Bulgaria— Tattoo scenes & cities

On 14 June 2019, Sylvia Petrova (Bulgarian National Radio) announced that a tattoo museum would be set up at the body art festival due the following weekend at Universiada Hall in Sofia. Organiser Emil Saparevski said he wanted to display old machines, devices and magazines linked to the history of tattooing in the country, and recalled that at the beginning tattooists had to prepare the equipment they needed themselves.

In the university journal Tereni (no. 2, dated 31 August 2018), Iliana Strahilova, a doctoral student in ethnology at Sofia University, traces the rise of tattooing in Bulgaria and the professionalisation of the trade. She dates the opening of the first official, legal studios to 1992, writes that some studios are still registered as beauty salons or cosmetic studios, and that without a professional association it is hard to act against unlicensed studios.