BG — Bulgaria

Bulgaria is a southeastern European country on the Black Sea coast, an EU member since 2007. Sofia, the capital, is one of Europe's oldest cities, with over 7,000 years of history. Bulgaria is the birthplace of the Cyrillic alphabet, which was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire and is now used by many Slavic and non-Slavic languages. The Bulgarian Lev (BGN) is pegged to the Euro as Bulgaria prepares for Eurozone membership. For developers, the BG country code maps to the bg-BG locale for Bulgarian, which uses Cyrillic script. The .bg domain and +359 calling code serve Bulgaria. Bulgaria's role as the birthplace of Cyrillic makes it symbolically important in character encoding discussions. The country's EU membership but non-Eurozone status means applications must handle BGN while anticipating future EUR adoption. Bulgaria has a growing IT outsourcing sector with competitive rates and strong technical education. Bulgarian Cyrillic has some unique characters distinct from Russian Cyrillic.