The winners: 10th-anniversary edition of Mayor of the Year Awards in Bulgaria

TheMayor.EU gave the special award to InnoAir, a project that mixes Artificial Intelligence with public transport

Today, during the official ceremony, the winners of the Mayor of the Year Award were announced in Bulgaria. This was the 10th-anniversary edition and 72,000 citizens cast their votes online to choose their favourite local leaders, as part of the initiative of the Kmeta.bg news portal.

The major award “Mayor of the Year” went to the mayor of Maglizh, Dusho Gavazov for the Small municipality category, to the mayor of Sandanski, Atanas Stoyanov, for the Medium municipality category and to the mayor of Pernik, Stanislav Vladimirov, in the Large municipality category.

The other big prizes for Mayor of the Citizens went to Mayor Dusho Gavazov from Maglizh, Mayor Marinela Nikolova from Kozloduy and Mayor Zhivko Todorov from Stara Zagora, in the respective size categories.

Special award by TheMayor.EU

TheMayor.EU, a long-standing supporter and media partner of the event, presented a special award to Sofia Municipality for the InnoAir project. The project aims to create a public transport system that shifts routes with demand, instead of having fixed ones. The developers will do this via AI data analysis and real time, while citizens will be able to check the routes via an app.

This project is a first for Europe and the developers will launch a pilot in one of the Bulgarian capital’s districts this autumn.

Categories and winners

Between 15 and 30 September, everyone with a Bulgarian IP address had the chance to cast their vote for the local leader of the year. Apart from the big award, there were also different categories like Smart City, Green City, Urban Environment, Tourism and Culture and Sport.

All awards have a classification, based on the size of the municipality with small being classed as under 20,000 inhabitants, medium – between 20,000 and 50,000 and large – over 50,000. Here are the winners:

Smart City

• Small municipality – Mayor of Ivaylovgrad - Diana Ovcharova;
• Medium municipality – Mayor of Kozloduy - Marinela Nikolova;
• Large municipality – Mayor of Blagoevgrad - Ilko Stoyanov.

Green City

• Small municipality – Mayor of Dzhebel - Nejmi Ali;
• Medium municipality – Mayor of Troyan - Donka Mihailova;
• Large municipality – Mayor of Gabrovo - Tanya Hristova.

Urban Environment

• Small municipality – Mayor Beloslav - Deyan Ivanov;
• Medium municipality – Mayor of Elin Pelin - Ivaylo Simeonov;
• Large municipality – Mayor of Yambol - Valentin Revanski.

Tourism and Culture

• Small municipality – Mayor of Arven - Emanuil Manolov;
• Medium municipality – Mayor of Nesebar - Nikolay Dimitrov;
• Large municipality – Mayor of Veliko Tarnovo -Daniel Panov.

Sport

• Small municipality – Mayor of Beloslav - Deyan Ivanov;
• Medium municipality – Mayor of Dupnitsa - Metodi Chimev;
• Large municipality – Mayor of Kardzhali - Hasan Azis.