Chapter 7
Poland hosts the world's most coveted piano competition, has five literary Nobel laureates, a poster school that taught the world, and video games sold in tens of millions of copies. Museums break attendance records — reading stands still.
Culture is the part of the Polish brand with the widest reach and the weakest link to the country's recognition: the world knows Chopin, Lem, The Witcher, the Polish poster and Penderecki, and less often knows where they come from. This chapter measures culture where it can be measured — in collections, attendance, competition entries, rankings and print runs — and does not skip the less flattering: almost six in ten adults read no books, and in the global soft-power ranking Poland is thirty-first.
Fig. 7.1
Amount raised by the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity in successive finales, PLN m, 2019–2026
Fig. 7.2
Museum visitors in Poland, million people, 2019–2025 (no confirmed value for 2021)
The pandemic collapse has been more than made up: museum attendance is now 15% higher than in 2019, and art museums — with 17.7 m visitors — are the most popular. Mazovia and Lesser Poland attract 59% of all visitors.
Cultural institutions are bursting at the seams, but reading (the last chart of this chapter) stands still — we visit museums and cinemas more and more often, we do not read more.
Fig. 7.3
Tourism, UNESCO heritage, the diaspora and the Chopin Competition
Tourism is breaking records after the pandemic — 2025 was the best year ever, and Poland was second in the EU for growth in overnight stays. The heritage is unique on a world scale: Kraków and Wieliczka were on the very first UNESCO list in 1978, alongside the Galápagos and Yellowstone.
The Chopin Competition remains a first-class Polish symbolic export — with a paradox: Poland runs the world's most prestigious piano competition and has won it only four times (most recently Rafał Blechacz in 2005; in 2025 the American Eric Lu won).
Fig. 7.4
Global Soft Power Index 2026, points (0–100): the top thirteen and Poland
Poland's soft power clearly lags behind its economic and military weight. In the Brand Finance ranking the country sits 31st — ten points behind Spain and Sweden — despite its marked rise in recent years in the safety and happiness rankings (chapter 12).
It is a gap this document partly tries to fill: Poland's strongest assets — the pace of development, safety, science, high culture, games — are less known abroad than the stereotypes.
Fig. 7.5
Share of Poles (15+) who read at least one book in the year, %, 2019–2025
The most interesting counterpoint to the record attendances at museums and cinemas: reading has stood still for three years at about 41–43%, and almost six in ten adults did not read a single book in the year. Internal differences are huge — from 34% among men to 71% in the largest cities.
The country of five literary Nobel laureates and the world's most-translated science-fiction writer reads less than most of Western Europe. Polish high culture has global reach; the everyday practice of reading does not.
Fig. 7.6
World firsts, exhibitions and awards of Polish art, music and film
Polish visual art has a feature that is easy to overlook: several times it was the first in the world. The oldest violin competition, the first open poster competition and the first poster museum are institutions, and the Polish poster school (Tomaszewski, Cieślewicz, Starowieyski) taught graphic design to half the world.
Abroad, Polish names are back in the first league: the Abakanowicz retrospective at Tate Modern, the Lempicka record, prizes in Cannes and Venice. A warning sign: the Poster Biennale lost its regularity after 2016 and the Łódź Design Festival cancelled its 2026 edition — institutional continuity in Poland is sometimes harder than talent.
Fig. 7.7
Highest prices for works by Polish artists at auctions in Poland, PLN m, 2019–2026
The contrast of scale is the whole story: the most expensive work ever sold at auction in Poland (about USD 4 m) is less than a fifth of Lempicka's London record. The Polish art market is young and narrow — records fall on single canvases by Abakanowicz, Wróblewski, Fangor, Pankiewicz — but it is growing: “Japanese Woman” beat Pankiewicz's previous record more than threefold within three months, and Abakanowicz's “Bambini” — resold in June 2026 — set a new national record.
Fig. 7.8
General government expenditure on recreation, culture and religion (COFOG 08), % of GDP, 2024
Poland spends more public money on culture than the EU average — more than Germany and Czechia, less than Hungary and Estonia — and it shows in the institutions: 994 museums with record attendance, 206 theatres and music institutions with 13 m spectators, 174 of them public, and for 93% the local government is the organiser. The institutions are in good shape; it is their continuity that can be fragile (the Poster Biennale, the Łódź Design Festival).
Poland's mass philanthropy has one gigantic, stable channel: a one-day collection that has been funding equipment for children's hospitals for three decades. Six years of uninterrupted growth — from PLN 176 m to 289 m — were broken only by the 2026 finale, and even that was the third-best result ever.
The contrast with everyday engagement is telling: according to Statistics Poland only 28% of Poles aged 15–89 did any volunteer work in a four-week period (2022), and only 5% in organisations. Poles mobilise spectacularly for a day and in a crisis (a peak of 37% after the invasion of Ukraine), less often systematically.