People buy a flat by the sea and assume they can now come whenever they like and stay as long as they like. The flat is theirs, after all.
It does not work that way. And since April 2026 it takes a border officer about one second to see exactly how long you have already stayed.
Who this does not apply to at all
Citizens of EU countries — they live in Bulgaria with no limit on the length of stay.
Anyone holding a Bulgarian residence permit or a long-stay D visa: days spent in the country that issued the document do not count towards the limit.
Ukrainians under temporary protection in an EU country — they have their own status and their own count of days.
Everyone else, read on.
What the 90 in 180 rule actually is
A citizen of a country that enters Europe visa-free or on a short-stay Schengen visa may stay in the Schengen area for 90 days within any 180 days.
It is not a calendar year. The window rolls: on any day of your stay you count back 180 days and add up every day you spent inside Schengen in that stretch. It cannot exceed 90, and once it does, entry is closed until the older days drop out of the window.
The day of entry and the day of exit each count as a full day. Land in the evening of 1 June, fly out in the morning of 2 June, and that is two days, not one.
What changed specifically for Bulgaria
Bulgaria used to sit outside Schengen, and days here were counted separately. You could use up 90 days in Germany, then come to Bulgaria and stay on under a separate Bulgarian allowance.
Not any more. Checks at Bulgaria’s air and sea borders were lifted on 31 March 2024, and at land borders on 1 January 2025. Bulgaria is now a full part of Schengen, and there is a single shared counter for the whole zone.
Popping over to Greece for a day and coming back will not reset anything. Greece is the same Schengen, and the counter keeps running.
If you are looking at new builds — see new-build apartments by the sea in Bulgaria.
There are no passport stamps any more
Since 10 April 2026 the Entry/Exit System, EES, has been fully operational across the whole of Schengen, Bulgaria included. Passports are no longer stamped. Every entry and exit goes into a shared electronic database: name, date, fingerprints, photograph.
Days used to be counted from stamps, and a stamp could be smudged or missing altogether. Now the border officer sees how many days you have left on a screen before you have said a word.
The flat does not add a single day
This is the most common misunderstanding I run into. Buying property in Bulgaria gives you no residence permit, no visa and no extra hours. At passport control the owner of a flat is exactly the same 90-day guest as a tourist staying in a hotel.
What the flat does give you is different: a home of your own to come to on any of those 90 days, and an asset that earns from rent while you are away. It does not move the length of stay.
What to do about it
Count your days yourself and write them down. Overstaying is not a fine on the spot, it is a record in a database that will surface at your next entry and on every visa application for years afterwards.
And if the plan is to genuinely live by the sea long term, the conversation is not about a flat, it is about status. That is a separate discussion and an entirely different set of documents.
All current listings — apartments in Sveti Vlas. Prices, sizes and floors in the catalogue.
