site.bta201 Bulgarian Settlements Had No Residents in 2023

As of December 31, 2023, there were 201 settlements in Bulgaria without a population. The largest number of them are located in the regions of Veliko Tarnovo (67), Gabrovo (67), Kyustendil (10), and Kardzhali (9), the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said on Wednesday. Between 1 to 49 people lived in 1,453 villages, or 27.6% of all settlements. Six towns with a population of more than 100,000 people were home to 35.2% of the country’s population.

According to NSI data, there were 205 settlements in Bulgaria without a single inhabitant as of end-December 2022, the highest number of them being in Veliko Tarnovo (69), Gabrovo (68), Kardzhali (9), Smolyan (9), and Kyustendil (9). A total of 1,249 villages, or 23.8% of the settlements, were inhabited by between 1 and 49 people in 2022. There were also six towns in Bulgaria with a population of more than 100,000. They were inhabited by 35% of the country's residents.

In the last two years, Sofia Municipality was the largest municipality in Bulgaria. Apart from it, seven other municipalities had a population of over 100,000 people: Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Stara Zagora, Ruse, Sliven, and Pleven. The relative share of the population in these eight municipalities represents 40.8% of the total population in the country.

The population of Sofia Municipality was unevenly distributed across its quarters, according to NSI. Lyulin and Mladost, which had a population of more than 100,000 people each, were home to 15.7% of the Sofia Municipality residents. The smallest quarter in Sofia Municipality is Bankya, with a population of 11,531 people, or 0.9% of the municipality's population.