The 310-metre Varso Tower, completed four years ago as the European Union’s tallest building, rises above the Palace of Culture and Science, the 1950s monument associated with the country’s Soviet-dominated past. National income reached more than $1tn last year, while incomes rose from 40% of the EU average in the mid-1990s to 81% in the latest comparison.
The shift has also changed Poland’s relationship with emigration. After EU membership encouraged many Poles to seek higher earnings abroad, departures from the UK have outnumbered arrivals by roughly two to one in every year since 2021. Germany recorded more non-Germans moving to Poland than moving in the opposite direction in 2024, the first such result in its records.
Among the returnees are architects Jedrzej Kolesinski and Krzysztof Gornicki, who worked at Foster + Partners in London before returning to Warsaw. They helped design Varso Tower and are now working on Poland’s planned Centralny Port Komunikacyjny, a new airport and integrated rail-and-road hub.
Wages have risen sharply alongside the investment. The cost advantage is narrowing, however, and rising prices in Warsaw are making the capital less inexpensive: net salaries have increased 120% since 2016, a meal for two now costs more than in Tokyo, and cappuccino prices have doubled.
That has intensified the pressure to move beyond low-cost growth. Rafał Brzoska, founder of parcel-locker company InPost, argues that Poland’s next phase depends on productivity, technology, cheaper energy and better regulation, with more emphasis on advanced manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services. The country is also positioning itself as a regional technology centre through a $1bn public-private fund for startups and artificial-intelligence companies.
CD Projekt Red illustrates the change in ambition. The Warsaw games developer began in the 1990s importing American CD games and now competes internationally for programmers, designers and other specialists behind The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. Its co-chief executive Michał Nowakowski says younger Poles no longer view Western countries as an unreachable standard.
The gains have brought costs and political strain. Global investment has pushed up living expenses and inequality remains among Europe’s highest, while tensions between President Karol Nawrocki and Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government are sharpening ahead of a general election next year. Poland is simultaneously increasing defence and energy-security investment as Europe responds to Russian aggression and uncertainty over US engagement. The country’s economic progress is therefore entering a more demanding stage: wages and confidence are higher, but future gains increasingly depend on whether productivity can keep pace with rising costs.