2025 Polish presidential election

Presidential elections were held in Poland on 18 May 2025. As no candidate received a majority of the vote, a second round was held on 1 June 2025. Incumbent president Andrzej Duda was ineligible for re-election to a third term. The second round was won by conservative Institute of National Remembrance director Karol Nawrocki, with 50.89% of the vote, who was backed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party. Nawrocki defeated the progressive-liberal Mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, who received 49.11% of the vote, nominated for the second time by the Civic Coalition (KO). It was the third consecutive victory for a candidate supported by Law and Justice in the presidential elections. In the first round, Trzaskowski narrowly came first with 31.4% of the vote, while the right-wing candidates, Nawrocki, Sławomir Mentzen (Confederation) and Grzegorz Braun (KKP) overperformed polls, winning 29.5%, 14.8% and 6.3% respectively, coming in second, third and fourth. Other candidates of the ruling coalition underperformed and fell below expectations; the centre-right candidate Szymon Hołownia (PL2050) received 4.99% of the vote while the left-wing candidates together secured 10.2%, with coalition candidate Magdalena Biejat (The Left) coming below opposition Adrian Zandberg (Razem). Nawrocki ran on a nationalist and socially conservative platform, focusing his campaign against the incumbent government. Nawrocki's platform called for significant government intervention in the economy, close ties between the Catholic Church and the Polish government, opposition to the European Green Deal and economic regulations, the maintenance of Poland's restrictive abortion laws, also being in opposition to legalization of same-sex marriage or civil unions. Trzaskowski supported moderate economic liberalization, social liberalism, ecological regulations, European integration, the broad legalization of abortion, the introduction of same-sex civil unions, and a greater role for the local governments of voivodeships. They also differed on their foreign policy approach, with Trzaskowski supporting the further strengthening of relations with the European Union and approving Ukraine's membership in NATO, and Nawrocki opposing Ukraine's accession to NATO and being against the strengthening of relations with the EU, instead supporting stronger cooperation with the United States. Both, however, supported continuing military support to Ukraine. Observers noted that a victory for Nawrocki would hurt Donald Tusk's government, due the governing coalition not having votes in the Sejm to overrule a presidential veto. The election result continued the trend of tighter electoral margins over the last 25 years, becoming the closest in Polish history, and the streak of Law and Justice aligned presidential candidates winning presidential elections, losing only one out of five since its founding in 2001. The first-round results indicated a notable shift in political momentum for anti-establishment parties, with the Confederation Liberty and Independence (Mentzen), Confederation of the Polish Crown (Braun) and Razem (Zandberg) having their best results in history. Exit polls indicated that both candidates won nearly 50% of each age demographic, a change from older voters voting for the Law and Justice candidate and younger voters voting for Trzaskowski in the prior election. Anti-establishment parties gained the most of the youth vote; the far-right Sławomir Mentzen performed best among the youngest generation of Polish voters, with left-wing Adrian Zandberg coming second. The election saw the largest number of candidates since the 1995 presidential election, with 13 candidates running for president.