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The main goal of the analysis presented in the paper is to contribute to a clearer understanding of climate changes in Bulgaria, assessing the long-term changes in annual characteristics of surface temperature and precipitation in the period 1961-2020 and providing climate projections to the end of the 21st century. During the last decades of the 20th century, a tendency towards warming occurred in Bulgaria. Since the 1990s, only four years have had negative temperature anomalies compared to the reference period 1961-1990. Changes in the precipitation regime are also apparent, with increasing frequency of days with both torrential rainfall and dry, hot weather. The analysis of future climate is focused on the projected changes under the four RCP climate change scenarios for selected ETCCDI climate indices, computed on a yearly basis: absolute maximum temperature (TXx), absolute minimum temperature (TNn), the maximum number of consecutive frost days (CFD), the maximum number of consecutive summer days (CSU), precipitation sum (RR), number of heavy precipitation days (RR10mm) and maximum number of consecutive dry days (CDD). The projected significant warming is manifested in the spatial patterns and temporal evolution of all considered temperature indicators. Despite the predicted decreasing precipitation trend, especially in Southeast Bulgaria, the changes are statistically significant only for scenario RCP8.5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]