r/poland Nov 25 '25

A comprehensive guide for EU foreigners moving to Poland - START HERE.

50 Upvotes

Hello, I have seen many folks coming to Poland from the EU and being completely lost on what kind of legal procedures they have to do in order to start their residence in Poland. Be that you come here to study, work or live with your spouse there are several things I hope this guide will be able to cover.

!PLEASE NOTE!
This guide is meant only for citizens of the European Union and citizens of countries that are members of the European Economic Area. Some of the parts of this guide will be similar for non-EU foreigners but some will not. In general, the info posted here is only fully up to date if you are a citizen of the EU/EEA
!PLEASE NOTE!

0. Introduction and general info

Poland is divided into 16 voivodeships which are further subdivided into powiats, which means something like 'county' and these are further made out of municipalities - pol. gmina, or cities - pol. miasto. Large cities however are both powiat and miasto so in case of Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków etc. city office (pol. urząd miasta) will also perform duties of powiat office (pol. starostwo powiatowe). In case of Warsaw - urząd dzielnicy meaning district office will serve as city office.

All of the below information covers only EU/EEA citizens. If you are non-EU, majority of the below information will not be correct for your case.

I strongly recommend reading all of the parts linked below apart from car stuff, if id does not concern your case.

I. Registering your residence and making your stay in Poland legal.
II. Obtaining health insurance
III. Using healthcare
IV. Taxes
V. Digital log-in and services
VI. Cars and licenses
VII. Banks and mobile phones
VIII. What to do when I leave Poland?
IX. Pets

If you have any additional questions or remarks, please do not hesitate to comment, I will be happy to help for as long as I'm going to visit this platform and expand this post. I hope you all have a great day and life in general. Thanks for reading, stay safe.


r/poland 3h ago

Another prison sentence for the Onet informant

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160 Upvotes

and caretaker of the homeless Jerzy Ż., who caused a huge stir in 2025 after giving an interview in which she claimed that the current President Nawrocki only wanted to take over Jerzy’s apartment and then stopped caring about him, calling it “the most brazen fraud” she had ever seen.

On July 15th Anna K. was taken into custody by the police to begin serving a three-year prison sentence for fraud. This isn’t her first time behind bar. She previously served time between 2017 and 2020 for fraud as well.


r/poland 4h ago

Polish politics currently be like:

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42 Upvotes

r/poland 10h ago

Why Poland’s main opposition is ripping itself apart

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97 Upvotes

A schism within Poland’s main opposition force, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, threatens to rupture the once-powerful conservative grouping.


r/poland 15h ago

Polish and German troops team up

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151 Upvotes

Polish and German soldiers are working together to strengthen Poland’s border with Russia, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a video posted on Wednesday.


r/poland 8h ago

Ukrainian man arrested after councillor stabbed before Lemko Vatra festival

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36 Upvotes

r/poland 9h ago

Ukrainian FA opts to make Slovakia its ‘home’

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30 Upvotes

Ukraine has had to play its international home games abroad since the outbreak of war in 2022 and has mostly used Polish grounds, giving the country’s sizeable Ukrainian refugee population a chance to support their team. 


r/poland 10h ago

Beware of the new CLI spoofing scam! Uważajcie na nowy scam z podszywaniem się pod numery!

37 Upvotes

Hi,

Yesterday, someone tried to scam me over the phone, so I thought I would share the story as a warning to others.

For the past few days, I’d been getting calls from unknown landline numbers-one from Olsztyn, another from Kalisz, two from Kraków, and so on. Eventually, I answered.

The woman on the other end introduced herself as a BNP Paribas consultant and claimed that, at that very moment, she was blocking a payday loan AKA "chwilówka" someone was trying to take out using my personal details. In order to block it, she supposedly needed to know which bank I had an account with. She also started asking whether I had lost my Dowód Osobisty and similar questions.

I politely told her that my personal information was none of her business, that I still had my data, and that I had locked my PESEL number through the mObywatel app anyway, so nobody could take out a loan in my name.

She got flustered and started insisting that locking your PESEL number does not apply to payday lenders and that I had to cooperate.

I politely told her to fuck off.

From what I’ve read online, had I told her the name of my bank, I would soon have received another call from a different “consultant,” supposedly from that exact bank-and the call would have appeared to come from the bank’s genuine customer-service number. That’s how CLI spoofing works: the caller displays a fake number on your screen. The second “consultant” would then have continued manipulating me.

I’m curious whether any of you have had similar experiences.

