It's day 120 of your wait. Your friend in Kraków says his decision arrived faster than he expected. Your cousin in Katowice says his case is still sitting there. You refresh the MOS page again, call the office, get a recording. Is your case stuck, or is this just how your region works? Poland TRC processing time in 2026 depends heavily on where you file, and the gap between voivodeships is bigger than most people think. Let's put real numbers on it, so you can tell a normal wait from a problem.
What does the law say about TRC processing time, and what actually happens?
On paper, the answer is short. For a temporary residence permit (the TRC, or karta pobytu in Polish), the voivode is supposed to decide within 60 days. That clock starts from the later of two moments: the day you filed, or the deadline the office gave you to fix missing documents. The office must give you at least 14 days for that. You can read the official procedure on gov.pl/web/cudzoziemcy.
In real life, 60 days is rarely what people experience. According to the pobyto.pl tracker, which compiles MSWiA and Sejm data and was last updated on 6 July 2026, completed temporary-residence cases averaged about 598 days, roughly 19.6 months. That is an average across all of Poland, and the spread between regions is huge. A few things to keep in mind when you read any such number: it measures time to the decision, not time to the plastic card, and it can climb when an office finally closes very old cases.
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Which voivodeship is fastest? The numbers, region by region
Here are the average days to a decision for temporary residence, as published by pobyto.pl on 6 July 2026. The first figure is the whole voivodeship, the second is the main city office.
- Małopolskie (Kraków): 249 days, city figure 242 days. The fastest of the four big regions we checked.
- Dolnośląskie (Wrocław): 329 days, city figure 303 days.
- Mazowieckie (Warsaw): 425 days, city figure 394 days.
- Śląskie (Katowice): 680 days, city figure 658 days. The slowest of the four, by a wide margin.
Look at what that means in practice. The same type of application takes about 8 months on average in Małopolskie and over 22 months in Śląskie. Same law, same 60-day rule on paper, very different reality.
What about Wielkopolskie (Poznań), Pomorskie (Gdańsk), Zachodniopomorskie (Szczecin) and the rest? We don't have a figure for them that we can stand behind, so we won't invent one. Check the current tracker numbers for your region and ask your own office what they are working through.
Why is the wait so different from one region to another?
The data tells us how long, not why. What we can say from experience is that offices differ in how many files they have to get through, and that a backlog from earlier years does not disappear overnight. We would not tell you the exact cause of Silesia's number, because nobody outside the office can prove it.
One more honest warning about the numbers. Older figures give a different picture. A 2024 comparison showed 145 days for Małopolskie and 485 days for Dolnośląskie, which looks nothing like today's 249 and 329. Different years and different methods are not comparable, so use the newest figure, and treat every average as a rough guide rather than a promise.
Also, the number depends on your type of case. If your permit is tied to a job, our post on what to do after a work permit is approved explains the sequence. The work permit itself is arranged by your employer, not by us. We take over at the residence card stage.
When your decision comes, how long until the plastic card is in your hand?
The decision is not the end. After it, the card has to be produced and handed over. The Mazowiecki voivodeship says that since 1 June 2025 it issues the card within 14 days of personalization at PWPW, down from 30 days. Other offices may work differently, so ask yours.
Money matters here too. The official fee tables of voivodeship offices show PLN 340 for a regular temporary residence permit and PLN 440 for a permit for stay and work or for work in a highly qualified profession. You pay the fee up front, and the proof of payment goes with the application. A missing proof of payment is exactly the sort of gap that can make your application come back to you, and that costs you months.
While you wait, you probably have questions about travel. Our guide on flying and returning with a pending residence application covers what the stamp in your passport does and does not allow.
When is a long wait a problem you should act on?
A wait longer than 60 days is common, but it is still a delay, and Polish law gives you tools to push back. There are two steps, and they come in order.
- Send a ponaglenie. This is a formal reminder under Article 37 of the Code of Administrative Procedure (KPA). You file it through the voivode's office, addressed to the higher authority. It is the required first step before anything else.
- If the delay continues, file a skarga na przewlekłość (a complaint about the length of proceedings) to the administrative court. You can only do this after you have filed the ponaglenie. Keep proof that you sent it, because courts have rejected complaints where that proof was missing.
- Pay the court fee. In 2025 and 2026 court orders, the fee requested for such a complaint was PLN 100, with seven days to pay or the complaint is thrown out. Check the current amount before you file.
We wrote a step-by-step guide for this in how to write a ponaglenie for a spouse's karta pobytu. The logic is the same for other types of cases.
Here is an illustrative example, not a real client. Ravi, a warehouse supervisor from India, filed in Katowice and waited well past the legal deadline. He kept a dated record of every contact with the office, sent a ponaglenie, and filed the complaint when the delay continued. A written record gave him something concrete to put in front of the authority and the court.
Practical tip: save the date you filed, your case number, the date of any request for missing documents, and the date you answered. The 60-day clock restarts from the later of filing or the deadline for fixing gaps, so these dates decide whether the office is actually late.
For official procedures and office contacts, use gov.pl/web/cudzoziemcy and your regional page on uw.gov.pl. Legal Solutions helps with residence cards, appeals and speeding up stuck cases. We do not obtain visas or work permits.
Your wait may be normal for your region, or it may be time to push. Either way, Legal Solutions — 98% approval rate. Drop us a WhatsApp at +48 735 248 525 (Kamil, English only) — we read every message.