Poland issued 69,000 work permits to foreign nationals in the first half of 2026, according to figures released by the Ministry of the Interior and Administration (MSWiA) and reported by the Polish Press Agency (PAP) on 10 August 2026. That is 75,000 fewer than in the same period of 2025 — a fall of roughly 52 percent year on year, and around 60 percent below the level recorded two years ago.
| Period | Work permits issued | Change vs. 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| January-June 2024 | 173,000 | -104,000 (about -60%) |
| January-June 2025 | 144,000 | -75,000 (about -52%) |
| January-June 2026 | 69,000 | — |
MSWiA figures on work permits (zezwolenia na pracę) issued to foreign nationals in Poland. The ministry says the 2026 numbers are still undergoing final verification.
Why the ministry says the numbers fell
MSWiA attributes the drop to the legislative overhaul of Poland's foreign-employment rules, the move to electronic filing, and a deliberate effort to stop applications being lodged where no real job existed behind them. The ministry said the new arrangements have narrowed the ability to start proceedings that were not backed by genuine demand for a worker.
We have curbed the filing of applications for appearance, which has tightened the system and reduced the scale of refusals. Final verification of the data is still under way, but the trend is unambiguous.
Ministry of the Interior and Administration (MSWiA), quoted by PAP
What changed in the procedure
The fall follows a package of reforms phased in from December 2025 onwards. Work-permit applications must now be filed exclusively in electronic form through the praca.gov.pl portal, which requires the employer to hold a trusted profile or a qualified electronic signature — paper submissions are simply not considered. Application fees rose sharply on 1 December 2025, with the fee for a locally hired employee increasing from PLN 100 to PLN 400. At the same time, the labour market test — the requirement to first prove no Polish candidate was available — was abolished, and the statutory minimum wage that a full-time permit must meet rose to PLN 4,806 gross per month from 1 January 2026.
What this figure does and does not measure
- It counts work permits (zezwolenia na pracę) issued in a given period — not the total number of foreign nationals legally working in Poland.
- It does not capture the other legal routes into the Polish labour market, including single (work-and-residence) permits and the separate arrangements that apply to Ukrainian citizens.
- MSWiA has said the half-year figures are provisional and still being verified.
- A lower issuance count is not by itself evidence of lower approval rates — the ministry attributes much of the fall to fewer applications being lodged in the first place.
Why this matters if you are being recruited for Poland
Poland remains one of the largest single destinations in the EU for workers from South and Southeast Asia, and the permit is the document the whole placement rests on. The practical shift is that the burden has moved decisively onto the employer: if a Polish company cannot file electronically, cannot produce the contract and passport documentation the authorities now require, or is offering a role below the statutory salary floor, the application will not progress — regardless of how far along the recruitment conversation has gone. Workers should expect employers to be able to name the portal their application was filed through and to show that the offered salary meets the current minimum.
Fewer permits are being issued in Poland, and the tightening is largely at the employer's end of the process. Before committing to documents, travel, or language training tied to a Polish job offer, ask the employer to confirm that a work-permit application has actually been submitted through praca.gov.pl and that the offered monthly salary meets the current statutory minimum. This is an account of published ministry data, not legal advice, and it does not predict the outcome of any individual application.
