List of cities and towns in Poland


This is a list of cities and towns in Poland, consisting of four sections: the full list of all 107 cities in Poland by size, followed by a description of the principal metropolitan areas of the country, the table of the most populated cities and towns in Poland, and finally, the full alphabetical list of all 107 Polish cities and 919 towns combined.
As of 1 January 2026, there are altogether 2479 municipalities in Poland:
  • 1453 of them are rural gminas containing exclusively rural areas, each of them forms a part of one of the 314 regular powiats, but never as its seat,
  • the remaining 1026 contain a locality classified either as a city or a town, among them:
  • * 724 towns are managed together with their rural surroundings under a single local government in the form of an eponymous urban-rural gmina typically seated in such town ; such mixed municipalities always form part of a regular powiat, sometimes seated in such town, in such case being usually an eponymous one
  • * 302 cities and towns are standalone as an urban gmina; nevertheless some of them be also a seat of an eponymous rural gmina surrounding it, despite not being a part of its territory;
  • ** 195 standalone towns, each of them forming a part of a regular powiat and sometimes being its seat, in the latter case usually an eponymous one, though there are three exceptions
  • ** 107 cities, among them:
  • *** 41 cities form along with two or more other municipalities an eponymous regular powiat, seated always in the city
  • *** 66 cities hold status of a city with powiat rights which is an urban gmina operating also as a powiat in its own right within a voivodeship; nevertheless, it may be also a seat of a regular powiat, in such case usually an eponymous one despite not being included in the territory of the county
  • **** 37 cities are over 100,000, including
  • ***** 18 cities which serve as a seat for voivode or the voivodeship sejmik, thus being informally called voivodeship cities or capitals,
  • ****** 11 of them are seats of an appeal court and other supra-voivodeship institutions,
  • ******* They include the capital city of the country, the only Polish city with population exceeding 1,000,000, and the only one governed by a dedicated act of Parliament.
In some cases, a city with powiat rights may also be a seat of both an eponymous rural gmina and an eponymous regular powiat, despite belonging to neither, e.g. Siedlce, Skierniewice, Słupsk. No city in Poland constitutes a separate voivodeship in its own right, though 5 cities held such status in the past.

General principles

All municipalities in Poland are governed regardless of their type under the mandatory mayor–council government system. Executive power in a rural gmina is exercised by a wójt, while the homologue in municipalities containing cities or towns is called accordingly either a city mayor or a town mayor, all of them elected by a two-round direct election, while the town/city council is the legislative, budget-making and oversight body. Any local laws considered non-compliant with the national ones may be invalidated by the respective voivode, whose rulings may be appealed to an administrative court. Decisions in individual cases may in turn be appealed to quasi-judicial bodies named, their ruling subject to appeal to an administrative court. A town or city mayor may be scrutinized or denied funding for his/her projects by the council, but is not politically responsible to it and does not require its confidence to remain in office; therefore, cohabitation is not uncommon. A recall referendum may however be triggered either in respect to the wójt/town mayor/city mayor or to the municipal council through a petition supported by at least 1/10 of eligible voters, but the turnout in the recall referendum must be at least 3/5 of the number of people voting in the original election in order for the referendum to be valid and binding. In addition, elected bodies of any municipality may be suspended by the Prime Minister of Poland in case of persisting law transgressions or negligence, resulting in such case in the municipality being placed under receivership. In a city with powiat rights, the city mayor additionally has the powers and duties of a powiat executive board and a starosta, while the city council has the powers and duties of a powiat council; both nevertheless being elected under the municipal election rules rather than those applicable to county elections.

Cities

In spite of no linguistic distinction between a city and a town in the Polish language, a city may be recognized among other Polish urban municipalities through being managed by a city mayor instead of a town mayor as the head of the city executive, thus being informally called miasto prezydenckie, with such privilege automatically awarded to municipalities either inhabited by more than 100,000 residents or those enjoying the status of a city with powiat rights. As of 2022, all of the former group fit into the latter, though it was not always the case in the past. There is, however, a number of exemptions due to historic or political reasons, when a municipality meets neither of these two conditions but nevertheless has the city status, including the only 3 capitals of the former voivodeships of Poland not meeting the abovementioned criteria, as well as 38 other municipalities which do not fit into any of the mentioned categories but have nevertheless been allowed to keep the earlier awarded status due to unspecified historical reasons. Among the 34 cities over 100,000, 18 are seats of voivode or voivodeship sejmik, thus carrying the informal designation of a voivodeship city. 11 of them are seats of an appeal court and other supra-voivodeship institutions.
The 107 Polish cities these are cities with a president belong to the following size ranges in terms of the number of inhabitants :
Only a single officially incorporated multi-purpose metropolitan union exists in Poland, the sui generis Metropolis GZM, established by a dedicated act of Parliament of Poland within the Silesian Voivodeship, currently composed of 41 contiguous municipalities, with some of them containing also rural areas. Its total population is 2,279,560. The metropolis largely coincides with the metropolitan area of the Katowice urban area, which is a part of the wider polycentric transnational Katowice-Ostrava metropolitan area.
A de facto metropolitan area is, however, also formed in some aspects by Warsaw metropolitan area, consisting of the capital city of Warsaw, a city with powiat rights, and the 9 neighbouring counties: Warsaw West County, Nowy Dwór County, Legionowo County, Wołomin County, Mińsk County, Otwock County, Piaseczno County, Pruszków County and Grodzisk Mazowiecki County. Warsaw forms together with these counties a NUTS 2 area separate as an exception from the remainder of its home region, the Mazovian Voivodeship. In addition, identical area is policed by the Capital City Police Headquarters separate from the Mazovian Voivodeship Police Headquarters, with a status equal to that of voivodeship police headquarters. Attempts to establish a formally incorporated metropolitan union have been fiercely resisted by the citizens and the city mayor of Warsaw who have considered them a form of concealed gerrymandering, potentially leading to a political takeover of the city government through aiming to counterbalance the profoundly liberal city population with the conservative population of the neighbouring areas.
A third widely known metropolitan area is the metropolitan area of Tricity in Pomeranian Voivodeship, urban area of which consists of the eponymous cities of Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia. The designation has been used informally or semi-formally only. A strategic cooperation declaration, the Tricity Charter, was signed by the three city mayors on 28 March 2007. The only incorporated common management authority in the Tricity metro is the Gdańsk Bay Public Transport Metropolitan Union which is, despite the name, an inter-municipal union and not a metropolitan one.