Poland
2026

March, at Home, on the Blue Track

Poland spent the indoor season hosting it. The World Athletics Indoor Championships were held on 20–22 March 2026 at the Kujawsko-Pomorska Arena in Toruń, with 674 athletes from 118 federations — the second time the country has staged the event, after Sopot in 2014, on the same banked track that had already held the European Indoor Championships in 2021.

The host team finished ninth with four medals. Jakub Szymański won the 60 metres hurdles in 7.40 on the final day, ahead of Enrique Llopis (7.42) and Trey Cunningham (7.43) — the first world title of his career. It was not, as some coverage had it, Poland's first world indoor gold: Adam Kszczot won the 800 metres in Birmingham in 2018.

Natalia Bukowiecka took silver over 400 metres in 50.83, a national indoor record. Pia Skrzyszowska was third in the 60 hurdles in 7.73, also a national record. The mixed 4×400 relay added bronze in 3:17.44. Four medals, three of them from hurdles and one lap of the track — a shape worth remembering when the outdoor season came round.

Six Silvers in Birmingham

The European Championships ran from 10 to 16 August 2026 at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham. Poland entered 75 athletes and won eight medals: six silver, two bronze, and no gold. Italy topped the table with 22 medals and ten titles, ahead of the host nation and Germany.

The closest of the eight was the closest anyone came to anything all week. In the 100 metres hurdles on 11 August, Skrzyszowska and the Dutch defending champion Nadine Visser both stopped the clock on 12.67; the thousandths read 12.669 against 12.667. Two thousandths of a second, second place.

The rest: Ewa Swoboda two hundredths behind Amy Hunt in the 100 metres on the opening day; Szymański a bronze over the high hurdles; and then a Saturday that brought four medals in one afternoon and evening — Katarzyna Zdziebło in the marathon race walk, Bukowiecka over 400, Maria Żodzik in the high jump and the women's 4×100 relay. Klaudia Kazimierska closed the championships with silver in the 1500 on the Sunday.

Two of the silvers carry their own footnotes. Zdziebło walked 3:19:50 for a national record — faster than the world record of 3:24:19 she herself had set in October 2025 — and finished second anyway, because Sofia Fiorini went 3:15:11 and took the world record with her. And Bukowiecka arrived as the defending champion: in Rome in 2024 she had won this title in 48.98, breaking Irena Szewińska's national record from 1976. This time the Norwegian Henriette Jæger ran 49.04 and Poland was second in 50.04.

Seven of the eight medals were won by women. The relay squad that took bronze in 43.15 — Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, Skrzyszowska, Magdalena Stefanowicz and Swoboda — included the sprinter who refused to board a flight home from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, was granted Polish citizenship by presidential decree in June 2022 and became eligible to represent Poland in August 2023.

The Circle Nobody Filled — and the Kit

Here is the number that makes this season unusual for Poland: zero. Not one of the eight medals came out of a throwing circle, in the country that has built its athletics reputation on throwing.

Paweł Fajdek was fifth in the hammer with 79.13. Wojciech Nowicki, the reigning European champion, threw 74.49 and went out in qualification, thirteenth overall; the title went to Hungary's Bence Halász. Anita Włodarczyk was fourth in the women's hammer at 72.37. Dawid Wegner was fourth in the javelin with a season's best 82.96, Konrad Bukowiecki seventh in the shot, Damian Rodziak out in the discus qualification. Four fourth-or-fifth places and nothing to show.

The contrast with the year before sharpens it. At the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo, Poland sent 59 athletes and came home with one medal — Żodzik's high jump silver, twenty-seventh in the table — with Nowicki absent through injury. Twelve months later the same federation had eight medals and still no gold, and the medals had moved from the circle to the track.

From this season · in the archive4F Poland International Team Pro Elite 2026 Women Distance Singlet4F Poland women's distance singlet marked for 2026 — team issue from the season on this page, and the only Polish piece the archive has held.160,00 €View piece →

This page is a season still running: it closes with the European Championships of 10–16 August 2026 and will be extended when the year is. The national story behind it is in our history of athletics in Poland.