The city of Sofia received DARA on arrival from Vienna with an official welcome party following her victory in the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 last weekend.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria welcomes its first ever Eurovision winner
Last weekend in Vienna, Austria the Balkan nation of Bulgaria won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time. To celebrate this achievement, the city of Sofia held a welcome party for DARA at Prince Alexander Battenberg Square. At the event, almost 30,000 spectators filled the square and the surrounding streets to give DARA a heroes welcome. Their patience was rewarded with a performance of the Eurovision 2026 winning hit, ‘Bangaranga’.
“I hope that the step we took with Eurovision is only the beginning – actually, it truly is just the beginning – and from here on we will really be able to open the door to the world stage for Bulgarian artists.
We Bulgarians are very hardworking people, and I know that every one of us is doing a million things. And we are very talented. Together, when we unite, we can turn the world upside down. And we will do it next year as hosts of Eurovision.”
During the party, the local Sofia Mayor Vasil Terziev presented Dara with the Key to People’s Hearts to recognise the cultural impact DARA has made for Bulgaria on the global stage.
In the Vienna contest DARA become the first artist since Salvador Sobral in 2017 to achieve the jury and televote double. Also receiving points from every single voting nation in order to break Alexander Rybak’s longstanding record points gap to second place, which DARA now holds with 173 points. In the Semi-Final DARA earned 90.2% of the available televote points on offer, breaking the record of 89.5% set by Kalush Orchestra in 2022.
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