Poland

National election body is investigating potential vote counting irregularities following this month’s presidential runoff that gave a razor-thin victory to the conservative Law and Justice party for less than 400.000 votes in nearly 21 million votes cast

First round of presidential election ends with Centrist Trzaskowski narrowingly leading with 31,3% of the vote on Karol Nawrocki, backed by the populist right, gaining 29,5 %; runoff is scheduled for on 1 June 1

3.000 European bisons live in Poland according to the country’s annual wildlife survey for 2025, of which over 2.800 are wild; the record high reflects decades of successful protection and reintroduction programs

Magda Butrym is back in the news after becoming the first Polish designer to join retail giant H&M: in Warsaw crowds formed outside the downtown H&M flagship store as local fashionistas queued to be among the first to grab one of the coveted new pieces

A count ruled that Zakopane, a popular mountain resort, is unjustified in charging tourists a “climate fee” given how bad the air quality is in the area; Zakopane disagrees and says will change local laws to charge the fee which brings €1.2 million a year

Poland and Baltic states may be leaving the 1997 Ottawa treaty banning antipersonnel land mines, citing security reasons at the borders they share with Russia

The novel 'Blackbird Blackberry', by Georgian writer and a feminist activist Tamta Melashvili, was awarded best book of the year in Poland

The IDEAS Research Institute was launched to give Poland a competitive edge in artificial intelligence research and development; it is jointly supervised by the Ministry of Digital Affairs and the Ministry of Defence

A Polish couple, devoted to the Virgin Mary, is building a large statue of the Mother of God near the Shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows in Konotop; it will be a total of 55,6 metres high and will be the higher in Europe when it wiil be finished in half 2026

Poland's largest utility Polska Grupa Energetyczna has signed a €400 million agreement loan with the European Investment Bank for the design and construction of Baltica 2, the EU's largest offshore wind farm

The annual number of births in Poland once again reached an all-time low, according to the state agency Statistics Poland; 2024 marked the 12th consecutive year in which deaths exceeded births

Polish surgeons performed a record 2.197 organ transplants last year, according to data from Poltransplant, the Polish Transplant Coordination Centre, beating the previous high of 1.805 procedures in 2023