The Bulgarians (Bulgarian: българи, pronounced: [bɤ̞ɫˈɡɐri]) are a South Slavic people native to Bulgaria and neighbouring regions. Emigration has resulted in immigrant communities in a number of other countries.

The Bulgarians have descended from three main tribal groups, which mixed themselves and formed a Slavic-speaking nation and ethnicity in the First Bulgarian Empire: 1) the Slavs, who gave their language to the Bulgarians; 2) the Bulgars, from whom the ethnonym and the early statehood were inherited; as well as 3) the 'indigenous' late Roman provincial peoples: Thraco-Romans and Thraco-Byzantines, from whom certain cultural elements were taken.

The ethnonym Bulgars is first attested by an anonymous Roman chronograph of 354 A.D. (Latin: Vulgares). Between the 7th and the 10th centuries, the local population, the Bulgars and the other tribes in the empire, which were outnumbered by the Slavs gradually became absorbed by them, adopting a South Slav language. Since the late 10th century, the names “Bulgarians” and “Bulgarian” got prevalence and became permanent designations for the local population, both in the literature and in the spoken language.

Famous or notable Bulgarians include:

Khan Asparukh (640-701), founder of the First Bulgarian Empire

Khan Tervel (675-721), the "Saviour of Europe", for which is known because of a crushing he infected on the Arabs in the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople and barricading the way of the Arab invasion to Europe

Saint Knyaz Boris I (?–907), christianizator of Bulgarian people and linguistic unifier by making the current Bulgarian language (this from the Slavic linguistic familly) official language for the population of the Bulgarian Empire

Tsar Simeon the Great (864/865-927), led the First Bulgarian Empire to its largest territorial extent

Saint Clement of Ohrid (840–916), often associated as the creator of the Cyrillic script

Saint John of Rila (876–946), the patron saint of the Bulgarian people

Tsar John Asen II (?-1241), led the Second Bulgarian Empire to its largest territorial extent

Saint John Kukuzel (1280–1360), composer, singer and reformer of the Orthodox Church music, known as the "Angel-voiced"