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Independent reading. tolbg is an informational publication about roads in Bulgaria for cars, motorcycles and freight vehicles. It does not sell vignettes, tolls, permits, insurance or roadside help, and it is not a public authority. Rules, fees and closures change. Confirm them with the responsible institutions before you travel.

Frontiers · revised 22 April 2026

Some borders became internal. The trucks did not become invisible.

Published . Updated . Bulgaria applies Schengen rules. That sentence has a date and a list of exceptions.

Green direction sign for Kapitan Andreevo on the A1 motorway, with a truck ahead.
The approach to Kapitan Andreevo. The photograph shows the sign, not the length of the queue.Approach signing for Kapitan Andreevo, on the road toward the Turkish border. Photo: Bin im Garten, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized and compressed.

External border

Kapitan Andreevo

This is the road crossing with Türkiye at the end of the Maritsa motorway, the E80 corridor that leaves Trakia and runs to the border. It is an external border of the European Union and of Schengen. People and goods are controlled. It is also one of the busiest lorry gates in the region, so a wait is part of the operation.

Have passports or identity cards, the vehicle registration, insurance, and for a truck the transit and goods documents, ready before the last kilometres. A vignette or toll problem discovered in the queue is a worse problem than the same discovery at a service area. The charge guide says how to check a plate. tolbg cannot check it for you.

Other crossings with Türkiye, Lesovo and Malko Tarnovo, are smaller and sit on ordinary roads. They are not secret fast lanes. They have their own hours, their own queues and less motorway on the way in.

The gates, in plain rows

Kalotina

Serbia, external border, E80. The A6 Europe motorway covers the Bulgarian approach to Sofia, reported complete in September 2025. Border control is unchanged by that asphalt.

External · people and goods

Gyueshevo

North Macedonia. A mountain road, not a motorway. Useful for that corridor, slow if you imagined Struma.

External

Kulata

Greece. Since 1 January 2025 this is an internal Schengen land border. Routine passport control for travellers ended with that change. Customs and transport checks on goods vehicles can remain. The delay most drivers feel is still the Kresna gorge on the way there.

Schengen land border

Ruse

The Danube Bridge to Giurgiu in Romania. Internal Schengen land border for people. The bridge itself is tolled. That toll is not the Bulgarian road vignette and not the heavy-vehicle distance toll. Three different ideas, three different payments if you are in a heavy vehicle.

Schengen · bridge toll

Vidin

The New Europe Bridge to Calafat. Also a Schengen land border with Romania, also a separate bridge toll. The operator posts 60 km/h on the bridge. Lower limits apply near the booths. Bicycles use a signed path, not the motorway approaches.

Schengen · bridge toll

Silistra, Kardam, Durankulak

Smaller northern crossings toward Romania. They matter for local and some transit traffic. They are not substitutes for Ruse if your papers or your appointment expect Ruse.

Check the specific post

Documents, said modestly

An EU citizen travelling in a private car typically needs a passport or national identity card, the driving licence, the registration and insurance that covers Bulgaria. A non-EU national may need a visa or a residence permit that the border officer is entitled to ask for. This page cannot list every nationality. The official visa and entry pages of the Bulgarian and EU authorities are the lists that count.

Goods change the conversation. A car boot full of commercial cargo is not a passenger trip. Trucks need the documents the customs office and the transport rules require, including anything the transit regime asks for at an external border. tolbg does not prepare those papers.

Paying, in the right order

  1. Light vehicle: vignette valid for the Bulgarian network you will use, checked on the plate. See vignette and toll.
  2. Heavy vehicle: distance toll via unit or route pass, not a vignette. See freight corridors.
  3. Danube bridge, if used: the bridge toll, paid to the bridge, on top of the road charge.
  4. External border: the control itself, which is not a product and not optional.

Public toll information has listed cash desks for vignettes and route passes at several of these crossings. Using a desk is a transaction with the administration or its partner. It is not a transaction with this website.

A calm approach

Fuel before the queue. Water in the cab. The reflective vest if you have to step out. Do not change lanes inside a funnel of trucks to gain three places. The sign guide covers the temporary limits that appear when a crossing is being rebuilt, which is often.

Air and sea Schengen controls for Bulgaria began earlier, at the end of March 2024. The land change with Greece and Romania is the one that matters to a driver, from 1 January 2025. If you are reading this years later, confirm that no further change has reintroduced a control. Borders are policy, and policy moves.