Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

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 digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, included in a postal a ...

s 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 purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

), 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 letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional ser ...

, 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, * 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'', Goral Dialect: ''Miasto'') 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 Gorce Mounta ...

(3 – postal district of

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

, 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 Poczta Polska ( lit. ''Polish Post'') is the state postal administration of Poland, initially founded in 1558. It is the largest mail-handling company in the country, which additionally provides courier, banking, insurance and logistics serv ...

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

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

*1 -

Olsztyn Olsztyn ( , ; german: Allenstein ; Old Prussian: ''Alnāsteini'' * Latin: ''Allenstenium'', ''Holstin'') is a city on the Łyna River in northern Poland. It is the capital of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, and is a city with county rights. ...

*2 - Lublin *3 -

*4 - Katowice *5 -

Wrocław Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...

*6 -

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

*7 - Szczecin *8 - Gdańsk *9 -

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...

Special codes

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

Telewizja Polska Telewizja Polska S.A. (; "Polish Television"; TVP), also known in English as the public Polish Television is a Polish state media corporation. It is the largest Polish television network, although viewership has been declining in the 2010s. Sinc ...

, 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