General information
Bulgaria is member of the European Union and part of the Schengen area. For more detailed information about short stays in Bulgaria please familiarise yourself with the official information published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria.
https://www.mfa.bg/en/services-travel/consular-services/travel-bulgaria/visa-bulgaria
and check the table of countries entitled:
Who needs a visa?
In case you need a visa, you will have to apply to the respective Visa Application Centre (see list of Centres provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Your invitation letter will be issued by the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, for a short visit related to participation in a scientific conference. RANLP organisers are only allowed to provide invitation letters in three cases:
- to authors of accepted papers,
- to organisers of accepted workshops and shared tasks, or lecturers at the summer school and the tutorials, as well as
- to registered attendees of RANLP 2025, who are known for their professional activity in the field of Natural Language Processing, once they pay the registration fees.
When submitting your paper please do not forget to check YES in the VISA field. In this way the RANLP organisers will be alerted to plan timely review of your article. This is particularly important for the authors of workshop papers that are reviewed in July with notification of acceptance in the first days of August (only 4-5 weeks before the beginning of the conference).
Recommendations from RANLP 2025 Visa chairs
Carefully double check the requirements of the embassy you are applying for a visa to Bulgaria. Having an incomplete application can significantly delay your visa approval.
It is important to deliver the visa application documents yourself and not a spouce, sibling, parent, friend etc.