Working hours in Bulgaria: the measure of the week

Working life · Last reviewed: 2026-08-24

Why „how many hours” is not a complete question

Most people starting a job abroad picture working time as a single number. In Bulgaria it is not a number but a three-layer frame. The first layer is NORMAL DURATION: 40 hours a week, 8 hours a day. The second layer consists of the STRETCHING MECHANISMS — under defined conditions an employer may extend the working day, or may measure time not day by day but as a total across a reference period. The third layer is the PROTECTIVE RULES: rest periods, the shorter measure of night work, and the annual overtime ceiling. Your contract usually spells out only the first layer; what actually happens to you comes from the second, and your rights sit in the third.

The practical value of that distinction is this: the sentence „my employer makes me work ten hours, that is illegal“ may be true or may not be. If you are in an extended-working-time regime and the difference is offset on other days, that is an arrangement the law recognises. If nothing is offset, the same hours are overtime and a premium is owed. A complaint made without that distinction usually goes nowhere; a complaint made with it rests on a concrete document.

There is a third misconception too: these rules do not apply only to Bulgarian nationals. They follow the law applicable to the employment relationship — anyone who signs an employment contract with an employer in Bulgaria sits inside this frame, whatever their citizenship. For workers posted from another EU member state a separate set of minimum conditions applies, and working time and rest periods sit at the centre of that set as well.

Normal duration: five days, forty hours, eight hours

According to the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy (МТСП), the working week in Bulgaria is five days with a normal weekly working time of up to 40 hours. When the parties agree on full-time work of normal duration, they implicitly agree that it lasts 8 working hours. Normal duration may not be extended except in the cases and by the procedure provided in the Labour Code (Art. 136(4)). In other words, „we wrote it into the contract and the employee agreed“ is not enough to enlarge normal working time permanently.

The law also recognises REDUCED working time (Art. 137). This is a normal duration shorter than the one set in Art. 136, applied because of unfavourable or otherwise specific working conditions, age limits or other physiological factors. Reduced time is not a privilege but a protective measure: the types of work it covers are set out in a separate act, and a person working under it does not lose pay because the day is shorter.

Extending the working day: the offsetting logic

The law allows an employer, for production reasons, to extend working time on certain working days at the expense of a corresponding reduction on other days. This is the extended-working-time regime and it has two legs: the extension is introduced by a written order, and the compensating reduction must take place within a set period. Where there is no compensation, what exists is not extended working time but unpaid overtime — and the difference is proved by documents, not by intentions.

Extension has internal limits of its own. The daily figure cannot grow without bound, the regime cannot run indefinitely, and certain groups — people protected on health grounds, pregnant women, mothers of young children — cannot be placed in it even with their consent. The detailed limits sit in the Ordinance on working time, rest periods and leave. The most practical route to them is to ask for the employer's internal labour rules (правилник за вътрешния трудов ред) before signing; the employer is obliged to make them available.

Aggregated calculation: when time is measured by period, not by day

In shift work, continuous production, security and hospitality, the most common arrangement is aggregated calculation of working time (сумирано изчисляване на работното време). Here the unit of measurement is not the day but a reference period fixed in advance: total hours worked across the period must not exceed the norm for that same period. One week of 50 hours followed by one of 30 is not in itself a breach; the breach is a total above the norm at the end of the period with the excess left unpaid as overtime.

Two details are decisive for the worker. First, the length of the period and the shift schedule must be announced in advance; an arrangement that runs on a phone call saying „come in tomorrow“ does not meet the requirements and turns in practice into on-call work. Second, at the end of the period the account is closed and any excess is paid; leaving it unclosed and rolling it into the next period is the classic scenario in which hours become invisible. Your own note of when you clocked in and out is the cheapest insurance against it.

Aggregated calculation also raises the question of converting night hours. Because the normal duration of night work is shorter than daytime work, that difference has to be taken into account when the account is drawn up. In practice this is exactly what gets skipped, and the effect is not small: for someone on a regular night rota the gap at the end of the period comes not from individual hours but from that conversion.

Rest: within the day, between days, within the week

• •Break within the working day — a meal break is taken during the working day; as a rule it is not counted as working time and its length is fixed by internal rules. Working straight through without a break is contrary to the law, whatever the calculation regime.
• •Daily rest between working days — under Art. 152 of the Labour Code a worker is entitled to uninterrupted rest between working days, which cannot be less than 12 hours. Someone leaving at 22:00 cannot start at 08:00 the next morning, but at 10:00 at the earliest.
• •Weekly rest — in a five-day working week a worker is entitled to two consecutive days of weekly rest, one of which is normally Sunday. In these cases at least 48 hours of uninterrupted weekly rest must be provided.
• •Official holidays — work on official public holidays falls under a separate regime and is paid with a premium; it cannot be accounted for as an ordinary day.
• •Annual rest — paid annual leave belongs to the same family and its minimum size is fixed by law; the detail is in the annual leave article on this site.

Night work: 22:00-06:00 is a separate regime

Night work in Bulgaria is work performed between 22:00 and 06:00; for workers under 16 the interval starts at 20:00. The normal duration of night work is shorter than daytime work: in a five-day working week it is 7 hours, and weekly night work is up to 35 hours. A night worker therefore does not do „the same eight hours, only at night“ — their normal day is already shorter, and that is the measure of the law even where the contract is silent.

Night work also carries an additional payment, and for some groups it is restricted or entirely prohibited. Pregnant women, mothers of young children and the other protected categories cannot be placed on nights even with their consent, because protective rules are not entitlements a person can waive. The obligation to arrange a medical examination before night work begins, and periodic checks thereafter, also rests with the employer; that cost cannot be passed to the worker.

