A portrait in data · 2026
Poland:A Self-Portrait
Who we are by the numbers: economy, science, culture, safety — lights and shadows, always with a source. A portrait of a country the world knows less well than it deserves.
The Poland the world knows is often the Poland of 50 or 100 years ago — poor, agricultural, grey, eastern. The Poland of the 2026 data is different in almost every dimension: the world's 21st-largest economy, the fastest-growing large economy in the Union since the 2004 enlargement, one of the safest countries on the continent, a society with some of the lowest income inequality in Europe, schools teaching above the OECD average, and exports that grew sixfold in two decades.
A self-portrait must also hold the shadows — and it does so by the same method, without dramatising: growing antipathy towards outsiders, low trust, susceptibility to disinformation, the second-highest deficit in the Union, the lowest fertility on record and homes whose prices have run away from wages. Against the world, Poland remains an oasis of calm and relative prosperity; against its own ambitions — a country with a to-do list. Sixteen chapters, a hundred charts, each with a source.
Chapters
- 1 An eagle's-eye view: Poland in 60 seconds 37.3 m inhabitants — the EU's 5th-largest country 3 figures
- 2 History and continuity: 1,060 years, 123 of them without a state 123 years without a state (1795–1918) — 11.6% of its history 5 figures
- 3 Economy: from the periphery to the top twenty 81% of the EU average (GDP per capita, PPS, 2025) 8 figures
- 4 Wages and living standards: six years after the pandemic +81% average wage 2019→2025 (nominal) 8 figures
- 5 Business, exports and digital Poland 6× growth of goods exports 2004→2025 7 figures
- 6 Science and discovery: from Copernicus to orbit 489 PISA 2022 maths points — 2nd in the EU 7 figures
- 7 Culture and the arts: from Chopin to The Witcher 46.2 m museum visitors in 2025 — a record 8 figures
- 8 Sport: a narrow band, strong results 6 Grand Slam titles for Iga Świątek 2 figures
- 9 Nature: forests growing, bison back, water scarce 3,060 European bison — the world's largest population (2024) 6 figures
- 10 Architecture: from Kraków to Varso Tower 18 UNESCO World Heritage sites 5 figures
- 11 Cuisine: from pierogi to 58 billion euros EUR 58.4 bn of agri-food exports (2025) — a record 6 figures
- 12 An oasis of calm: safety and wellbeing 0.69 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants (2024) 6 figures
- 13 Shadows: xenophobia, disinformation, polarisation 22% of Poles think most people can be trusted 9 figures
- 14 Inequality, housing, demography 1.14 children per woman (2024) — a record low 9 figures
- 15 Poland in Europe and the world 4.48% of GDP on defence (2025) — the most in NATO 8 figures
- 16 The composite portrait: lights and shadows on one page 6/10 Eurostat indicators better than the EU average 3 figures
How to read this portrait
Every chart has three layers: a number (or series) with its source and year, two or three key facts, and a short commentary saying what follows from the number — and what must not be read into it. Where the data are uncertain, we say so in a footnote. Where a stereotype diverges from the data, we show both. The document is bilingual — the Polish version lives at polska.tkm.cc — and is updated as new data are published; every change is visible in the project repository.