ul. Dywizjonu AK "Jeleń" 7B/U4, WarszawaLegal basis
Act on Foreigners
chapter rebuilt on 1 June 2025
Salary threshold 2026
PLN 13 355.34
gross per month, applications filed in 2026
Minimum contract
6 months
reduced from 12 on 1 June 2025
Permit validity
Contract + 3 months
capped at three years
Official fees
PLN 440 + 100
stamp duty plus card issuance
How to file
MOS only
electronic filing since 27 April 2026
In this guide
What the Blue Card is
Formally it is a temporary residence permit for the purpose of performing work in a profession requiring high qualifications – a species of temporary residence permit, governed by the Act on Foreigners. Informally everyone calls it the Blue Card, because the residence card carries the annotation „Niebieska Karta UE”.
It is not a work permit and it is not a visa. It is a single document that gives you both the right to live in Poland and the right to work here in a highly qualified occupation – which is why it sits alongside, rather than on top of, a work permit.
What distinguishes it from an ordinary temporary residence and work permit is the package of rights that comes with it: freedom to change employer without touching the permit, the ability to move to another Member State under the Directive's mobility rules, a favourable route to EU long-term residence, and family members who are not made to satisfy the usual income and accommodation tests.
The Blue Card suits you if
- You have a degree, or substantial experience in a listed ICT occupation
- Your gross salary is at or above 150% of the national average
- You expect to change employers, or to work elsewhere in the EU
- You are building towards long-term residence in Europe, not only in Poland
Look elsewhere if
- Your salary is below the threshold – there is no discretion here
- Your contract runs for less than six months
- You are being posted to Poland by an employer established in the EU
- You are moving within a corporate group – see the ICT permit
What the 2025 reform changed
Directive (EU) 2021/1883 replaced the original 2009 Blue Card Directive across the European Union. Poland was required to transpose it by 18 November 2023 and did not: the implementing statute, the Act of 24 April 2025 amending the Act on Foreigners (Journal of Laws 2025, item 619), entered into force on 1 June 2025, roughly eighteen months late.
Here is what moved, and what it means for an application filed today.
| Issue | Until 31 May 2025 | From 1 June 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract | 12 months | 6 months |
| Changing employer | Permit amendment required during the first two years | No amendment, no consent. Notification within 15 working days |
| What the decision says | Named the employer, position, salary and working time | Names only the validity period |
| Experience instead of a degree | 5 years, any occupation | 3 years within the last 7 for listed ICT occupations; 5 years otherwise |
| Long-term EU mobility | No dedicated Polish permit | New permit, 30-day decision deadline |
| How you file | Paper, at the voivodeship office | MOS only, from 27 April 2026 |
If you hold a Blue Card issued before June 2025, the new rules on changing employer apply to you too – the permit is no longer tied to the employer named in your old decision. This is one of the few immigration reforms that improved the position of people who already held the permit, and a good many holders still do not know about it.
Qualifications: a degree, or the right kind of experience
The Act requires higher professional qualifications, and defines those as qualifications obtained by completing higher studies or qualifications acquired through professional experience. The second limb is not new – Polish law accepted five years of experience before the recast – but the recast added a shorter route, and confined it to particular occupations.
| Route | What is required |
|---|---|
| Higher studies | Completion of a programme of higher education. A foreign diploma may need recognition or a statement of equivalence, particularly where the profession is regulated in Poland. |
| 3 years’ experience | Three years of experience at a level comparable to higher education, gained within the seven years preceding the application – but only in an occupation on the ministerial list. |
| 5 years’ experience | Five years of comparable experience, for occupations not on the list. No seven-year window is imposed here. |
The ministerial list, and what is on it
The three-year route works only for occupations named in an announcement of the Minister of the Interior and Administration: the obwieszczenie of 3 June 2025 (Official Gazette „Monitor Polski” 2025, item 549). It is built from the Polish occupational classification and mirrors Annex I to the Directive, and it is narrower than people assume – it is an ICT list, not a general one.
Occupational groups covered
133 – information and communications technology service managers.
251 – software and applications developers and analysts.
252 – database and network professionals.
In practice this captures most of the roles an IT company would recruit for – including work on artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud, the internet of things and cybersecurity. It does not capture engineering, finance, medicine or management outside ICT. For those, the five-year route applies.
