Poland

Last update: July, 2026

The 1996 Law on Museums stipulates that free admission to the public must be guaranteed one day per week and that reduced tickets must also be made available (the amount to be determined by the museum directors). Museums have developed cultural education programmes for children and youth. A similar educational obligation is in the remit of public theatres, as one of their statutory aims, although it is rarely implemented.

Cultural centres also play a very special role in promoting participation in cultural life. First of all, they provide facilities for amateur art activities and help to organise various events. There is also formal co-operation between schools and the cultural centres as part of a cultural education programme.

The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage runs the Accessible Culture programme. The programme supports activities aimed at reducing barriers to participation in culture, including spatial, economic, digital and competence-related barriers, with particular attention to people with disabilities, seniors and residents of smaller towns and rural areas.

The Ministry also implements programmes related to digital culture and digitisation. These programmes support digitisation, online access to cultural resources, media education and the development of digital competences in cultural institutions and among audiences. Recent cultural policy increasingly emphasises accessibility, digital participation and the impact of artificial intelligence and new technologies on cultural education and participation.

Last update: July, 2026

According to recent research led by prof. M. Krajewski in 2024 cultural participation in Poland is undergoing a clear transformation. Poles are increasingly moving away from the traditional model of culture based mainly on visits to institutions such as theatres, museums, galleries or philharmonic halls. Instead, culture is more often experienced at home, online and through everyday practices. Listening to music, watching films and series, using streaming platforms, following social media or sharing content on the internet have become important forms of cultural activity. 

Recent research points out that culture is now strongly connected with digital technologies and everyday life. It is often consumed individually, through smartphones, computers and headphones, and adapted to personal interests and routines. As a result, cultural practices are becoming more private, fragmented and personalised. This also means that the communal role of culture is weaker than in the past, because people less often experience it together in public spaces.   

An important conclusion is that traditional ways of measuring cultural activity, based mainly on attendance in cultural institutions, are no longer sufficient. They do not fully show how people actually engage with culture today. Contemporary cultural participation should therefore be understood more broadly, as a set of everyday, digital, private and social practices that go beyond the old division between “high” and “popular” culture. 

The data on cultural participation in Poland is collected annually by the Centre for Public Opinion Research. The 2018 survey was carried out in January 2019 on a representative sample of 928 adult citizens of Poland. The 2025 survey was conducted in January 2026 on a representative named sample of 938 adult.

According to the Centre for Public Opinion Research, cultural participation in Poland increased between 2016 and 2018. In 2018, 56% of respondents declared that they had gone to the cinema, 44% had attended a concert, 34% had visited an exhibition or museum, and 24% had attended a theatre performance.

More recent data from 2025 indicate some changes in participation patterns. Cinema attendance slightly decreased to 53%, while participation in exhibitions and museums increased to 38%, and theatre attendance rose to 28%. Concert attendance remained stable at 44%. At the same time, the share of respondents reading books for pleasure decreased from 67% to 64%, and attendance at sports events fell from 43% to 37%.

Table 4:     Share of respondents who participated at least once in a particular cultural activity, 2018 and 2025

Last update: July, 2026

Table 5:          Household expenditure on culture in PLN and in EUR, 2025

*calculation based on EUR exchange rate by NBP (National Bank of Poland) for 2024. 1 EUR = 4.3065 PLN
Sources: National Statistc Office, Uczestnictwo ludnosci w kulturze w 2024 r.

Household expenditure on culture in 2025 amounted to 111.76 EUR per month on average. The largest share of spending was allocated to other cultural, recreational and sports-related services and activities, which accounted for 43.14 EUR, or 38.6% of total expenditure. A significant proportion was also spent on radio and television licence fees as well as cable television subscriptions, representing 30.62 EUR and 27.4% of total cultural expenditure.

Expenditure related directly to participation in cultural events, such as theatre, music hall and cinema entry fees, reached 10.95 EUR, accounting for 9.8% of total spending. Households spent 13.52 EUR on the purchase of audio and video equipment, while spending on books and other publications amounted to 5.70 EUR. Newspapers and periodicals represented 4.69 EUR of monthly expenditure.

