Opera and Theatre in Sofia: A Night at the Opera or the National Theatre

Sofia does a proper night of culture for the price of a London cinema trip. The Sofia Opera and Ballet puts on opera, ballet and musicals most weeks, with seats from €20, and the red and cream Ivan Vazov National Theatre runs plays with English surtitles. This is how I pick a show, book it, dress for it and plan the evening around it.

Opera and theatre in Sofia at a glance

Sofia has two grand stages I send visitors to, and they're a short walk apart in the centre. The opera house is on Dondukov Boulevard, near Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and the National Theatre faces the fountain in the City Garden, the little park between Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard and Gurko Street.

If you only have one night, I'd pick the opera for a big Verdi or Puccini evening and the theatre when there's a surtitled play you already know.

Sofia Opera and Ballet

The Sofia Opera and Ballet is my first choice for a dressed-up night in the city. The building's address is 30 Knyaz Aleksandar Dondukov Boulevard, but the main hall entrance, the ticket office and the wheelchair entrance are all round the side at 1 Vrabcha Street. Opera, ballet and musicals share the main stage, and a chamber hall takes the smaller concerts.

It's a full repertory house, so the programme changes every few nights, and Verdi, a ballet and Mamma Mia! can all turn up in the same fortnight. The Sofia Opera's monthly calendar lists every show with its date, hall and a buy button.

What's on at the Sofia Opera in November and December 2026

These are the shows I'd plan a trip around. Evening performances start at 7pm and Sunday matinees at 4pm.

Popular ballets go first. Swan Lake on 1 November sold out, and December brings a Rossini recital by Svetlina Stoyanova on 2 December and a chamber concert of Rossini in the smaller hall on 6 December. The Nutcracker and the New Year galas are the opera's share of Christmas in Sofia, and The Nutcracker is the hardest ticket of the season.

Sofia Opera ticket prices

For La Traviata on 6 November 2026, the opera sells seats in seven price bands: €20, €25, €30, €35, €40, €50 and €60. Each show has its own seat map and prices on the booking page, and you can buy up to 8 tickets in one order.

My rule for opera seats: a middle band with a straight view of the stage beats the dearest seat off to one side. For ballet I go higher up and further back, because the patterns the corps de ballet makes read best from above.

Every guest needs a ticket, whatever their age, and children under 6 aren't admitted to adult performances.

How to book Sofia Opera tickets

I buy online on operasofia.bg and pay by card. ePay and bank transfer work too. The ticket comes by email with a barcode, and I show it on my phone at the door. Eventim, EasyPay and the ticket office at 1 Vrabcha Street sell the same seats.

You can also reserve by email at reservations@operasofia.bg or by phone on 02 800 62 66 or 0879 407 643. The Information Centre answers Monday to Friday from 9am to 6pm and at weekends from 10am to 7pm. A reservation is held for 3 days, and then you pay for it at the ticket office.

Ivan Vazov National Theatre

The National Theatre is the red and cream building with white columns and a gilded pediment behind the City Garden fountain, and to me it's the prettiest facade in Sofia. It's named after Ivan Vazov (1850 to 1921), Bulgaria's national writer, whose grave sits in the garden beside St Sofia Church.

The National Theatre building and its history

In 1904, under Ivan Shishmanov as minister of education, the state-backed drama troupe A Tear and Laughter was renamed the National Theatre. Its building, designed by the Viennese theatre architects Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, was finished in 1906 and opened on 3 January 1907.

It has been rebuilt three times since:

• 1923: a fire broke out during a jubilee performance and gutted the theatre. The German architect Martin Dülfer rebuilt it in reinforced concrete later in the 1920s.
• Second World War: the bombing of Sofia destroyed the south wing, and the theatre reopened in April 1945.
• 1970s: the last big reconstruction added the Chamber Stage.

Today the main auditorium seats 780, and the two small stages hold 120 and 90, close enough to see every face.

Plays with English surtitles at the National Theatre

Most of the programme is in Bulgarian, so the surtitled nights are the ones I book for friends. The theatre lists them on its English surtitles page, a month at a time, and November 2026 has 13.

The two I'd book first are The Physics of Sorrow, from the novel by Georgi Gospodinov, who won the International Booker Prize in 2023 for Time Shelter, and Arms and the Man, Shaw's comedy set in Bulgaria. Seeing Shaw's Bulgarians played by Bulgarians, in Sofia, makes Arms and the Man my pick for a first visit.

