As the regional ICT center, Sofia is home to over 50 000 IT professionals.

The city has attracted global IT R&D leaders like SAP Labs, HP, VMware, IBM, CISCO that already operate large R&D centers in Sofia employing, educating and developing thousands of highly qualified professionals.

The city has been gaining popularity as a start-up destination with a developing start-up ecosystem.

Sofia has already proven itself as an attractive global BPO center, with professionals working in more than 30 different languages.

The city’s new focus, however, is to shift to smart-sourcing, building on its highly skilled and competitively priced talent pool - over 50% of the city’ population holds a university degree - that can offer attention on innovation and excellence.

Sofia has great manufacturing traditions and the main focus of the capital is the establishment of high-value added productions and the introduction of cyber-physical systems, automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies.

The competitive real estate, energy and labor costs, as well as business-friendly tax frame and large labor pool, make greenfield development an attractive option.

Many Bulgarian producers are looking for partnerships with foreign companies and offering the advantages of market knowledge and established logistics networks.

The life sciences industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of the Bulgarian economy.

Bulgarian pharmaceuticals have strong traditions in the production of generics and, more recently, the clinical trials sector has grown into a 400 million leva per year industry.

Favourable cost base, competent medical personnel and developed mechanisms for technology transfer and know-how sharing are the factors contributing to the further growth in the sector.

The high level of digital skills and the developing start-up ecosystem make Sofia an interesting place for medical tech start-ups and bio/pharmaceutical R&D.

The focus on life sciences innovation will only increase in the coming years due to the demographic and economic circumstances in Europe.

Sofia is one of the greenest capitals in Europe - the ratio of trees to people is one of the highest on the continent.

The city has an extensive public transit system and is surprisingly compact for its population of 1.3 million people.

After a period of intensive infrastructure development that included the construction of 61 km of metro line by early 2020 to serve 500 000 passengers daily, the focus has now shifted to implementing comprehensive urban environment solutions. These should solve specific urban issues like air pollution, energy efficiency and water & waste management.

Sofia is 2nd in Europe in growth of international visitors for 2017 – 15.2%. Sofia is also among the TOP 5 cities in Europe with the highest overall growth of international visitors for 2009 – 2017, with an average increase of 9% per year. The strong upward trend continues with several new airlines announcing direct flights to destinations in Europe and beyond.

Many new cultural attractions, vibrant street life in summer and rich festival and event calendar year long make Sofia an increasingly recognizable tourist destination.

Major international hotel chains are due to enter the Sofia market in 2019 doubling the number of 5-star rooms in the city.

NDK - the biggest convention center in the city, has undergone a major renovation in preparation for the Bulgaria’s EU Presidency in 2018.

Sofia is the Bulgarian national center of cultural and creative industries: 3/4 of the Bulgarian CCI workforce is located here.

About 5% of all people employed in Sofia are working in the creative sector that includes, among others, advertising, architecture, crafts, design, film, interactive leisure software i.e. video games.

Employment in the sector is still growing.

With high-level of digital penetration, Sofia is a great place for R&D in the area of smart city solutions. Those are solutions that improve the quality of life of the citizens by enabling the city to use technology, information and big data to improve planning, infrastructure and services in all areas.

The areas of development are e-governance and citizen services, urban mobility, energy, waste & water management.

With 406 660 m² of shopping centers, Sofia is a mature retail market that is expected to grow steadily over the next several years.

Two trends to keep in mind are the increasing share of non-grocery retailing and the growth of e-commerce. Close to 90% of the purchases were made from Bulgaria-based online sellers and over 70% of the orders were in the Fashion segment. Тhe e-commerce market is projected to grow to 3.4 million users by 2021.

The absence of major e-commerce players like Amazon combined with high digital penetration and well-formed e-commerce habits makes Sofia a good test market for new business models, while the low use of e-banking services and Cash On Delivery payments may pose a threat to the sector’s growth.

The sector includes the production of aircraft, drones, rockets, satellites and related software and appliances. The aerospace industry is a strong engine of technological development since it integrates high technology from multiple sectors such as mechanical engineering, computer science, electronics and materials.

The University of Sofia and the Technical University have strong traditions in training engineers for the industry, with private educational initiatives already in place. After Sofia became European leader in aircraft maintenance, the city has now become a destination for its production. According to a large EC study from 2013, Bulgarians are the biggest supporters of the idea of ​​the EU developing as a space power.