“How much longer will I wait?” The answer depends on your document and office. We checked the sources on 20 October 2026. In the comparable official temporary residence series, the mean ranges from 242 days in Lesser Poland to 658 days in Silesia. These are concluded proceedings, not a promise for a new application.
What the figures measure
The main comparison comes from the MSWiA reply to parliamentary question 18089, dated 27 July 2026. Its 2026 figures are current to 6 July. The measure concerns temporary residence proceedings up to a first-instance decision. It excludes subsequent card production and collection. Searches for “Polish residence card waiting time” often combine these separate stages.
All 16 voivodeships compared
The first numeric column is the official July snapshot. The second separately shows the Krakspire publication citing UdSC: decisions issued from 1 January to 28 September 2026, published on 30 September. The original authority reply is not attached, so we label it a secondary source. September figures do not replace the verified official series.
| Voivodeship / city | MSWiA: 6 July 2026, days | Krakspire: 28 Sept 2026, days |
|---|---|---|
| Lower Silesian / Wrocław | 303 | 329 |
| Kuyavian-Pomeranian / Bydgoszcz | 541 | 547 |
| Lublin / Lublin | 386 | 389 |
| Lubusz / Gorzów Wielkopolski | 555 | 519 |
| Łódź / Łódź | 386 | 383 |
| Lesser Poland / Kraków | 242 | 249 |
| Masovian / Warszawa | 394 | 425 |
| Opole / Opole | 510 | 498 |
| Subcarpathian / Rzeszów | 302 | 313 |
| Podlaskie / Białystok | 447 | 470 |
| Pomeranian / Gdańsk | 598 | 622 |
| Silesian / Katowice | 658 | 680 |
| Świętokrzyskie / Kielce | 325 | 328 |
| Warmian-Masurian / Olsztyn | 273 | 278 |
| Greater Poland / Poznań | 339 | 343 |
| West Pomeranian / Szczecin | 465 | 461 |
Reading the figures for Kraków, Warsaw and Gdańsk
In the official July series, Lesser Poland, which includes Kraków, averages 242 days. Masovia, including Warsaw, averages 394 days. Pomerania, including Gdańsk, averages 598 days. These are regional figures, with no separate city or work, business or family basis breakdown. They do not predict a particular case’s decision date.
Why an average can rise
When an office closes old cases, they enter the calculation and can push the mean up. MSWiA explicitly describes this effect for Masovia. A higher average therefore does not prove every new application is being processed more slowly. Application and decision counts alone also cannot establish an average waiting time.
Permanent residence, EU long-term residence and work permits
For Masovia, the same MSWiA reply reports separate averages of 239 days for permanent residence and 423 days for EU long-term residence. An Opole regional extract for January–August 2026 reports 610 and 785 days respectively. Its outcome coverage is broader, so a direct ranking based on these two sources would be misleading.
A MRPiPS letter dated 25 August 2026 reports work permit processing averages for 2025 across all 16 voivodeships. This procedure is separate from the combined temporary residence and work permit. The ministry-issued document is available in a third-party archive; we label its provenance and reporting period in the explorer.
Plastic card production after a decision
We found no comparable card production and collection average for all 16 voivodeships. The UdSC notice of 10 August reporting more than two months concerns subsequent document issue or replacement applications received by UdSC itself. It is not the average printing time for every card after a voivode’s decision. Check document readiness through your own office’s official channel.
Check your voivodeship
Choose the region and document. Check the number of days alongside the reporting date, procedure and source author. We show a gap when figures are unavailable rather than borrow a different region’s number. The explorer does not require a case number and is not connected to individual government case files.
How the comparison is updated
We review new official publications for their reporting period, procedure and methodology. Checking a source today does not make its historical statistics new. A new dataset first becomes an update candidate; after review, a new version is published with its sources. We have not confirmed an official daily average-waiting-time API covering all documents and regions.