Experience has to be evidenced, not asserted. A CV is not proof. Expect to produce employment certificates, contracts, references on company letterhead with dates and duties, and where the work was done remotely for a foreign employer, evidence that it was genuinely performed. Voivodeship offices assess this strictly, and a thin evidential file is one of the more common reasons a well-qualified applicant is refused.
The salary threshold
This is the condition that decides most cases, and the one most often miscalculated. The Act requires that the annual gross remuneration under the contract be at least 150% of the average wage in the national economy in the year preceding the year the application is filed.
The base figure comes from an annual komunikat of the President of Statistics Poland, published each February. For 2025 the average wage was PLN 8,903.56 (komunikat of 9 February 2026, Monitor Polski 2026, item 192), which fixes the threshold for applications filed during 2026.
| Application filed in | Average wage used | Minimum gross salary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | PLN 8,903.56 (for 2025) | PLN 13,355.34 / month PLN 160,264.08 per year |
| 2025 | PLN 8,181.72 (for 2024) | PLN 12,272.58 / month |
Three traps worth naming.
The threshold follows the filing year, not the contract year. A contract signed in December 2025 that is the basis of an application filed in January 2026 must meet the 2026 figure.
It is gross, and it is what the contract provides. Discretionary bonuses that the employer may or may not pay are not counted on. If the salary is close to the line, put the compliant figure in the contract rather than relying on variable elements.
It is not a monthly test applied in isolation. The statute speaks of annual remuneration; a part-year contract is assessed by reference to that annualised level. Where the contract is for six months, the salary still has to be at the 150% rate.
The contract and the occupation
The Act requires a contract concluded for at least six months. The form is not limited to employment: the provision names a contract of employment, a contract for outwork, a civil-law contract under which the foreigner performs work or provides services, and a service relationship.
A word of realism about civil-law contracts. The statute admits them, but voivodeship practice varies in how readily it accepts an arrangement that looks like business-to-business contracting with a self-employed foreigner rather than the provision of services to an employer. If your arrangement is structured that way, it is worth taking advice before filing rather than after a refusal.
The occupation itself must be one requiring high qualifications, and since 1 June 2025 there is a further filter: the permit is refused where the occupation appears on a list of occupations drawn up by the starosta under the Act of 20 March 2025 on the conditions for entrusting work to foreigners – a local labour-market protection list, approved by the voivode and published by the labour ministry. It replaced the old labour market test with something blunter, and it is checked as at the date the application is filed.
The Act also empowers the government to set annual numerical limits on Blue Cards by regulation, and exhaustion of such a limit is itself a ground for refusal. Check whether any limit is in force at the time you file; the power exists whether or not it is currently being exercised.
How long the permit lasts
The rule is compact: the permit is granted for a period three months longer than the period of work, and in any event no longer than three years.
The extra three months are deliberate. They are there so that the end of a contract does not immediately end your right to be in Poland, giving you a window to find new work – which, since the permit is no longer tied to an employer, you are free to do.
Contract of 6 months
Permit of 9 months
Contract of 2 years
Permit of 2 years 3 months
Contract of 5 years
Permit of 3 years (capped)
Changing employer – the change that matters most
Under the old law the Blue Card decision named your employer, your position, your salary and your working time, and for the first two years you could not change employer without applying to amend the permit. That regime is gone.
The decision now states only the period of validity, together with the fact that the holder may work in an occupation requiring high qualifications for remuneration not below the threshold. Your permit does not name a company. You may change employer freely, from the first day, without the voivode's consent and without amending anything.
What you must still do
Notify the voivode in writing, within 15 working days. The duty runs for the whole life of the permit, not just an initial period, and it covers three events: losing your work, changing the entity that provides your work, and ceasing to meet any condition for the permit.
Fifteen working days, not fifteen days. Weekends and public holidays do not count, which makes the real deadline longer than it looks – and easy to misjudge in the other direction if you count calendar days and assume you are already late. Failure to notify is a ground for withdrawal of the permit – so the notification is not an administrative courtesy, it is the thing that keeps the permit alive.