Overtime: an annual ceiling of 150 hours

Overtime (извънреден труд) is prohibited as a rule in Bulgaria and permitted only in the cases the law lists. Even in permitted cases, overtime for one worker in a calendar year may not exceed 150 hours. The ceiling is individual — there is no defence based on a company average. Overtime must also be entered in a dedicated record; the absence of such a record is a breach in its own right and weighs against the employer in an inspection.

The consideration for overtime is a premium on pay, and its size depends on the day the work falls on. The rates below are the statutory minima under Art. 262 of the Labour Code; a collective or individual agreement may set higher rates but not lower ones. The premium is calculated on basic pay plus additional remuneration of a permanent nature, unless otherwise agreed.

Under aggregated calculation, overtime appears not on a single day but at the end of the reference period. The most common mistake shift workers make is to demand payment straight after one long week; the second most common is failing to notice that the account at the end of the period was never closed at all. Both are solved by the same simple record, which on its own can become the backbone of a case.

Part-time work, a second contract and the total

A person in Bulgaria may hold more than one employment contract; the second is concluded for time outside the first. What tends to be overlooked is that rest rules follow THE PERSON, not the contract. Two employers each saying „I had them for eight hours“ do not make a sixteen-hour day lawful; the right to uninterrupted daily rest remains the person's right, and the existence of a second contract is no defence.

In part-time work the commonest problem is creeping hours: the contract says four, practice becomes six, and the difference is recorded nowhere. Work beyond the agreed part-time hours does not become „normal“ by itself; it is a separate matter, and once it becomes regular it means the contract has in fact changed. If you notice such creep, the first step is to notify the employer in writing of your actual monthly hours and ask for the contract to be brought into line.

Self-insured persons and company owners fall outside this section: working-time rules govern relationships based on an employment contract. For someone working under a civil contract (граждански договор) neither the 40 hours, nor the 150-hour ceiling, nor the 12-hour rest applies directly — which does not mean they are freer, but that they do not enjoy the protective rules. The type of contract is therefore the question to answer before any argument about time.

Working on rest days and public holidays

Work on weekly rest days is an exception, not a rule, and when it happens it produces two consequences: compensating rest and premium pay. Giving compensating rest does not extinguish the premium, and the premium does not replace the rest; the two are not alternatives. In practice this is exactly where things go wrong — either rest is granted with no premium, or the premium is paid and the rest is never actually taken.

For official holidays the position is clearer still: the minimum premium for overtime on such a day is one hundred per cent. In hospitality, retail and healthcare, where holidays are working days, that line should appear regularly on the payslip. A payslip that shows no holiday premium across a whole year means no holiday work took place in that workplace — and if it did, the gap is worth pursuing.

On-call duty, standby and travel time

The murkiest zone in any argument about time is the state of „I was not working, but I was not free either“. The law does not put on-site duty and being on standby at home in the same basket: the first is treated as time at work, while the consideration for the second is settled by individual or collective agreement. The distinction has a direct financial effect in security, technical support and healthcare, where duty rotas are everyday practice.

Travel time is also frequently confused. The journey from home to the workplace is not, as a rule, working time; movement from one point to another during the working day on the employer's instruction, by contrast, is part of the work. For field engineering teams and couriers this distinction can make a difference of two or three hours a day. If the contract contains a sentence such as „the working day begins on site“, ask exactly what it means before you start.

Who proves the hours: records, schedules, payslips

1. 1

   Find out in writing, on day one, which regime you are in

   The contract should state the type of working time (full/part, normal/reduced) and the reference period, if aggregated calculation applies. If it does not, ask for the internal labour rules.
2. 2

   Keep a copy of the shift schedule

   The schedule is the employer's own document; even if it is changed later, your copy carries a date. A photograph is enough, no signature is needed.
3. 3

   Keep your own record of arrival and departure

   Even a note in a calendar works. Where there is electronic access control, you can request an extract of the records relating to you.
4. 4

   Look for a separate overtime line on the payslip

   The premium must be visible as its own item. Overtime buried in a lump sum does not count as paid; what proves payment is the line itself.
5. 5

   Under aggregated calculation, watch the end of the period

   When the account closes, hours worked are compared with the norm. If the difference is unpaid, ask in writing; the written question is the founding document of every step that follows.

Enforcement: the General Labour Inspectorate

Enforcement of working-time rules belongs to the Executive Agency „General Labour Inspectorate“ (ИА ГИТ). The agency inspects both on complaint and on its own initiative, and publishes guidance by topic on its site. For workers posted to Bulgaria from another member state there is a separate information channel, in which working time and rest periods are expressly part of the minimum set of conditions that applies to posted workers too.

For a complaint to work, three things are needed: the name of the rule breached, the date range of the breach, and the document in your hands. „They make us work too much“ opens no file; „the reference period closed at the end of March, 26 hours above the norm, no premium line on the payslip“ does. If you do not speak Bulgarian, file it anyway — what is missing is not the language but the date and the document.

How to verify this page today

Working-time provisions change through amendments to the Labour Code and updates to secondary legislation; the detail on extended time and aggregated calculation in particular lives at ordinance level and can be updated within the year. The information here is tied to official sources as at 24 August 2026; before making a claim or signing a contract, confirm the current value on the official page: the МТСП page „Работно време“ for the general frame, the Ordinance on working time, rest periods and leave published by ИА ГИТ for the applicable text, and the Ordinance on the structure and organisation of wages for the premiums.

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