Home hopes will rest on Boryana Kaleyn who is poised to take to the international stage for the first time since last year’s World Championships in Kitakyushu in Japan.

Kaleyn, who placed ninth at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, has great memories of the Armeets Arena having captured three golds when a World Cup was held there last year.

The 21-year-old is expected to use the event to trial new routines, including a hoop exercise to music from movie Chicago and a ball segment to a cover of the Radiohead song Creep, sung by Haley Reinhart.

She is due to be joined by five more Olympians including Italian duo Milena Baldassarri and Sofia Raffaeli as well as Ukraine’s Viktoriia Onoprienko and Japan’s Kita Sumire.

Stiliana Nikolova is also among the Bulgarian contingent as she prepares to make her World Cup debut in front of the home crowd.

Nikolova is the daughter of former professional football player Ilia Dyakov and Paulina Nikolova, a rhythmic group gymnast who won gold for Bulgaria at the World Championships in 1985.

Newcomers Sofia Ivanova, Bilyana Vezirska, Vaya Draganova, Elena Georgieva, Petya Borisova and Zhenina Trashlieva are poised to form the Bulgarian group in the team event.

They are expected to face competition from Spain, France, Germany and Greece.

Competition in Sofia is due to start tomorrow with hoop and ball qualification and conclude on Sunday (April 10).

The event is the second leg of the World Cup series after last month’s opener in Greek capital Athens.

Russian and Belarusian gymnasts have been barred from competing in International Gymnastics Federation-sanctioned events until further notice due to the invasion of Ukraine by the two nations.

Following the Sofia leg, the World Cup is due to travel to Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Baku in Azerbaijan this month before concluding in Pesaro in Italy in June.

The Bulgarian capital is scheduled to host the World Championships from September 12 to 18.