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Guide · Citizenship

My Polish citizenship application is taking forever. What can I do?

Portrait of Natalia PrzewoźnikBy Natalia Przewoźnik, Trainee Attorney

Since August 2025 the voivode has six months to decide on an application to confirm Polish citizenship, yet many applicants wait much longer. Polish law gives you two ways to push the case forward, and you can use both from the United States.

Reading time about 6 minutesLast reviewed October 2026Applies to applications to confirm Polish citizenship

The voivode has six months from the day your application reaches the office to issue a decision (Act on Polish Citizenship, Article 10(3a)). Once that period runs out with no decision, you can file a ponaglenie, a formal complaint about delay, with the Minister of the Interior and Administration. If the case still does not move, you can take it to a Polish administrative court, but only after the ponaglenie: the court will not hear a complaint without one.

Ponaglenie

A formal complaint about delay, made in writing under Article 37 of the Code of Administrative Procedure. You ask the higher authority to find that the office handling your case has failed to act on time or is dragging the case out, and to order a decision by a set date.

How long should a citizenship confirmation take?

Confirmation is decided by a voivode, the central government's representative in one of Poland's regions. If you have never lived in Poland, your case goes to the voivode of the Mazowieckie region in Warsaw (Article 55(1)). Since August 1, 2025, the Act gives the voivode six months, counted from the day the application reaches the office. Before that, the general deadlines of the Code of Administrative Procedure applied: one month, or two in a complicated case.

If you file at a Polish consulate in the United States, the application is forwarded to the voivode (Article 57), and the six months start when it arrives in Warsaw. The day you handed it in at the consulate is not the starting point. Some periods are left out of the count entirely, for example delays caused by the applicant or by reasons outside the office's control (Code of Administrative Procedure, Article 35(5)).

Is a long wait normal?

Unfortunately, it is common. In a reply to the Polish Ombudsman dated November 14, 2025, the Ministry of the Interior reported that in 2024 it received 4,939 ponaglenia in recognition and confirmation cases from all over Poland. Of these, 4,787 concerned the Mazowieckie voivode, and the ministry found 3,614 of them justified. A 2023 inspection showed that the Warsaw office did not have enough staff for the number of cases it handles, confirmations included. The ministry also admitted that it keeps no data on average processing times.

What must the office do when it misses the deadline?

The office has to notify you. Under Article 36 of the Code of Administrative Procedure, each time the authority misses a deadline it must tell the applicant why, set a new date, and explain the right to file a ponaglenie. Getting a letter with a new date does not take that right away.

How does a ponaglenie work?

You address the ponaglenie to the Minister of the Interior and Administration, the authority above the voivode in these cases (Act on Polish Citizenship, Article 10(4)). You file it, however, through the voivode (Code of Administrative Procedure, Article 37(3)), and you have to give reasons. The voivode then has seven days to pass it on with its own position. The minister has seven days to decide.

If the minister finds the complaint justified, the order states whether the voivode failed to act or dragged the case out, and whether this was a flagrant breach of the law. It also obliges the voivode to decide by a set date and directs that the causes of the delay and the officials responsible be identified (Article 37(6)).

Example

In August 2026 the ministry, answering a question from a member of the Polish parliament, described a case in which the application reached the voivode on May 26, 2026. The deadline therefore ran until November 26, 2026. A ponaglenie filed before that date was left unexamined, because a complaint filed before the deadline expires is not considered at all (Article 37(3a)).

So count the six months carefully before you file. A ponaglenie sent too early gets you nothing.

When can you go to court?

Once you have filed the ponaglenie, you can bring a complaint about the authority's failure to act before the administrative court at any time (Law on Proceedings before Administrative Courts, Articles 52 and 53(2b)). The court fee for this kind of complaint is PLN 100.

The court can order the voivode to issue a decision within a set time and state whether the delay was a flagrant breach of the law. It can also fine the authority or award you a sum of money of up to half the maximum fine (Article 149). That maximum is ten times the average monthly salary in Poland for the previous year (Article 154(6)).

Key points

  • Since August 1, 2025, the voivode has six months from the day the application reaches the office.
  • If you filed at a consulate, the count starts when the application reaches the voivode, not on the day you filed it.
  • Once the deadline has passed, file a ponaglenie with the Minister of the Interior and Administration, through the voivode.
  • A ponaglenie filed before the deadline expires is not examined.
  • You can complain to the administrative court only after a ponaglenie.

Can you do all of this from the United States?

Yes. In administrative proceedings you can act through an attorney in Poland whom you appoint by a written power of attorney (Code of Administrative Procedure, Articles 32 and 33), and the same is true before the administrative court (Law on Proceedings before Administrative Courts, Articles 34 and 35). The stamp duty on a power of attorney is PLN 17. Your attorney can also receive the voivode's letters for you, which helps when deadlines are short.

How we help

We check when your application reached the voivode, work out when the deadline expires, and prepare and file the ponaglenie. If the case still stalls, we file the complaint with the administrative court under your power of attorney. You do not need to travel to Poland for any of it.

Sources

This article is based on the acts listed below. Each link opens the text published by the Polish government, checked on September 20, 2026. Acts in force open as a consolidated text; historical acts are marked as such, with the date they stopped applying.

This article is general information about Polish law and is not legal advice about your situation. Legal basis: the Act on Polish Citizenship of April 2, 2009 (consolidated text, Journal of Laws 2025 item 1611), Articles 10, 55 and 57; the Code of Administrative Procedure (consolidated text, Journal of Laws 2025 item 1691), Articles 32, 33, 35, 36 and 37; the Law on Proceedings before Administrative Courts (consolidated text, Journal of Laws 2026 item 143), Articles 3, 34, 35, 52, 53, 149 and 154; the Stamp Duty Act (consolidated text, Journal of Laws 2025 item 1154); the Regulation on court fees in administrative courts (consolidated text, Journal of Laws 2021 item 535). Figures on ponaglenia come from the Ministry of the Interior's reply to the Ombudsman of November 14, 2025. To find out how this applies to your case, describe your situation.

Next step

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Send us the date of your application and any letters you have received from the voivode. The initial inquiry costs nothing. Before any paid work begins, we will tell you whether we can help.

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