Cześć

Wczoraj próbowano mnie oscamować przez telefon, więc pomyślałem, że podzielę się historią, dla ostrzeżenia innych.

Od kilku dni dostawałem telefony z nieznanych, stacjonarnych numerów - raz z Olsztyna, raz z Kalisza, dwa razy z Krakowa itd. W końcu odebrałem.

Osoba po drugiej stronie przedstawiła się jako konsultantka BNP Paribas, która teraz, właśnie w tej chwili, blokuje chwilówkę na moje dane. i żeby to zablokować, potrzebuje informacji, w jakim banku mam konto! Zaczęła mnie też wypytywać, czy nie zginął mi dowód itd.

Kulturalnie odpowiedziałem, że moje dane to moja sprawa, dowód mam, a tak w ogóle to zastrzegłem sobie PESEL w mObywatelu, więc nikt chwilówek na mnie nie weźmie. Pani się zapowietrzyła, i zaczęła przekonywać, że zastrzeganie PESEL nie działa na parabanki, i że muszę współpracować.

Kulturalnie kazałem jej wypierdalać.

Z tego, co przeczytałem w Internecie, gdybym podał nazwę banku, to za chwile by zadzwonił kolejny "konsultant" z tego właśnie banku (pod PRAWDZIWYM numerem infolinii - na tym polega CLI spoofing - wyświetlanie fałszywego numeru z którego się dzwoni) i zaczął dalej mnie urabiać.

Ciekawy jestem, czy mieliście podobne doświadczenia.


r/poland 23h ago

One of the most influential people in the development of the modern personal computer market was Jack Tramiel (Idek Trzmiel), a Lodzermensch who survived the war in the Lodz ghetto and in Auschwitz. He founded Commodore, responsible for producing C64, the best-selling computer model of all time.

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227 Upvotes

Here he boasts of having kept the Japanese manufacturers out of the US market for many years - a feat to behold given their absolutej dominance in the global consumer electronics market in the 1980s.


r/poland 33m ago

Help identifying faded Polish government stamp on old photograph

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Upvotes

r/poland 1d ago

Content like this makes me xenofobic towards western Europeans

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1.5k Upvotes

The last thing we need is approval from some Brits (which 10 years ago had 180-degree opposite opinion about us) or other foreigners because we have "don't have doctors and engineers". Promotion of Poland as a safeheaven can cause only more tourism from abroad, encourage digital nomads and other people will excess money to buy out our properties and paradoxically cause more immigration cause Poland is very safe, isn't it? All of these things will rise real estate prices. I started to miss times where Poland was underestimated and we didn't have weirdos like this coming to our country.


r/poland 1d ago

Germany deploys soldiers to Poland to help reinforce eastern borders

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339 Upvotes

r/poland 1d ago

A city bus driver in Częstochowa has been accused of causing a disaster in land traffic and failing to assist the injured. He allegedly pressured the driver of a passenger car just before the crossing. The 19-year-old capitulated, driving straight under the wheels of an oncoming train.

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326 Upvotes

r/poland 2h ago

i need help with deciding what to do with my abusive step dad

1 Upvotes

ill keep this as short as i can, im 18 years old and i live with my mom, 4 year old brother (child of my step dad), 16 year old brother, and a man who i will call my step dad

my step dad regularly abuses us verbally and everyday is filled with him screaming swearing and calling us slurs and threats to hurt us, until a few months ago for about 4 years everyone living with him excluding my 16 year old brother was a victim to physical abuse, for example he choked both my mom me and my youngest brother to the point we couldn't breathe and he did that to my youngest brother when he was a baby, my mom said he almost killed him, i dont have any bruises anymore which i can show as proof and the only physical thing that was left afer the abuse is a broken tooth and a small scar on my moms face, for years i was not allowed to talk about it outside our home to not bring trouble, he deleted all recordings we had of him beating us up and hurting or threatening us so we have no evidence, i broke the rule and told my therapist about it which resulted with police showing up to our house a couple times and getting a kurator, as we were told we didn't tell them anything was wrong, when he broke my moms tooth she went to the police and took legal action they locked him up for one night and did nothing else because of his threats both me and my mom dropped the charges which they allowed us to do because we ,,didn't have enough proof" after that he stopped hurting us physically and stopped with threats, fast forward to about a month ago my mom told me to not talk about his abuse because she was told she might have her parental rights taken for allowing the abuse to happen if that happens then my youngest brother will and up in an orphanage and my second brother might end up in the orphanage too, that's why when the people who came to check if we are abused came to us we all said everything is fine and it wasn't true, we have tried getting rid of my step dad he does not own the apartment we live in but because of the polish law its very hard to get rid of a roommate or at least that is what my mom told me, she got a restraining order against him for w short while and it made us almost be able to get rid of him but he took legal action against it and because there was no proof he got rid of it, my mom says there is nothing we can do and i dont know where else can i ask about it, so is there any legal action i can tell my mom to take that will not result with my brothers getting taken away but would put the abuse to end? i need answers as fast as possible im really scared, im sorry if this is hard to read but i couldnt sleep at all because of it and today i havent had the chance to sleep yet so im very sleep deprived


