Bojan Z (Bojan Zulfikarpašić) was born in Belgrade on February 2, 1968. His mother was Bosniak, and his father's family, the Zulfikarpašićs, is said to come from Foča in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He began piano at five at the Kosta Manojlović music school in Zemun, played in small jazz groups on the Belgrade scene as a teenager, and in 1986 studied with the American pianist and arranger Clare Fischer at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan. His military service in Yugoslavia included time in an army orchestra, and he appears on the 1987 album by the group Oktobar 1864.

He moved to Paris in 1988 and took courses at the Centre d'informations musicales (CIM). He was named best young jazz musician of Yugoslavia in 1989, and in Paris he built a career as pianist, composer and producer, working with the bassist Henri Texier, the saxophonist and clarinettist Michel Portal, the guitarist Noël Akchoté and the saxophonist Julien Lourau. In 1992 his quartet Trash Corporation won first prize in the group category of the national jazz competition at La Défense. In 1993 he joined Texier's Azur group, recording An Indian's Week for the Paris label Label Bleu, and the same label issued his first album as a leader, Bojan Z Quartet, recorded on December 19 and 20, 1993 with Lourau on saxophones, Marc Buronfosse on double bass and François Merville on drums, with Dave Liebman credited as producer and author of the liner notes.

Label Bleu released most of his work through the 1990s and 2000s. Yopla! (1995) added the Turkish ney player Kudsi Erguner as a guest, and Koreni (Serbian for "roots," 1999) was recorded in November and December 1998 with guests from Algeria, Turkey and Macedonia. Solobsession (2001), his first solo piano album, was recorded at the Théâtre de Coutances in October 2000. Alongside his own records he played on Texier's Mosaic Man (1998), Portal's Dockings (1998), Nguyên Lê's Hendrix tribute Purple (2002) and Julien Lourau's The Rise (2001). In 2002 the French government made him a Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the Académie du Jazz gave him the Prix Django-Reinhardt, its award for the French musician of the year.

Transpacifik (2003) was recorded in Brooklyn on June 13 and 16, 2003 with the bassist Scott Colley and the drummer Nasheet Waits. In 2005 he received the Hans Koller Prize as best European jazz musician. Xenophonia (2006) used the double bassist Rémi Vignolo with two drummers, Ben Perowsky and Ari Hoenig, and it features the Xenophone, a customised Fender Rhodes that he plays alongside a Fazioli grand piano; the album won the Victoires du Jazz award for best album in 2007. With the group Bojan Z Tetraband (the drummer Sebastian Rochford, the bassist Ruth Goller and the trombonist Josh Roseman) he made Humus for EmArcy, recorded in April 2008 in Meudon and released by Universal in France in January 2010.

Soul Shelter (2012) is a solo set for piano and Fender Rhodes recorded at the Fazioli Concert Hall in Sacile, Italy, on June 20 to 22, 2011, and he was honoured again at the Victoires du Jazz for it. From then on he often worked in duo and ensemble formats: Duo (2015) with Julien Lourau, recorded live at Le Triton in Les Lilas in May 2014, Housewarming (Nwog Records, 2015) with the German trombonist Nils Wogram, Sound Architects (2012), an album by the bassist Stéphane Kerecki's trio with the saxophonist Tony Malaby and Bojan Z, and, in the Balkans, concerts and records with the Serbian bassist Nenad Vasilić, the pianist Vasil Hadžimanov and the Bosnian singer Amira Medunjanin, whose album Amulette he produced. In 2017 he received the Grand Prix du Jazz of the Sacem, the French authors' and composers' society. He is also on the Label Bleu thirtieth-anniversary concert album led by Texier (2017) and on Michel Portal's MP 85, and he joined the touring group Criss Cross Europe in 2019. His third solo piano album, As Is, was recorded at Paradis Improvisé in Marseille on October 17, 2021 and released in 2023, and in 2024 he joined the pianists Eric Legnini, Pierre de Bethmann and Baptiste Trotignon for the four-piano album PianoForte (Artwork Records).

He has lived and worked in France since 1988. His career is carried by French labels, French festivals and French prizes, and French Wikipedia and Discogs both describe him as Franco-Serbian.

Bojan Z is a pianist who combines the vocabulary of modern jazz with traditional material from Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey, and the pieces of Koreni and Solobsession carry titles such as "Grana od Bora," "Zulfikar-Pacha," "Uci me majko, karaj me" and "Sveti Bože (Dear Lord)." Transpacifik opens up a different side, a New York-recorded trio set with a Bulgarian folk tune ("Bulgarska") worked into hard-bop and free-improvisation territory, as Discogs labels it. A distinctive habit is playing a Fender Rhodes and an acoustic piano at the same time, and on Xenophonia and Humus he plays the Xenophone, his own modified Rhodes. His Belgrade schooling and his lessons with Clare Fischer sit alongside long working partnerships with the French musicians Henri Texier, Michel Portal and Julien Lourau. AllMusic lists him as a jazz artist in the Contemporary Jazz style, and French institutions have recognised him repeatedly: the Prix Django-Reinhardt (2002), the Victoires du Jazz and the Sacem Grand Prix du Jazz (2017).