BULGARIA’s Ministry of Transport has confirmed details of its upcoming tender for contracts to operate passenger services in the country. The bidding process is set to start by the end of July.
Three 12-year contracts will be available, split regionally between the north, west and south of the country. The ministry says that each lot will include main and secondary lines and cover all services, including existing long-distance, cross-border, suburban and overnight trains. Each region will be served by a dedicated depot.
Prospective participants in the tender will be able to submit bids up to October 30. Contract awards are expected to take place before December 31 with services under the new contracts due to commence on December 13 2026. A mobilisation period will take place from the time of the contract signing until December 12 2026. Bids will be evaluated on the basis of the lowest figure for the average cost per train-km, with each bidder restricted to a 5% profit margin.
The contracts include provision to introduce Express services, defined as those that operate at over 80km/h, covering distances of more than 100km, and serving towns and cities with a population of more than 20,000. These services are currently not provided due to a lack of suitable rolling stock. However, the ministry says the plan is to progressively introduce these trains within the first year of the contract.
Each operator will be obliged to coordinate the services offered according to a General Train Schedule, which the state will prepare with input from municipalities and regional administrations. The planned train-km for the first year of the contracts have already been calculated with operators expected to submit capacity requests for subsequent years to infrastructure manager NRIC.
Fleet
Rolling stock for each contract will either be provided by the state, leased, or supplied directly by the operator. This includes new fleets purchased using National Recovery and Resilience funding, such as 25 single-deck EMUs which Škoda Group is supplying for delivery by August 31 2026, and 35 EMUs which Alstom is supplying, and are scheduled for delivery by August 25 2027. The operators will also have access to nine new electric shunting locomotives, which domestic firm Express Service is providing. The document makes no reference to the contract with Pesa to supply seven EMUs that the ministry announced last year.
The operators will be obliged to ensure compatibility between their ticketing systems. All staff employed by the existing operator, Bulgarian State Railways (BDZ), will transfer to the new operators.
