Poland’s nationalists marched through Warsaw on Wednesday under the slogan “Polak w Polsce gospodarzem!” – “A Pole is the master in Poland!” (translated) – as the annual Independence March sets off, with organizers claiming up to half a million marchers.
President Karol Nawrocki took part “as every year” (translated), with Polexit and the fight over the Constitutional Tribunal overarching themes.
The march came four days after a gunman killed six people in Kraków’s Main Market Square. Prosecutors say they have not established his motive, though Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński described the killer’s views as ultra-nationalist, a label that, as we reported, has been challenged.
According to Statistics Poland (GUS) data published in July, Poland had around 2.3 million foreign residents at the end of 2025, almost 6% of the population, 73% of them Ukrainian. Foreigners now make up 14.5% of Warsaw’s population and 19.5% of Wrocław’s.
Most of them arrived under the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government, which ran Poland from 2015 to 2023. Poland issued more first residence permits to non-EU nationals than any other EU country for six years running, from 2017 to 2022, according to Eurostat, peaking at 967,345 in 2021: a third of the EU’s total and more than twice as many as any other member state. Some 82% of them were for work.