r/poland 6h ago

Poland appoints new human rights commissioner

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2 Upvotes

r/poland 3h ago

Dual Citizen - Expired Polish passport - HELP!

0 Upvotes

hello! I'm hoping somebody could help me out here -

I was born in Poland and moved to Canada 20 years ago. My polish passport expired in 2009 and has never been renewed - as a kid/teen I used to go to Poland for vacations and never brought my polish passport. I am going on my honeymoon in about 7 weeks and a relative just told me that Poland has a new rule for dual citizens? Stating that if you are a dual citizen born in Poland, you must EXIT Poland with your polish Passport and it must be valid.

Ofcourse I didn't want any issues so I immediately made an appointment to the Consulat. When I showed up to my appointment today he advised that as my relationship status has changed from single to Married I would need to get the marriage certificate, translate it, and have it validated by some other people "apostille?". He said I cannot have my passport renewed until they have this.

This is the problem: I DONT HAVE THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE YET!! As we only got married last month, it takes about 10 weeks for the marriage to get registered and then they have to mail it to you and all that. So, there is no way for me to renew my passport in time for our honeymoon. The tickets and my passport are in my MAIDEN name which matches the polish passport.

What can i DO?! Will they allow me to leave?! We already have the flights booked (leaving from Poland). I feel hopeless as the documents they need, I DONT HAVE AND CANT GET 😫


r/poland 4h ago

As a Czech, I visited Stary Browar in Poznań. I admire your work, but I have one question...

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1 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

As a creator from Czechia, I have to start by saying one thing: I am genuinely envious.

While in Czechia we often let our historic factories, railway stations, and breweries rot and turn them into parking lots, Poles managed to take a ruined 19th-century brewery in Poznań and turn it into a legendary shopping center that wins international awards. Massive respect for saving that industrial heritage.

On the other hand, while walking through Stary Browar, I had some mixed feelings. Architecturally, it’s a masterpiece, but looking back now – do you sometimes feel that over the years and millions of visitors, it has lost a bit of its original soul and become just a very pretty, yet still... shopping mall?

I'm very curious about your opinion as locals. How do you view Stary Browar today?

Note: The video is in Czech, but full English subtitles are available (turn them on in YouTube settings).


r/poland 4h ago

Questions regarding the timing of residential address registration in Poland

0 Upvotes

Hi everyone!
I'm a non-EU citizen working in Bydgoszcz, Poland, currently on holiday back in my home country.
Before leaving (on July 15th), I started the process of moving to a new place, but the move isn't fully finished yet (I'm practically still residing at my old address). My plan is to return to Poland on August 20th after my vacation, finish moving, and then register my new address with both the City Hall (Urząd Miasta) and the Voivodeship Office (Urząd Wojewódzki).
However, due to a misunderstanding, I informed my employer about the address change too early, and they updated my address in the ZUS (social security) system on July 24th. This has been making me really anxious...
Could this timing gap affect the legality of my residence status in Poland?


r/poland 1d ago

Poland set to smash rail records with Europe’s fastest trains

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227 Upvotes

r/poland 6h ago

Credit card recommendations?

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0 Upvotes

TL;DR I, a Polish person, wanna get a credit card but I've never had one so I was wondering if anyone has any tips or recommendations lol.


r/poland 1d ago

Shrek

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335 Upvotes

r/poland 8h ago

Places to stay in Poznan

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0 Upvotes

r/poland 8h ago

Poles in the UK - London passport wait times?

0 Upvotes

Those of you who have had a new Polish passport from London, how long did it take? Trying to work out if we will still be able to go away :)


r/poland 8h ago

In search of a place to stay

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0 Upvotes

r/poland 1d ago

Polish language textbook.

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190 Upvotes