Bulgarian Lev country flag

Bulgarian Lev

BGN

Лв.
Hungarian Forint country flag

Hungarian Forint

HUF

Ft
Bulgarian Lev
The lev (Bulgarian: лев, plural: лева, левове / leva, levove; ISO 4217 code: BGN) was the sole currency of Bulgaria from 1880 to 2025, and is in a double circulation period alongside the euro from 1 January 2026 until its full withdrawal on 31 January 2026. In early modern Bulgarian, the word lev meant "lion"; the word "lion" in the modern standard language is lаv (IPA: [ɫɤf]; in Bulgarian: лъв). The lev is subdivided into 100 stotinki (стотинки, singular: stotinka, стотинка). Stotinka in Bulgarian means "a hundredth" and is, in fact, a direct translation of the French term "centime". Grammatically, the word stotinka is derived from the Bulgarian word "sto" (сто; a hundred). Under a currency board established in 1997, the lev was first pegged to the Deutsche Mark (1,000 BGL = 1 DEM). With the lev's 1999 redenomination and the arrival of the euro, the exchange rate was updated to its long-standing fixed peg of 1.95583 BGN = 1 EUR. Between 10 July 2020 and 31 December 2025, the lev remained within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM II), exiting the mechanism to transition into the euro on 1 January 2026.
Hungarian Forint
The forint (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈforint] , sign Ft; code HUF) is the currency of Hungary. It was formerly divided into 100 fillér, but fillér coins are no longer in circulation. The introduction of the forint on 1 August 1946 was a crucial step in the post-World War II stabilisation of the Hungarian economy, and the currency remained relatively stable until the 1980s. Transition to a market economy in the early 1990s adversely affected the value of the forint; inflation peaked at 35% in 1991. Between 2001 and 2022, inflation was in single digits, and the forint has been declared fully convertible. In May 2022, inflation reached 10.7% amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine and economic uncertainty. As a member of the European Union, the long-term aim of the Hungarian government may be to replace the forint with the euro, although under the current government there is no target date for adopting the euro.