Graf Ignatievo lies on the Thracian Plain about 10 km north of Plovdiv, next to the village of the same name in Maritsa Municipality. The village is named after Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev, the Russian ambassador in Istanbul who helped bring about the Treaty of San Stefano; its Turkish name had been Çulluk. According to the air force’s own history, land for the airfield was expropriated and paid for under royal decree No. 1294 in 1937.

Bulgarian aviators still call it the German airfield. English Wikipedia, citing the Bulgarian magazine Klub Krile, says it was built with extensive help from Third Reich engineers in the 1930s and was intended to house Luftwaffe units. The air force dates Bulgarian flying here to 6 June 1940, when the third squadron of the First Army Air Regiment moved in from Bozhurishte, and to 17 June 1940, when the Second Army Mixed Regiment was formed at the base.

That regiment flew Avia B.534 biplane fighters, PZL.43 bombers and Letov S.328 reconnaissance aircraft, according to Wikipedia. In 1943 it became a ground-attack unit and received the first of 12 Junkers Ju 87 R-2 dive-bombers in August, followed by 32 Ju 87 D-5s between January and May 1944. In October 1944, after Bulgaria changed sides, the regiment moved to Vrazhdebna and fought in the 1944–45 campaign against Germany. In 1945 it re-equipped with Soviet Il-2 Shturmoviks.

The jet age at Graf Ignatievo began in March 1951. The air force gives 17 March 1951 as the date the 10th Fighter Air Division was formed from the 15th, 19th and 21st Fighter Air Regiments, and the 19th as the direct ancestor of today’s base; English Wikipedia gives 18 March 1951. The 19th started with 284 personnel, 18 of them pilots, under Captain Simeon Stefanov Simeonov, later commander of the whole air force. It received its battle colours on 26 August 1953.

The regiments arrived from Karlovo, and Wikipedia says the first jets were 30 Yak-23s and four Yak-17 trainers, with MiG-15s from September 1951. The 15th Regiment left for Bezmer and the 21st for Uzundzhovo in 1952. In 1955 the 1st Squadron took 12 radar-equipped MiG-17PFs, 40 MiG-19S fighters arrived in September 1957, and MiG-19P and MiG-19PM interceptors followed in 1959 and 1960.

The MiG-21 arrived in 1963 with the F-13 version. By the 1970s the regiment had one squadron on MiG-19PM/S and one on the MiG-21M; the last MiG-19s left in 1978, replaced by the MiG-21MF, and 36 MiG-21bis plus two-seaters came in 1983. On 18 August 1994 the regiment became the 3rd Fighter Air Base, military unit 28000, and on 1 September 1996 it passed to the Air Defence Corps in Sofia. Wikipedia’s chronology relies on a 2000 Klub Krile article and is not confirmed type by type by the air force.

The MiG-29s came to Graf Ignatievo in 2000, when the 1st Fighter Squadron of the 5th Fighter Air Base at Ravnets moved in and became the base’s 2nd Fighter Squadron. The Bulgarian MiG-21s were retired on 18 December 2015, leaving the MiG-29 as the only fighter. Bulgaria had operated the type since 1989, and in June 2020 the defence ministry counted about 14. Two had been lost: one in September 1994, killing the pilot, and one in April 2012.

Keeping them flying meant depending on Russia’s RSK MiG. After NATO’s 2014 push to cut reliance on Soviet equipment, Defence Minister Nikolai Nenchev signed an engine-repair deal with Poland on 22 October 2015. Parliament ratified it on 27 November 2015, by 133 votes to 42 at first reading: six engines at 1.023 million euro each. Russia said it held exclusive repair rights and threatened legal action; Nenchev was later tried on charges that he had endangered aviation safety, which he denied.

The fleet stayed fragile. In November 2016 The Sofia Globe reported nine MiG-29s, of which four were serviceable, as the ministry ordered ten engines. In December 2019 the government released 16 million leva for engines for eight jets, and Polish overhaul contracts followed in August 2023 and November 2024, the second worth just over 10 million euro. In 2023 the ministry denied a leaked report that it had offered its MiG-29s to Ukraine, saying this would leave a capability gap contrary to the constitution.

