Short-term rental in Poland: rules and advice for owners

Today: an entry in the municipal record

Polish law already treats renting a flat by the night as a hotel-type service. The municipality keeps a record of other facilities providing hotel services (ewidencja innych obiektów), and a short-let flat should be entered there before guests arrive. The EU regulation on short-term rental data has applied since 20 May 2026, but Poland had not yet built the national register needed to issue numbers.

Tomorrow: CWTON and local bans

On 14 July 2026 the Council of Ministers adopted a bill creating a Central Register of Tourist Accommodation Facilities (CWTON), with a unique number to be displayed in every listing and fines of up to PLN 50,000 for missing registration. That version dropped municipal restriction zones, but on 3 September 2026 the government backed a revised package: city councils could ban short lets in chosen areas or limit them to a set number of days a year, and housing communities and cooperatives could vote to ban them in their buildings, leaving operators six months to stop. Parliament and the President still have to approve it, and full implementation is planned for 2028.

Twelve cities, one regime for now

Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Gdynia, Poznan, Lodz, Katowice, Szczecin, Lublin, Bydgoszcz and Bialystok all belong to the registration group: open, subject to the municipal record today and to CWTON once it exists. Demand differs sharply between them: Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw and the Tricity coast are the busiest, while Bydgoszcz and Bialystok are thin markets.

Taxes and guests

A private owner can generally opt for the flat-rate tax on recorded revenue at 8.5% or 12.5%, depending on the amount earned. Guests must be registered, and many municipalities charge a local visitor fee per night.

Practical advice

Enter the flat in the municipal record now and keep proof of it. Read your housing community's resolutions carefully: under the planned rules, a vote of your neighbours could weigh more than any city decision. Think twice before buying purely for short lets in a building where residents are already hostile. We study every request and tell you honestly whether and how we can help.