Notable alumni of the university are five Prime Ministers of Bulgaria – Reneta Indzhova, Stefan Sofiyanski, Ivan Kostov, Marin Raykov and Plamen Oresharski; the current managing director of the International Monetary Fund – Kristalina Georgieva; and the director of the Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics and former Minister of Finance of Bulgaria Simeon Djankov.

UNWE was founded in 1920 as the Free University of Political and Economic Sciences (FUPES) by Stefan Bobchev and the Russian emigre Peter Bogaevsky with ordinance of the Minister of Public Education.

[2][3] After the democratic changes in Bulgaria, the Academic Board (AB) passed a resolution renaming the Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics into the University of National and World Economy (On 27 April 1990 ).

Officially this was done with an act of the National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria on the establishment and transformation of higher educational institutions (26 July 1995).

[4] The university was awarded the Japanese Foreign Minister’s Commendation for their contributions to promotion of economic relations and mutual understanding between Bulgaria and Japan on 1 December 2020.

University of National and World Economy is the leader among students in the professional fields of Economics, Administration and Management in Bulgaria.

It is the rating of 112 professional fields of higher education institutes in our country which give the students the opportunity to achieve the highest level of material well-being.

The university ranks second in Bulgaria by the realization of its graduates and the majority of them hold extremely favourable positions in the labour market.