Two conditions continue to bind you even though the decision is silent about them. The new work must still be in an occupation requiring high qualifications, and the salary must still be at or above the threshold current for your situation. Moving to a lower-paid role does not require anyone's permission, but it does mean you have ceased to meet a condition of the permit – which is precisely the third event you are required to report.
If you lose your job
Losing work does not automatically cost you the permit. The Act gives a tolerated period of unemployment, and its length depends on how long you have held the card.
Permit held under 2 years
3 months
of unemployment tolerated before withdrawal becomes possible
Permit held 2 years or more
6 months
the longer allowance recognises settled residence
The clock and the paperwork run together: the loss of work must be notified within 15 working days, and the tolerated period is measured from when the work ended. Do not treat the notification as something to do once you have found the next role – a late notification is itself a withdrawal ground, quite apart from the length of the gap.
Your family
Family members apply for a residence permit for the purpose of family reunification, in which the Blue Card holder is a qualifying sponsor. What makes the Blue Card route materially easier is this: for family members of a Blue Card holder or of a long-term-mobility permit holder, the requirements of stable and regular income and of secured accommodation do not apply, where the family was already formed in the Member State that issued the residence document.
Health insurance is still required. And family members of Blue Card holders have access to the Polish labour market – this is what the Directive requires and it is the settled position in practice, though the domestic provision now sits in the framework created by the Act of 20 March 2025 rather than in the old employment act.
Moving within the European Union
This is the feature that separates the Blue Card from every other Polish work-related permit, and the recast Directive strengthened it considerably. There are two regimes.
Short-term mobility – up to 90 days
A person holding a residence document annotated „EU Blue Card” (or „Former EU Blue Card holder”) issued by another Member State may come to Poland to pursue professional activity for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. No Polish permit is needed, and no notification to the voivode. Where entry is from a Member State outside the Schengen area, the Act requires additional evidence at the border that the entry and stay serve that professional activity.
Long-term mobility – the new Polish permit
For stays beyond 90 days, the Act creates a dedicated temporary residence permit for long-term mobility of an EU Blue Card holder. The conditions echo the main permit, with a residence qualification added:
- A contract of at least six months in an occupation requiring high qualifications
- The qualifications themselves – with formal evidence where the profession is regulated in Poland
- A valid EU Blue Card issued by another Member State, plus 12 months’ residence there – reduced to 6 months if you are already exercising long-term mobility in that State
- Health insurance
- Remuneration meeting the same 150% threshold
A faster deadline. The voivode has 30 days to decide a long-term mobility application, and 60 days on appeal – against the 60 and 90 days that apply to an ordinary Blue Card.
Some voivodeship offices state that a long-term mobility applicant may begin work immediately on filing, which is what the Directive contemplates. The Polish provision underpinning that is not easy to identify, so if your plan depends on working from the day of filing rather than from the decision, confirm the position with the office handling your case before you rely on it.
Leaving Poland for another Member State
Entry and work in the receiving State are governed by that State's law. Poland's own requirement is this: if you begin long-term mobility in another Member State, notify the voivode who granted your permit, in writing, within 15 working days, identifying the State. Short-term mobility out of Poland needs no notification.
The route to EU long-term residence
For most foreigners the EU long-term residence permit requires five years of continuous residence in Poland. Blue Card holders get a materially better deal, and it is the strongest long-term argument for choosing this permit.
Residence can be cumulated across Member States
The Act allows legal and uninterrupted residence anywhere in the EU as a Blue Card holder to count towards the five years – provided that at least the two years immediately preceding the application were spent in Poland on a Blue Card or a long-term mobility permit. Three years in Berlin and two in Warsaw can therefore add up.
A shorter income history
The Act shortens the period over which the income condition must be demonstrated to two years rather than three. A smaller point than the cumulation rule, but it removes a common evidential obstacle for people who moved to Poland mid-career.
The procedure in 2026
Since 27 April 2026 residence applications in Poland are filed electronically through the MOS system – the moduł obsługi spraw at mos.cudzoziemcy.gov.pl. The basis is a new Division VIa of the Act on Foreigners, introduced by the Act of 21 November 2025 (Journal of Laws 2025, item 1794) and brought into force by an announcement of the Minister of the Interior and Administration of 10 April 2026 (Monitor Polski 2026, item 370).
