Statistics from Poland’s Central Statistical Office (GUS) do not lie. In recent years, Poles—completely independently of one another—have started doing the same thing on a massive scale. Within the span of just one generation, they have reshaped the country’s demographic map more profoundly than at any time in decades. What is happening to Poland’s cities and villages has no precedent in the country’s recent history. Yet most of us are not even aware that we are part of this process.
According to the latest available data, Poland’s population decreased by more than 147,000 people in a single year—between 2024 and 2025. Sounds abstract? That is roughly the population of Koszalin or Legnica. It is as if one medium-sized Polish city ceased to exist within twelve months.
But this is not a story about extinction. It is a story about where Poles are moving. Because they are somewhere—they are still living their lives.
Major Cities Are Emptying Out
In 2025, the population declined in 61 out of Poland’s 66 cities with county rights. Łódź lost 6,322 residents in a single year, Bydgoszcz lost 2,391, and Szczecin lost 2,360.
A population decline was recorded in nearly 80 percent of all Polish municipalities. These are not isolated cases or local anomalies. Depopulation now affects 72 percent of Poland’s municipalities. At the same time, population growth has become the exception rather than the rule. It is also worth noting that this growth is concentrated almost exclusively in one specific type of location on the map.
The COVID-19 Pandemic Only Accelerated the Trend
So what is happening to Poland’s residents? The answer is both simple and surprising: they are moving out of the cities.
For the past 25 years, Poland has been experiencing suburbanization—the movement of people from cities to neighboring municipalities. The COVID-19 pandemic merely accelerated a process that had already been underway since the turn of the century.
In 2022 alone, more than 53,000 people moved out of Polish cities. Since then, rural areas have consistently maintained a positive migration balance. The middle class is leaving apartment blocks for houses. They are moving from city centers to suburban peace and quiet, from busy streets to places where children can run freely in the garden.
Mazowieckie, Małopolskie, Pomorskie, Wielkopolskie, and Dolnośląskie are the only five provinces in Poland that recorded a positive internal migration balance between 1998 and 2024: +320,500, +92,900, +82,600, +47,400, and +39,500 people respectively. It could be argued that the rest of the country is “giving away” its population to these five winners.
These Are the Towns Benefiting from the Trend
This is not an abstract phenomenon. Piaseczno, Ząbki, and Marki near Warsaw. Wieliczka and Skawina near Kraków. Siechnice near Wrocław. Reda and Rumia near the Tri-City area.
These are the places where new housing estates are being built, shops are opening, and schools are filling up. Meanwhile, the centers of the nearby metropolitan areas are seeing growing numbers of vacant properties.
In 2024, Poznań County recorded a population increase of exactly 5,620 residents, Wrocław County gained 3,957, and Piaseczno County added 2,650. This is neither a coincidence nor a temporary trend, but rather a systematic redistribution of the population that has been taking place for decades and is permanently changing what Poland looks like from above.
Who Pays the Price?
This great migration to the suburbs comes at a cost. It is not paid only by those who remain in depopulating city centers.
Depopulation leads to school closures, the elimination of public transport services, and cuts to public services. It creates the risk of a “downward spiral”—the fewer the residents, the fewer the services, and the fewer the services, the more people leave.
Prof. Przemysław Śleszyński, a geographer and demographer at the Polish Academy of Sciences, points out that the actual outflow from peripheral municipalities is 20–30 percent higher than GUS data suggest, because many people simply do not deregister their previous place of residence. As a result, the real scale of depopulation is deeper than official statistics indicate.
No administrative decision will stop this process. Millions of Poles have already made their choice. And that is why the map of the country has changed irreversibly.