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Founded | 1938 |
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Region | Bulgaria |
Number of teams | Various |
Current champions |
Botev Plovdiv (3rd title) |
Most successful club(s) |
Levski Sofia (25 titles) |
Television broadcasters | Nova Broadcasting Group |
2016–17 Season |
The Bulgarian Cup (Bulgarian: Купа на България) is a Bulgarian annual football competition. It is the country's main cup competition and all officially registered Bulgarian football teams take part in it.
The tournament's format is single-elimination, with all matches being one-legged, except the semi-finals. The competition's winner gets the right to take part in the UEFA Europa League. If the winner has already secured a place through the Bulgarian A Professional Football Group, the team that has come fourth in the championship substitutes it.
The competition has been dominated by Sofia-based teams. The Sofia teams have won together a total number of 61 titles. The two most successful teams are Levski Sofia (25 cups) and CSKA Sofia (20 cups). The most recent winners of the Bulgarian Cup is Botev Plovdiv, who beat Ludogorets Razgrad 1–2 in the 2017 Bulgarian Cup Final.
The Bulgarian Cup as a domestic cup knock-out tournament, has its roots in several tournaments held in Bulgaria through the early 20th century, simultaneously or successively starting in the 1910s with regional Sofia competitions.
The first Bulgarian national tournament was the Tsar's Cup ("King's Cup"). The competition is officially recognized as the foundation of the modern domestic cup by the Bulgarian Football Union. From 1924 until 1937 the tournament was the de facto state championship to determine the Bulgarian national football champions and winners of the tournament for those years are recognized as such by the BFU). The trophy was decided over a series of direct knock-out matches in which the champions of the country's oblasts played in one-legged single-elimination rounds.