The cost of a starved fleet fell on the pilots. In February 2017 caretaker Defence Minister Stefan Yanev said the standard for a fighter pilot was 180 flying hours a year but that Bulgarian pilots flew about 40. Italian Air Force aircraft helped cover Bulgarian air policing that year. Major-General Roumen Radev, the air force commander and later president, had tried to resign in 2015 over the shortage of serviceable jets and of flying hours.

On 24 and 25 October 2017 most of the MiG-29 pilots at Graf Ignatievo did not take off for scheduled training. Deputy Defence Minister Atanas Zapryanov said they lacked confidence because of insufficient training and flying hours; Prime Minister Boiko Borissov responded publicly that he flew when he had tasks to carry out. The Plovdiv prosecutor found no evidence that anyone had refused orders, and the government insisted there had been no mutiny.

The accidents followed. On 9 June 2021 Major Valentin Terziev was killed when his MiG-29 went into the Black Sea during exercise Shabla 21; investigators named spatial disorientation as the most probable of three causes. On 13 September 2024 an L-39ZA crashed at Graf Ignatievo while rehearsing for an air show, killing both instructors. A ministry report that November described a chronic shortage of serviceable aircraft and three accidents at three air bases in three years.

Bulgaria chose the F-16 Block 70 in 2019 and paid the United States US$1.2 billion in August 2019 for eight aircraft; a second contract for eight more followed in 2022. The Sofia Globe put the cost of all 16 at about five billion leva. Graf Ignatievo was chosen as the F-16 base, and on 21 September 2022 the MiG-29s and the base’s L-39ZAs flew to Plovdiv Airport so that the runway and facilities could be rebuilt.

The new runway opened on 15 July 2024, when caretaker Defence Minister Atanas Zapryanov handed certification documents to the base commander, Brigadier General Nikolai Rusev, and the MiG-29s returned. Forty-nine infrastructure projects were under way, four of them delayed; by December 2025 more than half were complete. Zapryanov made clear the MiG-29s would stay until an F-16 squadron could take over.

The first F-16, a two-seater later identified as 301, landed on 2 April 2025, but a fault found after arrival delayed its acceptance and led to allegations of sabotage and attempted espionage in the Bulgarian press, which the air force commander played down. It first flew in Bulgarian airspace on 28 May 2025. Further jets arrived on 8 June, 3 and 18 October and 16 December 2025, and the eight were formally celebrated on 18 December 2025. In July 2026 no F-16 pair was yet on alert duty.

Graf Ignatievo provides Bulgaria’s quick-reaction alert. On 30 June 2026 a MiG-29 from the 3rd Air Base launched after a LOT Polish Airlines Airbus A320, chartered for a flight from Poland to Israel, squawked the hijack code 7500; it escorted the airliner through Bulgarian airspace before it landed at Burgas, and the crew later said the alert was triggered in error. Former defence minister Tagarev later noted that only one of the two MiG-29s on duty had launched.

Because the Bulgarian fleet is small, allies have flown from the base. These were allied, not Bulgarian, detachments. Spain sent four Eurofighters and 130 personnel from 11 February to 31 March 2022, and the Netherlands four F-35s from 6 April to 31 May 2022, after the Bulgarian cabinet approved up to eight Dutch fighters on 8 March. Both deployments came as Russia invaded Ukraine and were flown under NATO’s integrated air and missile defence system.

Graf Ignatievo MiG-29s have also escorted US bombers: on 3 March 2025 they flew with a B-52 of Bomber Task Force 25-2 from RAF Fairford. Bulgaria has signed cross-border air-policing memoranda with Romania, Greece and Türkiye, the last ratified by parliament on 8 August 2024, and on 6 August 2026 a trilateral agreement let Spanish fighters police Romanian and Bulgarian airspace. The sources consulted do not say which allied aircraft, if any, would use Graf Ignatievo under these agreements.