How to Make Friends in Sofia: 10 Ways to Meet People

Sofia's social life runs through small groups, from a Friday pub crawl to a Wednesday philosophy night, and finding them is most of the work. I'm a Brit who lives here, so this is my list of 10 ways to meet people in Sofia, for a weekend visit or a proper move, with what each one costs and who it suits, plus how to make friends with Bulgarians.

Is it easy to make friends in Sofia?

On a weekend, yes. A solo traveller can have company by Saturday night here, because Sofia's nightlife keeps its social options close together: a pub crawl twice a week from the Palace of Justice, hostels with bar nights, and candlelit bars where talking to the next table is normal.

Moving here takes longer. The Bulgarians I know mostly keep the friends they made at school, university and their first job, and those circles are tight. Getting the first invitation home is the hard part.

The expat scene is small enough for faces to repeat, so by your second Sofia Expats event you'll recognise someone. Younger Bulgarians mostly speak English, and most of the groups below run in English.

How to meet people on a weekend in Sofia

A weekend gives you two nights and a spare afternoon. These four work at short notice, and the first one needs no planning at all.

1. The Original Sofia Pub Crawl

The Original Sofia Pub Crawl is how I'd start any solo trip to Sofia. It runs every Friday and Saturday, and the group meets at 9pm in front of the Palace of Justice (Съдебна палата) at 2 Vitosha Boulevard, under the left lion statue. You pay the guide €21 on the night, and booking a spot is free.

The ticket covers 4 bars with a welcome shot in each, drinking games, no cover charges and free VIP entry to a club, which the group reaches around midnight. Public crawls usually have 20 to 40 people, and most come alone or in twos. The games put you in conversation with strangers at the first bar, and by the second the pairs and solo travellers have merged into one loud group.

Bring a passport or ID, because the crawl is 18+ and the club won't let you in without one. With 3 or 4 extra beers and a taxi home, a realistic night on the Original Sofia Pub Crawl costs €33 to €47 in total.

2. A social hostel: Hostel Mostel

Hostel Mostel is the hostel I'd book for company. It's a renovated 19th-century building about 5 minutes' walk from St Nedelya Church, with mixed dorms of 6 or 8 beds, a self-catering kitchen, a pool table and a wooden veranda. Its programme of movie, barbecue and bar nights does the introductions for you.

It scores 8.6 on Hostelworld from more than 11,000 reviews, and it has sister hostels in Plovdiv and Veliko Tarnovo if you're carrying on round Bulgaria.

Pick with care, because some hostels here are built for sleep. Hostel N1, a few steps from Serdika metro, bans alcohol, keeps quiet hours from 10pm to 9am and calls itself a no-party hostel. It's ideal before an early bus to Rila and hopeless if you're after company. Dorm beds at the best hostels in Sofia start at about €5 to €7 a night.

3. A seat at the bar in Hambara

Hambara (Хамбара, the barn) is my favourite bar in Sofia and the one where I find it easiest to talk to strangers. It's an old house at 6 Septemvri 22 with no sign outside, two floors lit only by candles, and a crowd that mixes artists, students, expats and visitors.

Skip it if smoke bothers you: people still light up inside, though Bulgaria has banned smoking in bars since 2012. A half-litre of draught beer costs about €3.50 on average in Sofia, so a long evening at the bar is cheap by London standards.

Hambara opens around 9pm. For an earlier drink, three of the best bars in Sofia each specialise in one thing: Raketa in rakia, Nectar in natural wine and KANAAL in craft beer.

4. A Sofia Expats tasting, workshop or hike

Sofia Expats is an English-language community for people living in Bulgaria, and its small events suit a visitor whose dates line up as much as a newcomer. They're paid, they cap at 5 to 20 places, and you sign up through the Register links on the Sofia Expats meetups page.

The €3 brunch and the €3 picnic both sold out in late summer 2026, so book the cheap social ones as soon as they're listed. The banitsa workshop takes 5 people into a Sofia home to make banitsa from scratch, which is about as close to Bulgarian family life as a visitor gets on a weekend.

The picnic is my favourite format. Borisova Gradina is Sofia's oldest park, 15 minutes on foot from Alexander Nevsky, and a picnic blanket on its lawns with 20 strangers is a gentle way into the expat crowd.

How to make friends in Sofia if you're moving here

Living here, you need things that repeat: the same faces every week or every month, until a few of them turn into friends. These six are where I'd start.

