List of Polish gminas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Since 1999, Poland has had a three-tier administrative division system. On the first level, Poland is divided into 16 voivodeships (województwa, sing. województwo). These are subdivided in 380 counties (powiaty, sing. powiat), and these counties contain 2,479 municipalities, known as gminas.[1]
The municipalities are grouped into four categories:
- 66 cities with county rights, which are among the largest cities in Poland, which, in addition to being a municipality are also a county on its own and also have duties of such.
- 302 urban municipalities, which usually contain a small-to-medium-sized city alone.
- 724 urban-rural gminas, which contain all the other towns not in any of the above categories as well as surrounding rural areas
- 1,453 rural gminas, which do not have any towns located on their territory.[2]
The status and the changes in borders of gminas are decided by the Council of Ministers.[3] While their creation and dissolution is also usually decided by it, in exceptional cases, the parliament might direct the organ to issue ordinances ordering dissolution (as it was the case with gmina Ostrowice).[4] These ordinances take effect on 1 January of the year following the year of publication of the ordinance.
Major changes to the framework (such as a restructuring of local administration or regulation of the duties and powers of the self-government) is only possible by law.
The current framework and regulation of powers and duties of the local self-government was adopted in 1998 and became effective on 1 January 1999, with special regulations concerning Warsaw came into existence in 2002.
History of municipalities
Poland has had a long history of having gminas as an administrative division. In Interwar Poland, gminas also were local self-governing entities. This system stayed after World War II until administrative reform in 1950.[1]
That year, a large overhaul of local administration was made. While the administrative divisions remained three-tier, gminas were substituted with almost 8,800 gromady, osiedla, and towns. The largest change, however, was that the local administrative units were stripped of their self-government and instead simply executed the will of higher administrative organs and, in practice, also of local party organs.[5][6]
Over time, over half of the gromadas were merged into larger entities, until the larger gminas were reinstated in 1973, decreasing the number of municipalities to 3,201. Further reductions brought the number down to below 2,900 by 1977. Meanwhile, Poland abolished counties completely and introduced a new, two-tier administrative division system, with 49 smaller voivodeships and gminas.[6] Ostensibly, the reforms of 1973 and 1975 were made in order to guide Poland through an accelerated period of growth; however, the real intent seemed to be an attempt to address what the government in Warsaw and party organs saw as excessive decentralisation.[6] As a result, Poland's local units lost all degrees of self-government.[5]
This was an immediate concern with the fall of communism, and in 1990, gminas were regranted some rights of self-government and autonomy.[3] Quickly, though, over 500 towns that previously had been separate municipalities were merged into urban-rural gminas.[4][7] The last major change happened with the return to the three-tier administrative division in 1999, when some county mergers were reversed and some of the largest cities became city with powiat rights. Since then, the vast majority of changes have been made with the Council of Ministry granting city-rights to smaller settlements that had previously lost theirs, even for settlements as small as 330 inhabitants.[8][9]
As of 1 January 2021, the number of gminas according to its type is the following:
| voivodeship | Lower
Silesian |
Kuyavian-Pomeranian | Lublin | Lubusz | Łódź | Lesser
Poland |
Mazo-vian | Opole | Subcar-pathian | Podla-chian | Pome-ranian | Sile-sian | Święto-krzyskie | Warmian-
Mazurian |
Greater
Poland |
West
Pomeranian |
Poland |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| urban | 35 | 17 | 20 | 9 | 18 | 14 | 35 | 3 | 16 | 13 | 22 | 49 | 5 | 16 | 19 | 11 | 302 |
| of which with
county rights |
4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 19 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 66 |
| urban-rural | 57 | 35 | 30 | 34 | 28 | 48 | 57 | 33 | 36 | 27 | 20 | 22 | 40 | 34 | 96 | 55 | 652 |
| rural | 77 | 92 | 163 | 39 | 131 | 120 | 222 | 35 | 108 | 78 | 81 | 96 | 57 | 66 | 111 | 47 | 1523 |
| TOTAL | 169 | 144 | 213 | 82 | 177 | 182 | 314 | 71 | 160 | 118 | 123 | 167 | 102 | 117 | 226 | 113 | 2477 |
List
The list contains 2,477 municipalities sorted by increasing TERYT (National Register of Territorial Land Apportionment Journal) code, which is not given in the table. It is roughly sorted alphabetically by voivodeships, powiats and then gminas (with urban gminas first) as they appear in Polish.
- The data for the local administrative units' names and their status (urban, rural-urban, rural) is given as of 1 January 2021.[10] The cities on county rights, for emphasis, have been given in bold.
- Population count is given as of 30 June 2025[11], with population density given as of 30 June 2020.
- Area, in km2, is given as of 1 January 2020[12]
- Average population increase is given in per milles (‰) and has been averaged per annum for 2023-2025[11].