After withdrawing from the contest in 2023, Bulgaria makes its long-anticipated return to the Eurovision Song Contest in 2026 with an entry built, from first note to final chorus, for the grandest stage in European pop music. DARA — the stage name of Darina Nikolaeva Yotova, born September 9, 1998, in the Black Sea city of Varna — will represent her country in Vienna performing "Bangaranga": a propulsive dance-pop anthem she co-wrote alongside an internationally acclaimed songwriting trio. Selected on February 28, 2026 through the Natsionalnata Selektsiya (The National Selection), organised by broadcaster BNT (Bulgarian National Television), this is a country signalling — with unmistakable clarity — that its return to Eurovision is not provisional. It is a commitment.

Table of Contents

The Artist — DARA
The Song — "Bangaranga"
The Road to Vienna — Natsionalnata Selektsiya
Technical and Musical Analysis

The Artist — DARA

From Varna to the Eurovision Stage

DARA — born Darina Nikolaeva Yotova on September 9, 1998, in Varna, Bulgaria's sun-soaked Black Sea port city — is one of the most coherent and compelling voices in contemporary Bulgarian popular music. Her career began in 2015 when she reached the final of The X Factor Bulgaria, finishing third under the mentorship of Bulgarian rapper and producer Krisko. The following year she signed with Virginia Records, adopted the stage name DARA, and released her debut single — the start of a deliberate decade-long campaign to build a career far larger than any single television moment. As the official Eurovision artist profile describes her: "one of the most well-known pop musicians in Bulgaria and a prominent figure in the modern Balkan music scene," known for "a unique voice, commanding stage presence and unrestrained genre blending."

What distinguishes DARA's decade-long trajectory from many of her peers is the breadth of her commercial and creative reach. Her songs and videos have amassed over 80 million listens and views, anchored by a run of Bulgarian chart-toppers — "Thunder", "Call Me", and "Mr. Rover" — that dominated airplay and digital platforms simultaneously. "Mr. Rover" achieved something exceptional in 2023 when K-pop superstar Kai remade it as "Rover" on his solo debut album — a cross-continental endorsement, in the loudest possible terms, that the song's melodic architecture had registered far beyond Bulgaria's borders. Through international partnerships with collaborators including Chris Young (Rod Stewart, Kylie Minogue), Jungleboi (ZAYN, Rihanna), Yoad Nevo, and Monoir, DARA has been systematically expanding her creative network in the direction of a genuinely global career. Her second studio album, ADHDARA (September 2025), marked — in her own words and those of the critics who followed its rollout — a formal transition from dominant domestic presence to artist with a distinct international identity.

Since 2021, DARA has also served as a coach on The Voice of Bulgaria, winning the competition twice: in Season 9 (2022) and Season 11 (2024). Five years in the role of expert evaluator — assessing potential and making consequential decisions about artistic promise under live broadcast conditions — have given her a self-awareness about performance that most competitors can only aspire to. Now standing on the other side of that dynamic, as the artist being assessed on the Eurovision stage, she carries that perspective into every rehearsal and every live moment in Vienna.

The Song — "Bangaranga"

A Dream Team Collaboration With an Artist at Its Centre

"Bangaranga" is the product of a four-person collaboration whose combined Eurovision pedigree is, by any measure, exceptional. As confirmed in the official song selection announcement, the track was co-written by Dimitris Kontopoulos, the Athens-born songwriter and producer responsible for multiple top-five ESC results and widely regarded as one of the contest's most accomplished active architects; Anne Judith Wik, the Norwegian songwriter affiliated with Dsign Music, a collective behind multiple Eurovision entries in the 2020s; Cristian Tarcea (also known as Monoir), the Romanian producer who bridges Eastern European pop sensibilities with contemporary club-oriented production craft; and Darina Yotova — DARA herself. That last credit matters. In an era when Eurovision entries are frequently assembled by international writing camps operating at arm's length from the performing artist, DARA's own authorship grounds the song's identity in something beyond professional craft. It grounds it in personal investment.

The title itself — "Bangaranga" — operates in the tradition of Eurovision's most enduring sonic-identity devices: a phrase that is simultaneously untranslatable and entirely communicative. It evokes movement, communal energy, and the kind of celebration that requires no linguistic passport. In a contest where a lyric must land intelligibly on ears attuned to dozens of different phonetic systems, a hook that functions as pure percussive sound — as much as it works as language — is a structural competitive asset, not a gimmick. And it is exactly the kind of device that Kontopoulos, across a career built on understanding how music works in large and emotionally charged arena spaces, deploys with precision that reads as instinct.

Musically, "Bangaranga" positions itself within the contemporary dance-pop register the Eurovision format has consistently rewarded. Its architecture is modular and purposeful: verses build character with controlled restraint, a pre-chorus disciplines the accumulated energy into genuine anticipation, and a chorus is engineered to release that anticipation at full emotional volume. The collaborative intelligence of the Kontopoulos-Wik-Tarcea-Yotova team shows not in any single spectacular moment, but in how reliably the song delivers at each structural juncture — the hallmark of a composition designed to reproduce its emotional impact under live performance conditions, before a packed venue and a simultaneous pan-European broadcast audience.

