Bulgarian football clubs in European competitions

Did You Know?

• No club was elected by Bulgarian Football Union for the participation in the tournament in that season.
• A number of Eastern European clubs withdrew following UEFA's decision to separate western and Eastern countries due to troubles in Czechoslovakia.

Statistics

As of 3 November 2022, CSKA Sofia leads Bulgarian clubs with 25 appearances in the European Cup/UEFA Champions League, 2 in the UEFA Europa Conference League, and 58 overall. Levski Sofia holds the record for most appearances in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup/UEFA Cup/Europa League (26) and the Cup Winners' Cup (11). Spartak Varna has the most Intertoto Cup entries with 5. CSKA Sofia also has the most matches played (258), wins (100), draws (56), and losses (102). The biggest single-match win is Levski Sofia's 12–2 victory over Lahden Reipas in the 1976–77 European Cup Winners' Cup, while the largest aggregate win is Levski Sofia's 19–3 over the same opponent. The heaviest single-match defeat is Sigma Olomouc's 8–0 win against Velbazhd Kyustendil in the 2000 UEFA Intertoto Cup, and the worst aggregate loss is Slavia Sofia's 0–10 defeat to Partizan in the 1988–89 UEFA Cup. For the 2020–21 UEFA competitions, Bulgaria's coefficient points total was 17.500, ranking 28th among 55 associations.

Active competitions

Due to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, UEFA matched Eastern European clubs against each other in the first two rounds, leading several of them to withdraw. After riots at the Bulgarian Cup final, Levski Sofia was banned from European play, and Botev Plovdiv replaced them. For several seasons, Bulgarian champions did not enter the Champions League because UEFA restructured the competition to include only the top 24 European nations. Instead, the Bulgarian league winner competed in the UEFA Cup.