The smallest categories of expenditure were purchases of photographic and film equipment and related services at 1.90 EUR, as well as sound and image recording media at 1.23 EUR, together accounting for less than 3% of total expenditure

Last update: July, 2026

Folk culture

Folklore preservation, including traditional arts, is associated mostly with rural areas. In many villages the tradition of regional arts is cultivated and more often operates as a local tourist attraction.

The protection, development and promotion of Polish folk culture are also the main aims of the "Cepelia" Polish Art and Craft Foundation operating since 1984. In particular, it supports research in the field of art, handicrafts and ethnography; arranges exhibitions, shows, concerts, lectures, conferences; establishes, maintains and supports the activities of the exhibition centres, art galleries and outlets selling works of art and handicraft products; supports the publishing of books, magazines, brochures, etc.; and promotes Polish culture and art abroad.

Folklore in its many forms (from arts and crafts to music and dance) is slowly gaining the interest of younger generations. It is no longer perceived as boring and unoriginal. Initiatives to popularise and re-new folk culture are becoming more common. Numerous design and music events using traditional folk patterns, instruments, tools, etc. in a modern way are gaining a wider audience every year.

Folk dance

The biggest organisation in Poland active in the field of folk culture and connected with the activity of unprofessional folk groups is the Polish Section of the International Council of Folklore Associations, Festivals and Folk Art (CIOFF – Conseil International des Organisations de Festivals de Folklore et d'Art Traditionnels). Poland was one of the initiators of this organisation in 1970. It aims to protect folklore and folk art; foster international cooperation in the field of preservation and popularisation of folklore and folk art; and include the younger generation as much as possible in the implementation of these objectives.

There are two professional folk ensembles in Poland: "Mazowsze" Tadeusz Sygietyński State Folk Song and Dance Ensemble and "Śląsk" Song and Dance Ensemble. The former is in a very good financial situation and owns an extremely modern base, which was renovated with the assistance of EU Structural Funds several years ago. There are also many amateur folklore groups and student groups.

Folk music

Due to the engagement of local institutions, regional ensembles and ethnographers, traditional music is still present in rural areas. Folk music is increasingly an inspiration for modern musicians who play it in a traditional way or with jazz, rock or even techno arrangements. The festivals of folk music are becoming more and more popular. Since 1999, the Folk Artists Association in Lublin has conducted a national database entitled "Village artistic groups" including over 2 000 music ensembles, bands and theatre groups.

Cultural houses and community cultural clubs

Prior to 1989, cultural houses in Poland were leading institutions of the communist cultural politics. It was difficult to find their equivalent in democratic European countries. There were even problems with translating the term itself. No law defines cultural houses. The Act on Organising and Conducting Cultural Activity merely states that this is one of the possible forms of organising cultural activity, but does not indicate differences or gives a description. However, cultural houses run by state enterprises were dismantled in the free market economy environment because their costs were seen as unjustified.

Today, cultural houses and centres are creating a new image for themselves as a shelter for amateur art and various programmes aiming at broadening participation in cultural life, with a special focus put on those parts of the population which are "socially excluded". Together with libraries, they are often the only cultural institutions in the Polish suburbs. Their activities are undertaken in co-operation with and financed by local governments, mostly the municipalities and communes.

The extent to which cultural houses and community cultural clubs are financed by the the government and local administrations is presented in chapter 7.1.3.

An important programme has been launched by the National Centre for Culture. The Culture House + (Dom kultury +) aims at creating equal access to culture for the inhabitants of rural areas and improvement of participation in culture. The concept of the programme is to initiate the process of transformation of the existing culture houses into modern local culture centres. The programme consists of three priorities: Training, Development and Infrastructure. An important part of the programme is creating the Support Network – an interactive platform of cooperation and exchange for all culture houses. It aims at having development strategies created on the basis of socio-economic-cultural diagnosis of the given municipality or commune; actively animating the cultural life of local communities; creating possibilities for basic but universal cultural education, etc.