Pirin Macedonia (region)
It covers an area of about 6,798 km2 which is 10.18% of the geographical region Macedonia. One of the regional centers is Blagoevgrad, also known as Gorna Dzumaya, the old name of the city. The region is bordering with Kyustendil Province and Sofia Province on the north, Pazardzhik Province and Smolyan Province on the east, Greece on the south and Republic of Macedonia on the west. The population is estimated around 325.000 people.
Irredentism
Some Macedonian nationalists promoted the irredentist concept of a United Macedonia () among ethnic Macedonian nationalists, which involves territorial claims on the northern province of Macedonia in Greece, but also in Blagoevgrad Province ("Pirin Macedonia") in Bulgaria, Albania, and Serbia. The United Macedonia concept aims to unify the transnational region of Macedonia in the Balkans (which they claim as their homeland and which they assert was wrongfully divided under the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913), into a single state under Macedonian domination, with the Greek city of Thessaloniki ("Solun" in the Slavic languages) as its capital.