A paper application is left without examination. Not refused – left unexamined, which means it is treated as though it had never been filed, with everything that implies for the legality of your stay. A narrow set of exceptions survives for certain applicants outside Poland; if you think you fall within one, check it before posting anything.
- Set up access. You need a trusted profile (profil zaufany) or another means of identification accepted by login.gov.pl, and a MOS account.
- Complete the application in MOS and attach the evidence – contract, qualifications, insurance, passport.
- The employer signs the annex. The entity providing the work completes and signs Annex 1 electronically. Build time for this into your planning; it is the step most often delayed by someone else's diary.
- Submit and keep the confirmation. You receive an official confirmation of receipt (UPO). Your stay is legal from filing until the decision becomes final – but note that legal stay and legal work are different questions, and for an ordinary Blue Card application there is no rule that lets you start work merely because an application is pending.
- Attend in person when summoned. Fingerprints, a specimen signature and document verification still happen at the office. Where the voivode calls on you to correct formal defects or appear, the deadline is short – commonly 14 days – and missing it means the application is left unexamined.
- Decision. The statutory deadline is 60 days for an ordinary Blue Card, running from the last of the events listed in ust. 2 – a complete application, the documents, and your personal appearance. Appeal proceedings have 90 days. For long-term mobility it is 30 and 60 days.
What actually happens. The statutory 60 days and the real waiting time are different numbers. In the busier voivodeships four to six months is common, and longer is not unusual. The remedy for excessive delay is a ponaglenie under the Code of Administrative Procedure to the Head of the Office for Foreigners, followed if necessary by a complaint to the administrative court. What shortens the wait far more reliably is filing a complete file in the first place.
Fees
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Stamp duty on the application | PLN 440 |
| Issue of the residence card | PLN 100 |
The stamp duty is not returned if the permit is refused or the proceedings are discontinued. It is returned only where the application is left without examination.
Refusal, withdrawal and what you can do
The Act separates three things, and they have different consequences.
Refusal to initiate proceedings
The proceedings never start. This applies where, at the date of filing, you already hold or are seeking certain other permits, are a posted worker of an employer established in the EU, are present on a tourist or visitor visa (including another State's Schengen visa), or hold tolerated stay, humanitarian stay or protection.
Refusal of the permit
The proceedings run and end badly. Beyond failing the conditions, the specific grounds include exhaustion of any annual limit set by regulation, and a set of defects on the employer's side.
Withdrawal of the permit
The permit you hold is taken away: where you are not actually performing highly qualified work, where a refusal ground arises, where you breach the notification duties, or where unemployment exceeds the tolerated period.
The employer-side grounds catch applicants out. The permit is refused where the entity providing the work was set up mainly to facilitate the entry of foreigners; where it is managed or controlled by a person convicted of repeated offences under the Act of 20 March 2025, of offences against employee rights under the Criminal Code, or of offences under the Act of 15 June 2012 on illegal employment; where social insurance contributions or taxes are unpaid; or where the entity is not genuinely conducting business or is in bankruptcy.
Nothing about that is within your control as the applicant, which is why it is worth establishing before you sign a contract, rather than four months into a doomed application.
An appeal against a refusal goes to the Head of the Office for Foreigners within 14 days of service. A further complaint lies to the voivodeship administrative court within 30 days of service of the appeal decision. Both are short deadlines, and both start running from service rather than from the date on the decision.
The most common mistakes
1. Using last year's salary threshold. The figure changes every February and applies by reference to the year of filing. An application filed in January against December's number fails on its face.
2. Missing the 15-working-day notification. Particularly after a change of employer, where people assume that because no permission is needed, nothing needs to be done. Non-notification is a withdrawal ground.
3. Assuming experience counts because the work was in IT. The three-year route is limited to the occupations in the ministerial list. Outside it the requirement is five years, and the distinction is decided by the occupational classification, not by the name of the employer's industry.
4. Starting work because an application has been filed. Filing makes your stay legal. For an ordinary Blue Card it does not by itself make your work legal.
5. Filing on paper. Since 27 April 2026 that means the application is left unexamined.
6. Overlooking the starosta’s list. If the occupation sits on the local list under the Act of 20 March 2025, refusal is mandatory – whatever your qualifications and salary. The list is checked as at the date of filing, so check it before, not after.
