To design and implement place-based regional development policies and ultimately reap positive regional development outcomes, Bulgaria needs to renew its multi-level governance model and establish effective co‑ordination mechanisms across levels of government. This should be done by revisiting the current decentralisation strategy and reforming both municipal and regional governance systems. Reforming municipal governance involves enhancing intra-municipal decentralisation and civil society participation, generating more effective administrative decentralisation and horizontal co‑operation and strengthening fiscal decentralisation and responsibility. To enhance regional governance, both the district level and the planning regions need to be considered, given the strong interconnections between the two layers. One approach is to reinforce the role of the districts as state territorial administration while enabling planning regions to become regional development bodies with a legal personality and adequate resources. Two potential models of regional organisation for planning regions are proposed based on a typology developed using examples from OECD and EU countries.