5. Expat bar nights and the Sofia Expats newsletter

Sofia Expats sends an English-language newsletter every Monday to more than 2,800 subscribers, and its bigger meetups are bar nights. The Meet & Talk it ran with the events app togeda at Bar de Rouge in June 2026 drew about 100 people, and earlier meetups ran at Edin bar and Rabbit Hole. It also runs coworking days, one of them with Puzl Coworking in November 2025, for remote workers who'd like company on a weekday.

The other English-speaking communities in Sofia are online first. Search Facebook for Sofia Expats & Friends and Girls Meetups in Sofia, check InterNations' Sofia group, and look at Eventbrite's Sofia listings. I'd join two, watch for a month, then go to anything with a date and an address.

6. Meetup groups for games, running and tech

Meetup is busier in Sofia than I expected, and its groups are the easiest way into a weekly routine. These are the Sofia groups on Meetup I'd look at first, with member counts from November 2026.

The philosophy group is the one I'd try first, because it keeps numbers small. Its November session, on a Wednesday at 7.15pm, had 10 seats, so everyone gets a turn to talk. The tech groups run bigger: PyData Sofia's November 2026 meetup had 100 people going and a waitlist. Check each group's language before you go, because the WordPress meetup's November talk was billed in Bulgarian.

7. Language exchange and learning Bulgarian

A few words of Bulgarian change how people treat you here, and Cyrillic comes first. It has 30 letters, and once you can read them, menus and metro signs open up.

For a group to practise with, onhuddle lists a Sofia Social and Language Exchange aimed at making new friends.

The swap I'd set up is one to one: an hour of your English for an hour of someone's Bulgarian, with a colleague or someone you met at a meetup. Start with the Bulgarian phrases people use every day: здравейте (zdraveyte) for hello, благодаря (blagodarya) for thank you, and наздраве (nazdrave) for cheers.

8. Hiking on Vitosha

Vitosha Mountain rises at the end of Sofia's high street, and a hike up it is my favourite plan for getting to know someone. Two hours on a trail side by side is plenty of time to get past small talk.

Bus 66 runs from Vitosha metro station (M2) and Sofia Zoo up to Aleko, at 1,810 metres, for €0.80 a ride. Tap the same bank card for every ride and fares stop at €2 a day. From Aleko, Cherni Vrah, the summit at 2,290 metres, is 3 km and about 1.5 to 2 hours on foot. Neither lift from the city runs in 2026, so the bus is the way up.

If you don't have anyone to go with yet, watch the Sofia Expats meetups page for a group hike like its October 2026 sunset walk.

9. Folk dancing and the horo

The horo is Bulgaria's line dance: a line or circle of people holding hands or belts, stepping together. At weddings and village fairs everyone joins in, so learning the basic steps is how you stop being the foreigner at the edge of the room.

A new Meetup group, Sofia Expat Folk Dance & Cultural Adventures, teaches complete beginners the horo in English, and with 9 members at its first meet and greet in November 2026, you'd be there from the start. To hear the music first, Hadjidraganovite Izbi, a cellar tavern at 18 Hristo Belchev Street, has a live band from 8pm to 11pm every evening except Monday. Bulgarian folk music runs in odd rhythms, and the rachenitsa is a fast dance in 7/8, so expect to count under your breath.

10. Groups for parents

Sofia has English-speaking groups for families, and they're where expat parents meet each other. A toddler group for ages 0 to 5 meets at the Anglican church near Doctor's Garden, and the British Craft Club at 20 Bogdanovets Street, one metro stop from NDK, runs sessions for ages 4 to 11 that you book ahead.

Theatre Visions, an English-language theatre in Mladost, runs classes for children, and play cafes such as Malki Prikazki in Iztok serve food for the adults while the kids run about. Muzeiko, the children's science museum, costs about €6 a visit and tops my rainy-day list for kids in Sofia.

Where to meet people in Sofia, compared

Making friends with Bulgarians

A handshake is the safe greeting, and it becomes a hug and a kiss on each cheek once you're friends. Bulgarian tables get loud, and what sounds like a row from across the room is usually people having a good night.

Most Bulgarian dinners I'm invited to start with rakia, sipped slowly with a shopska salad as an aperitif. Every clink comes with "nazdrave" and eye contact, and a glass holds 50 ml at most, so it lasts.

A name day can matter more than a birthday. Every name has its saint's day in the Orthodox calendar, so every Ivan and Ivana celebrates on 7 January and every Georgi and Gergana on 6 May, St George's Day. The person celebrating pays, which means a new friend's name day usually comes with a free round.

If you're invited home, the first piece of Bulgarian etiquette happens at the door: shoes come off, and the host hands you slippers. I turn up with wine or chocolates and an empty stomach, because the host keeps refilling the plate.