Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

postal code A postal code (also known locally in various English-speaking countries throughout the world as a postcode, post code, PIN or ZIP Code) is a series of letters or numerical digit, digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, inclu ...

s are used for assigning post to addresses. They were introduced in 1973. They are five-digit codes of two-then-three digits, with a hyphen between them. The first digit indicates one of the 10 large postal regions the country is divided into. These areas do not follow the administrative divisions. The second and third digits specify a particular smaller region (originally the number of a regional sorting office, there was one in every

county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

), and the last two are the number of a postal delivery branch. Clients receiving particularly large volumes of mail may have their own unique postal codes; the same goes for PO Box lobbies of the largest post offices. Postal codes are written in Poland before the city/town/locality name, e.g. 00-001 Warszawa. First digit in the postal code represents the postal district, second digit major geographical subdivision of this district, and the three digits after

dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

: the

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

, or in case of large cities: particular street, part of the street or even separate address (in the last case code is in the form of xy-9zz). Thus the postal code 70-952 means: * 7 – postal district of

Szczecin Szczecin ( , , ; ; ; or ) is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Poland-Germany border, German border, it is a major port, seaport, the la ...

, * 0 – subdivision of that district, in this case the Western Part of Szczecin, * 9 – denotes ''special'' code, and * 52 – Office of the District Attorney (''Prokuratura Okręgowa''). Similarly, the code for 70-470 denotes the odd numbers from 1 to 27 in the Wojska Polskiego Street in Szczecin, and 34-434 is a code for whole town of Dębno near

Nowy Targ Nowy Targ (Officially: ''Royal Free city of Nowy Targ'', Yiddish: ''Naymark'', Gorals, Goral dialect: ''Nowy Torg'' ) is a town in southern Poland, in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. It is located in the Orava-Nowy Targ Basin at the foot of the Go ...

(3 – postal district of

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

, 4 – subdivision of that district, 434 the town of Dębno – strictly speaking the post office in Dębno). Postal districts and their subdivisions are not related to the administrative division of Poland.

Main postal areas

The first digit of a Polish postal code specifies the large area (postal region) to which the address concerned belongs. The numbers run clockwise around the map of Poland, from Warsaw (0) in the central east of the country, through east, south, west and north and then back to Łódź (9), close to the geographical centre of Poland. Each region is operated by one of the

Poczta Polska The Polish Post (, ) is the state postal administration of Poland, initially founded in 1558. The company is headquartered in Warsaw and employs over 67,000 people. It is the largest mail-handling company in the country, which additionally prov ...

's regional divisions (''oddział regionalny''), located in the following cities: *0 -

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

*1 -

Olsztyn Olsztyn ( , ) is a city on the Łyna River in northern Poland. It is the capital of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, and is a city with powiat rights, city with county rights. The population of the city was estimated at 169,793 residents Olsz ...

*2 -

Lublin Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...

*3 -

*4 -

Katowice Katowice (, ) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Katowice urban area. As of 2021, Katowice has an official population of 286,960, and a resident population estimate of around 315,000. K ...

*5 -

Wrocław Wrocław is a city in southwestern Poland, and the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. It is the largest city and historical capital of the region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the Oder River in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Eu ...

*6 -

Poznań Poznań ( ) is a city on the Warta, River Warta in west Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business center and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John's ...

*7 -

*8 -

Gdańsk Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, Data for territorial unit 2261000. it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdań ...

*9 -

Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...

Special codes

Codes in the format N0-9NN, e.g. are reserved for bigger clients (e.g. "

Telewizja Polska Telewizja Polska S.A. (; TVP), also known in English as Polish Television, is a Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster in Poland, founded in 1952. It is the oldest and largest Polish television network. After 2015, when the right-wing po ...

, 00-999 Warszawa"), and internal postal use, (e.g. "60-900 Poznań 2" when addressing post office #2 in

). Such postal codes route the mail directly to the recipient, therefore a street address is not necessary. This is similar to the French CEDEX.

Postal codes used for more than one settlement

Unlike other European postal codes the place names related to the postal codes in Poland can be more than one. Postal code 62-262 are valid with 5 different place names: *62-262 Wierzyce *62-262 Przyborowo *62-262 Chwałkówko *62-262 Fałkowo *62-262 Imielno Other examples are: 09-135, 12-250, 16-424, 32-104, 55-300, 62-010, and 98-338.

References

External links

Map of Polish postal codesSearchable database of Polish postal codes
{{Europe in topic, Postal codes in, UK_only=yes

Postal system of Poland