The Road to Vienna — Natsionalnata Selektsiya

A Strategic Return Built on Process and Ambition

Bulgaria's route to Eurovision 2026 was determined through the Natsionalnata Selektsiya — The National Selection — organised by BNT (Bulgarian National Television), broadcast live on BNT 1 and streamed via the broadcaster's dedicated platform, eurovision2026.bg. As outlined in BNT's official platform announcement, the selection was structured over three sequential phases, with voting at each stage determined by a combined 50/50 split between a professional expert jury and the television audience. The 15 competing acts were chosen not by open submission but by data: BNT partnered with music rights organisation Prophon to select artists based on digital airplay rankings across Bulgaria over the preceding eight months — ensuring the field reflected the genuine current state of the national music market.

The first phase (January 24) featured all 15 artists performing songs from their existing catalogues; eight advanced to the second show. On January 31, in the artist final, DARA — performing her 2021 chart-topper "Thunder" — won not merely the combined result but both its components independently: the unanimous verdict of the expert jury and the highest total from the public vote simultaneously. As confirmed in the official Eurovision announcement, "it was a unanimous choice." The artist selection jury — as reported in BNT's post-show coverage — included Bogdana Karadocheva, Nina Nikolina, Lubo Kirov, Krisko, and Victoria Chalkitis, described as one of the most respected vocal pedagogues in Europe, with a career spanning over three decades working with Eurovision finalists and winners including Elena Paparizou, Sakis Rouvas, Dima Bilan, and Eleni Foureira.

The third and final phase, on February 28, saw DARA perform the three songs written specifically for her Eurovision candidacy: "Bangaranga", "Curse", and "This Is Me". A combined jury and public vote selected the winning entry, and "Bangaranga" prevailed in both components — consistent with the pattern of unanimous endorsement that had defined DARA's entire selection journey. The full scope and results of the Bulgaria Song Selection 2026 capture how thoroughly BNT built a process worthy of the country's return.

That return carries the weight of history. Bulgaria withdrew from the contest in 2023, citing financial constraints. The country's historical high-water mark — Kristian Kostov's second-place finish at Kyiv 2017 with "Beautiful Mess", still the highest placement any Bulgarian act has achieved at Eurovision — remains the benchmark against which every subsequent entry is measured. DARA and "Bangaranga" represent Bulgaria's most deliberate and most credentialled answer to the question of what comes next. Bulgaria will contest its Grand Final place through Semi-Final 2 of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 on May 14, in Vienna — performing in the first half of the show.

Technical and Musical Analysis

Voice, Staging, and the Architecture of a Pop-Dance Anthem

DARA's vocal profile is well-matched to the structural demands of "Bangaranga". Her instrument operates across a comfortable mid-to-upper pop register, combining the tonal warmth that gives lyrical verses their emotional intimacy with the controlled clarity and projection that a dance-pop chorus requires. A decade of recording, performing, and coaching other singers through the mechanics of high-pressure live performance has given her a technical self-awareness that most careers take considerably longer to develop. She knows where her voice performs most convincingly, and the song's melodic architecture places her consistently in that register rather than testing its limits. The result is a vocal approach that sounds simultaneously effortless and intentional — the hallmark of a performer who has done the preparation that no amount of natural talent alone can replicate.

The staging potential of the entry is particularly compelling given the person directing it. Fredrik Rydman — whose Eurovision credits include Måns Zelmerlöw's winning performance in 2015, Käärijä's phenomenon "Cha Cha Cha" in 2023, and Nemo's winning staging for Switzerland in 2024 — brings a visual intelligence that has repeatedly proven capable of translating a song's rhythmic character and emotional arc into a fully realised arena spectacle. An entry built around communal energy, a phonetically percussive hook, and a performer with a decade of chart pedigree invites exactly the kinetic, choreographically driven grammar that Rydman has made his signature: lighting progressions that track each structural section from atmospheric intimacy to full-spectrum release, a staging concept that places DARA as the unambiguous visual and emotional focal point throughout. Vienna's Wiener Stadthalle — hosting the contest for only the second time, a decade after the 2015 edition set production benchmarks that shaped the years that followed — provides a world-class canvas for that ambition.

Arrangement-wise, "Bangaranga" reflects the structural intelligence that Kontopoulos has refined across two decades of high-stakes songwriting. The song's modular construction expands and deepens for a three-minute Grand Final slot without sacrificing its commercial density or the clarity of its hook. The English-language lyric, while less linguistically distinctive than an entry in Bulgarian might be, maximises immediate accessibility across the contest's pan-European broadcasting footprint — a deliberate strategic calculation from a team that has weighed the competitive landscape with professional candour. With the depth embedded in the writing credits, a staging director whose recent record includes two winning Eurovision performances, and the platform DARA has spent a decade building, "Bangaranga" has the architecture, the pedigree, and the momentum to deliver Bulgaria a genuinely significant result at the Eurovision Song Contest 2026.