How our lawyers help
We act for both sides of this permit – for the specialists applying and for the companies recruiting them – which means we see where the two sets of expectations fail to meet.
Before you apply
- Assessing whether the Blue Card or a standard residence and work permit is the better instrument
- Checking the occupation against the ministerial list and the starosta's list
- Reviewing the contract before signature, so the salary and term do not defeat the application
- Building the evidence of qualifications or experience
During and after
- Filing and running the case in MOS, and correspondence with the voivode
- Ponaglenia where the office exceeds its deadline, and court complaints where that fails
- Appeals against refusal and against withdrawal
- Notifications to the voivode, family reunification, and the move to long-term residence
Frequently asked questions
Can I really change employer without asking anyone?+
Yes, since 1 June 2025. The decision no longer names an employer, so there is nothing to amend and no consent to obtain. Two things still bind you: the new work must be in an occupation requiring high qualifications and the salary must meet the threshold, and you must notify the voivode in writing within 15 working days. The freedom is real; the notification is not optional.
I work in IT but I have no degree. Do I qualify?+
Possibly, and the route is better than it was. If your occupation falls within groups 133, 251 or 252 of the ministerial list, three years of experience at a level comparable to higher education, gained within the last seven years, is enough. If it does not, you need five years. The decisive question is which occupational group your role actually sits in – not whether your employer describes itself as a technology company.
My salary is just below the threshold. Is there any flexibility?+
None. The threshold is a statutory condition, not a guideline, and the voivode has no discretion to go below it. If the gap is small, the practical answer is usually to renegotiate the contractual salary before filing rather than to hope. If that is not possible, a temporary residence and work permit is the realistic alternative – it has no such threshold, though it also has none of the Blue Card's advantages.
Can I start work as soon as I file the application?+
Filing makes your stay legal until the decision is final. It does not, by itself, make your work legal. For an ordinary Blue Card application you need an independent legal basis to work in the meantime – an existing permit, or an exemption. This is one of the most frequent and most expensive misunderstandings we see, because working without a basis affects both you and the company that engaged you.
I hold a Blue Card from Germany. Can I work in Poland?+
For up to 90 days in any 180-day period, yes – short-term mobility, with no Polish permit and no notification. Beyond that you need the long-term mobility permit, which requires a contract of at least six months, your German Blue Card, and twelve months’ residence in Germany (six if you are already exercising long-term mobility there). That application must be decided within 30 days.
Does time on a Blue Card count towards permanent residence?+
It counts towards the EU long-term residence permit, and on favourable terms: residence as a Blue Card holder in other Member States can be cumulated, provided the last two years were in Poland. Permanent residence in the Polish sense is a different permit with its own grounds – usually Polish descent, a Polish spouse or refugee status – and the Blue Card does not open it.
Can my spouse work in Poland?+
Family members join you through family reunification and have access to the labour market. The Blue Card also removes two conditions that make family reunification difficult for everyone else: the stable income and secured accommodation requirements do not apply to your family members, where the family was already formed in the Member State that issued the residence document. Health insurance is still required.
How long does it really take?+
The statutory deadline is 60 days from the last of a complete application, the documents and your personal appearance. The honest answer is that in busy voivodeships four to six months is common. The two things that shorten it are a complete file at the outset and prompt responses to any call for corrections; the remedy when the office simply runs over is a ponaglenie to the Head of the Office for Foreigners.
I already hold a Blue Card issued in 2023. Which rules apply to me?+
The current ones. Your decision may still recite an employer and a position, because that is what decisions looked like when it was issued, but the law that governs your permit today is the law as amended on 1 June 2025. In practice that means you may change employer without amending the permit – while the notification duty applies to you in full.
Your attorney
Konrad Krasuski – Attorney at law
KRASUSKI Legal advises foreigners and employers on Polish immigration law: residence permits of every kind, work authorisation, appeals after a refusal, administrative court proceedings and Polish citizenship. If you are recruiting specialists into Poland, or moving here yourself under the Blue Card, we can tell you early whether the route works – which is considerably cheaper than finding out in month five.
Warsaw: +48 502 115 589 Wrocław: +48 71 719 59 08
Mobile: +48 736 860 916 office@krasuski.legal
Legal status as of September 2026. This article is general information and does not constitute legal advice for an individual case.
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