The eighty-seventh cabinet of Bulgaria ruled from May 21, 1997 to July 24, 2001. The government was formed by the United Democratic Forces, an electoral alliance led by the Union of Democratic Forces, after they won a landslide victory in the 1997 parliamentary election winning 49.15% of the votes and 137 seats in the National Assembly. The cabinet was chaired by the UDF leader Ivan Kostov who shared the cabinet posts between his party and his allies. This was the largest margin of victory since the end of communism in 1990, to this day. Kostov's government was the first since 1990 to serve its entire four-year mandate.

Petar Stefanov Stoyanov is a Bulgarian politician who served as President of Bulgaria from 1997 to 2002. A member of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), he was the party's nominee to succeed one-term president Zhelyu Zhelev in 1996. He was elected to the Presidency in 1996, but lost his reelection bid in 2001. Following a brief retirement from politics, he became an MP in 2005 and later Chairman of UDF from 1 October 2005 to 22 May 2007. He resigned following the 2007 European Parliament election.