The 2025 Amendments to the Bulgarian Arbitration Act: What Practitioners Need to Know
Author: VIAC Ambassador for Bulgaria, Yoana Yovnova, Attorney At Law at Tomov&Tomov
As VIAC CAN already published in the VIAC CAN Newsletter from November 2025, the rules related to arbitration in Bulgaria were changed significantly by the adoption of the amendments to the Arbitration Act in late 2025. These amendments have the ambitious goals of providing greater certainty and faster problem-solving for the business; modernizing and digitalizing the arbitration process; and ensuring that the arbitration institutions act with even more accountability and transparency.
One of the key amendments in the Arbitration Act was the setting up of a new Register of Arbitrations by the Ministry of Justice. The Arbitration Act provides that each permanent arbitration institution in Bulgaria and the arbitration proceedings initiated before them, as well as each international ad hoc or institutional arbitration proceedings with seat of arbitration in Bulgaria shall be registered in the Register of Arbitrations. The reasons for the decision to establish such a register were (i) unifying the requirements for all arbitration institutions; (ii) verifying the legitimacy and status of the arbitration institutions and arbitrators; (iii) increasing the importance of arbitration as an alternative means of dispute resolution by improving the confidence in it, and (iv) reducing the risk of unregulated practices in the arbitration proceedings in Bulgaria.
The Arbitration Act provides that the Register of Arbitrations had to be set up by the end of 2025. Meeting this deadline was of utmost importance because as of March 2026, any arbitration award rendered by an unregistered arbitration institution or an unregistered arbitrator, although subject to registration, shall be null and void. Shortly before the deadline, The Register of Arbitrations became operational as of 3 December 2025 and can be found at https://arbitrage.mjs.bg/.
The rules and the procedure for keeping, access to and maintenance of the Register of Arbitrations are set forth in Ordinance No. H-2 of the Register of Arbitrations dated 18 November 2025. The ordinance is easily accessible on the website of the Register of Arbitrations.
Some of the key provisions of Ordinance no. H-2 include the following:
a) The Register shall contain information about (i) the permanent arbitration institutions in Bulgaria; (ii) the ad hoc international arbitration proceedings with seat of arbitration in Bulgaria; (iii) the arbitration proceedings with seat of arbitration in Bulgaria which have commenced before a foreign arbitration institution.
b) The following shall be registered for arbitrations under (ii) and (iii):
· the date of receipt of the request for arbitration;
· the names and addresses of the parties;
· names, profession, and contact details of the arbitrators selected or appointed to resolve the dispute, and where they are arbitrators at a permanent arbitration institution with its seat outside the territory of Bulgaria, the name, identification number, and seat of the foreign arbitration institution shall also be entered;
· date and number of the arbitration award.
The following documents shall be attached to the electronic file for these cases:
· the request for arbitration and the response to the request, if any;
· the notice of an upcoming open hearing on the arbitration case – date and manner of its conduct;
· arbitration award, which is announced with a view to its entry into force.
c) Applications for registrations concerning such arbitrations shall be submitted by the President of the respective arbitration tribunal or by a person expressly authorized by him / her within 7 days of the constitution of the tribunal. Any change in the registrations shall also be subject to registration within 7 days of the occurrence of such change.
d) The employees of the Ministry of Justice who have been assigned the task to review the applications shall verify (i) the completeness of the submitted information; (ii) the veracity of the submitted information; (iii) the representative authority of the applicant; (iv) compliance with the requirements set forth in the Arbitration Act, and (v) any other requirements of the law. If any deficiencies or omissions are identified, the applicant shall be instructed to remedy them within 7 days of the notification. If there are no deficiencies or omissions, or they have been remedied, the Minister of Justice shall issue a decision for registration of the proceedings.
e) The electronic information about the Bulgarian arbitration institutions, and the names and professions of the arbitrators in them shall be public. Only the Minister of Justice, the civil servants whom he has assigned the maintenance of the Register, the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Justice and the court may access to the remaining data and documents in the Register of Arbitrations in specific cases.
Whether the amendments in the Arbitration Act and the setting up of the Register of Arbitration will achieve its ambitious goals remain to be seen. What is undisputed, however, is that communication and cooperation with the arbitration institutions, including the foreign ones as VIAC, will be of utmost importance for achieving these goals.
