Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

Credit where credit is due: the EU gets a lot of flack for being bureaucratic, hidebound, sclerotic, whatever, but the single currency has been a success and it's still expanding, 26 years after its creation.

Also, the addition of Bulgaria means it's almost possible to travel from Spain to Greece entirely through the Eurozone, with only a thin sliver of Serbia or Macedonia in the way. (Assuming we include Montenegro and Kosovo in the Eurozone: technically they aren't, but for all practical purposes they are.)

It'll also be interesting to see who's next. Czechia is not far off but doesn't seem to be in a hurry, while Romania wants in but still seems to be a ways off. Poland and Hungary will stay outside unless there are major political changes.

Poland will not adopt it in foreseeable future because it makes no sense: the Polish currency (zloty) acts as a kind of bumper in difficult times. It's very simple: something bad happens like a crisis or a war, investors immediately sell assets deemed as risky (such as zloty), zloty goes down by x%, and automatically Polish products and services become more attractive by x%. This all happens by itself. So for the Polish economy it's a no brainer.

For people themselves, they're not so keen either as they know well adopting euro was abused in other countries to increase prices (and not just round them up a bit). So basically nobody wants it, even if there are a few real benefits of joining, such as potentially lower mortgage rates which are among the highest in the EU).