start considering the Bulgarian coast for a future holiday? Will Burgas become associated with something more than Eurovision? Those are difficult questions to answer in advance.
But the choice of Burgas certainly gives Bulgaria an opportunity that Sofia would not have offered in quite the same way. It allows the country to present Eurovision not only through its capital, but through one of its major coastal destinations. And after years of Eurovision being hosted primarily in Western, large(ish), historic European cities, there is something rather appealing about the idea of a contest where the Black Sea is just outside the arena. That means, literally walking three miles east.
Personally, I can already imagine a virgin mojito somewhere along the waterfront before a Eurovision semi-final. I suspect I won’t be the only one.