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4% in Q4 – and an appetite for more. Poland’s economy gathers pace

Poland’s GDP grew by 4% year on year in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Statistics Poland’s flash estimate. The chart makes the acceleration unmistakable. Growth reached 3.8% in the third quarter, 3.3% in the second, and 3.2% in the first. A year earlier – in the fourth quarter of 2024 – GDP expanded by 3.5% year on year.

Michał Kulbacki
01.03.2026, 10:54
View of Gdansk's Old Town, in Gdansk, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland
The fourth-quarter 2025 GDP reading confirms that the economy is on a fast-growth trajectory. In 2026, GDP growth could exceed 4%. Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

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Over the past decade, growth rates above 4% were recorded in 2017–2019, as well as during the post-pandemic rebound in 2021–2022.

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What is driving such rapid growth?

Private consumption remains the main engine. For now, Statistics Poland (GUS) has released only the headline estimate for fourth-quarter growth, without a detailed breakdown. Still, based on earlier data on the contributions of individual components, household consumption spending is likely to have played the decisive role, accounting for an estimated 50–60% of overall growth. Investment came next, picking up markedly toward the end of the year, followed by public spending.

What comes next for growth?

The fourth-quarter 2025 GDP reading confirms that the economy is on a fast-growth trajectory. In 2026, GDP growth could exceed 4%. Alongside robust consumption, this could be reinforced by a further revival in investment and an improvement in conditions on Poland’s main export markets – Germany above all.

And then what? That question will be asked ever more often. Poland is currently growing at one of the fastest rates in Europe, and decisively the fastest among the continent’s large economies. Over the past 15 years, its average growth rate has been around two percentage points higher than that of the EU as a whole. In 2026–27, this pattern is likely to persist.

Poland also remains one of the world’s most resilient economies. Since 1995, it has not experienced a single major downturn. It weathered the pandemic relatively smoothly and proved equally resilient to the inflation shock triggered by the war.

There are plenty of reasons for satisfaction. Yet sustaining such a rapid pace of growth in the years ahead may prove more challenging. Headwinds include adverse demographics, rising trade protectionism, geopolitical tensions, and the gradual exhaustion of the catch-up dividend. That said, seven or ten years ago there was no shortage of arguments predicting a slowdown – and the Polish economy navigated them with little difficulty. One can only hope this time will be no different.