Bulgarian lev
Bulgarian lev: a historical unit of account.
- Dates in use
- Introduction and ending not established
- Ancestry branch
- French franc
Its place in the family
All ancestors and descendants ↗Parents 1
Bulgarian lev
This currencyTrace its ancestry backward
Bulgarian lev
French franc
Livre tournois
Frankish denier–livre
Roman solidus–nomisma
Roman as–denarius accounting
Earlier ancestry is not established here.
1 later contribution joined this currency. See those connections →
The story
Bulgaria’s 1952 reform converted cash at 100:1, with different rules for prices and deposits. No universal valuation stored. [1]
Turning points
Account-unit observation
Lev established in monetary legislation with specified fiscal revenues in gold leva. [2]
Account-unit observation
The 1880 law introduced the lev as national account unit, and monetary documents of public bodies and private persons were required to express sums in leva and stotinki. [3]
Account-unit observation
Reform rescales specified fiscal and contractual obligations separately from cash exchange. [4]
Redenomination
One new lev replaced 1, 000 old leva. [5]
Euro monetary substitution
1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN. Bulgaria: euro adoption 2026-01-01; cash 2026-01-01. Regulation 974/98 substitutes the euro for each participating state’s currency on its adoption date; cash changeover is separately defined. [6] [7] [8]
Euro cash changeover
Bulgaria: euro adoption 2026-01-01; cash 2026-01-01. [7]
Sources and evidence
- Deutsche Bundesbank · Metadata on the Exchange Rate Statistics, 24 September 2025 C876 ↗
- Kalina Dimitrova and Martin Ivanov · Bulgaria: From 1879 to 1947, South-Eastern European Monetary History Network historical database chapter C1544 ↗
- Bulgarian National Bank · 140 years since creation of the Bulgarian lev,4June 2020; Luca Fantacci · Autonomy vs. Stability: the Relationship between Internal and External Money in Bulgaria (1879–1912), BNB DP73/2009 C1767 ↗
- United States Foreign Claims Settlement Commission · Claims Against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania C1545 ↗
- Deutsche Bundesbank · Metadata on the Exchange Rate Statistics, 24 September 2025 C878 ↗
- Council of the European Union · Council Regulation (EC) 2866/98 — consolidation at 1 January 2026 C702 ↗
- Council of the European Union · Council Regulation (EC) 974/98 — consolidation at 1 January 2026 C703 ↗
- Council of the European Union · Council Regulation (EC) 974/98 — consolidation at 1 January 2026 C646 ↗
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Full claims, evidence coverage, corrections and earlier interpretations are kept separately.
Cite this page
“Bulgarian lev.” The Family Tree of Money. © Field Technologies, Inc. Reader edition 2026-10-13; research dataset v44. https://familytreeofmoney.org/currency/T-FTM000807.html