Bloomsday is celebrated every June 16 by book lovers all around the world and the day is named after Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. The day celebrates 16 June 1904, which is the day depicted in the novel, during which the encounters of Leopold Bloom take place in Dublin.

Covid-19 limitations do not allow Bloomsday 2020 to be marked with the usual street celebrations and public readings around the world and that is why it is celebrated mostly virtually instead. The Embassy of Ireland in Sofia together with the Sofia City Library present an exhibition dedicated to the writer, which can be seen before June 30 in the marble lobby of the library on Slaveykov Square.

For the pleasure of all, a multilingual short film has been created and part of it was shot in Sofia. In this three-minute clip, Joyce's immortal words speak to a contemporary theme: our concerns, our isolation, our solidarity and our hopes for the future in the context of Covid-19.

The film is called ‘A New Day Will Be: A Short Film for Bloomsday 2020’.

Especially for Bulgarian audiences, the Embassy of Ireland in Sofia has also created a second version shot entirely in Bulgarian with actor Dimitar Markov and Iglika Vassileva, Bulgarian translator of Joyce and other great Irish and international writers. In this short film Sofia becomes Dublin for Bloomsday 2020, as the locations from the novel are transposed to the Bulgarian capital.