Bulgarians in Albania

Ethnic Bulgarians in present-day Albania live mostly in the areas of Mala Prespa, Golo Brdo and Gora. According to the Bulgarian State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad, 40,000 to 50,000 persons of Bulgarian origin are living in Albania, but other sources have estimated Albania's Bulgarians to number as many as 100,000. Most speakers of Slavic languages in Albania converted to Islam during the period of Ottoman rule in the Balkans. Ethnic identity can be fluid among the Albania's Slavophonic population, who might identify as Albanian, Bulgarian or Macedonian, depending on the circumstances.

The first reference to a Slavic presence in Albania dates to 548, when the Slavs reached Epidamnos (Durrës), capturing fortresses in the city's vicinity. Slavic settlement near Epirus in southern Albania is mentioned in a note in a 10th-century manuscript of Strabo's Geographica, and near Durrës in a Middle Bulgarian translation of the Manasses Chronicle.

Archaeologists have suggested the existence of a Bulgar archaeological culture in what is now modern Macedonia and eastern Albania, citing fortresses, burials, various products of metallurgy and pottery that could be of Bulgar origin.

According to toponymic evidence, Slavic settlement was concentrated in the region between the Vjosë and Devoll Rivers. Slavic placenames in this region suggest an eastern South Slavic (i.e. Bulgarian, as opposed to Serbo-Croatian) dialect. Bulgarian Slavs were the majority of the population in the area by the Early Middle Ages, and remained a significant group in central and southern Albania through the 15th century. In the 850s and 860s, Simeon I's First Bulgarian Empire included the Slavic-inhabited areas of what is today western Macedonia and southern Albania, which constituted the Kutmichevitsa administrative province. Kutmichevista included the cities of Ohrid, Glavinitsa (Ballsh), Belgrad (Berat) and Devoll (at the village of Zvezdë). The Bulgarian enlighteners Clement of Ohrid and Naum of Preslav are known to have worked in Kutmichevitsa, where according to the 11th-century account of Theophylact of Bulgaria, Clement had 3,500 students. Clement's and Naum's activity, as well as the consolidation of Bulgarian religious and state authority, helped establish the Bulgarian identity of this Slavic population.

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