National Theatre tickets and the box office

Each show on the theatre's programme has a buy-ticket link, and that's how I book. Prices are set per show and appear on the seat map as you book.

The box office at 5 Dyakon Ignatiy Street opens from 9.30am to 7.30pm Monday to Friday and from 11.30am to 7.30pm at weekends. It takes calls on 02 8119 227, 02 8119 211 and 02 8119 259.

What to wear and the opera's house rules

The opera recommends formal dress. I treat it like a good dinner out: a dress or smart trousers, a shirt and proper shoes for the men, no trainers. At the National Theatre I dress the same, maybe a notch down for a small stage.

The opera sets five more house rules:

• Arrive early. Be there at least 15 minutes before the start time on your ticket.
• Use the cloakroom. Coats, jackets, hats and umbrellas go in, and it's free.
• Phones off. They can come back out at the interval.
• No photos. Audio and video recording are banned too, unless officially authorised.
• No under-6s at adult performances. Concerts for Babies (ages 0 to 3) and Performances for Children (ages 3 to 5) cover the little ones.

How long a night at the opera lasts

Running times at the opera go from 50 minutes for a one-act ballet to 6 hours for Wagner's Götterdämmerung. The visitor FAQ gives the running time and intervals of every production, and these are the shows on this November and December.

A three-hour opera at 7pm puts you back on Vrabcha Street at about 10pm. I check the running time before I book dinner, and for a long Wagner night I eat a late lunch and save dinner for after.

Getting to the opera and the National Theatre

Both are in the centre, and I walk to them from most central hotels. For the opera, trams 20 and 22 stop at National Opera, trolleybus 9 stops at St Alexander Nevsky Square, and trolleybuses 1, 2, 4 and 11 stop at Vasil Levski Square. The nearest stations on the Sofia metro are Sofia University and Serdika, and a single ride costs €0.80 with a tap of your bank card.

The National Theatre is between the same two stations, on the City Garden, so the metro works for both.

The metro runs until just after midnight, so it gets you home from a 10pm finish. After a long opera or a late drink I take a taxi in Sofia instead. Uber doesn't operate here, so I book through the TaxiMe app or flag a licensed yellow cab, and OK Supertrans charges €1.70 to start plus €0.85 a kilometre between 10pm and 6am.

My night at the opera, start to finish

This is the evening I plan when friends come for a weekend in Sofia and want one night at the opera.

Before the show: Sense Rooftop Bar

The rooftop bar on the Sense Hotel sits on the 9th floor at 16 Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard, with the gold domes of Alexander Nevsky filling the windows. It's my favourite of the rooftop bars in Sofia and a short walk from the opera. Cocktails cost €12 to €16.

It opens at 10am every day and closes at 2am from Wednesday to Saturday and 1am from Sunday to Tuesday. The dress code is smart casual after 6pm, with no shorts, sportswear or flip-flops, which your opera outfit already beats. I book a table on +359 884 544 108.

After the show: Bar Me

Bar Me is a tiny cocktail bar inside the Central Military Club building on Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard, through a side entrance on Rakovski Street. The room is bird-themed, with illustrations, taxidermy and green walls, and some drinks arrive in bowls of smoke.

It's my pick among the cocktail bars in Sofia for after a show, because it feels like a little bit of theatre itself. The Hemingway daiquiri is the classic I order, and with so few seats I book ahead for a Friday or Saturday.

Other stages: Bulgaria Hall and NDK

When the opera and the theatre have nothing on that I want, I look at the programmes of two more stages.

Bulgaria Hall and the Sofia Philharmonic

Bulgaria Hall, at 1 Aksakov Street, is home to the Sofia Philharmonic, and most of its concerts start at 7pm. The Sofia Philharmonic website links every concert to its tickets on Eventim.

Jazz under NDK, rock gigs and folk bands with dinner make up the rest of live music in Sofia, and those bands mostly start between 8pm and 9.30pm.

NDK, the National Palace of Culture

NDK opened on 31 March 1981 at the bottom of Vitosha Boulevard, and its Hall 1 seats 3,380, so it takes the big concerts and touring shows. Its New Year Music Festival has run since 1986 and ends with a classical concert on 1 January.

The National Palace of Culture has its own stop on two metro lines, NDK on M2 and NDK II on M3, and every November it hosts Kinomania, a film festival running since 1987.