Since the Act of 20 March 2025 came into force in June 2025, all legalisation procedures for employing foreign nationals in Poland run exclusively through the praca.gov.pl portal — applications, correspondence with the authorities, and delivery of decisions. There is no paper alternative.
The portal itself is straightforward. What catches employers is readiness: companies that start setting up access when a requirement arrives lose two weeks before anything is even filed.
What You Need Before You Can File
1. A praca.gov.pl account for the company, with the right person authorised to act for it.
2. An electronic identity. Filings must be signed either with a qualified electronic signature (podpis kwalifikowany) or through a trusted profile (profil zaufany). The qualified signature is obtained from a commercial certification provider; the trusted profile is the state's free alternative and is usually confirmed through online banking.
3. Authorisation for whoever files. If an agency or law firm files on your behalf, the power of attorney must be in place and the fee for it paid where applicable.
Set all three up before you have a vacancy. It costs nothing to have them waiting.
What the Application Carries
- Company identification and registration data
- The job offer: position, place of work, working time, salary
- The foreign national's identity and passport details
- Supporting documents the voivodeship office specifies for the role
Since the labour-market test was abolished, there is no starosta opinion to attach — one fewer document and one fewer delay.
Correspondence and Decisions
The authority communicates through the portal. This is a genuine change in behaviour: a request for additional documents arrives in your portal account, not by post, and the clock runs from when it is delivered there. Employers who do not check the account regularly discover a request weeks after it was made.
Assign a named person to monitor it, with a backup during holidays.
The Mistakes That Cost Time
- Setting up the account at the point of need. Two weeks lost before filing.
- Letting the signature certificate expire. A qualified signature has a validity period; renew before it lapses.
- Filing at the wrong voivodeship. Jurisdiction follows the workplace, not the company's registered seat. For multi-site employers this means several filings.
- Not monitoring the portal. Deadlines for supplementary documents are real and run from portal delivery.
- Incomplete candidate data. Passport details that do not match the document exactly will be queried.
What We Handle
For clients, we prepare the complete candidate dossier to the standard the voivodeship office expects — identity documents, qualifications, experience evidence — so the filing goes in complete. The employer retains the portal account and the signature; that part cannot be delegated away, only supported.
See the full permit walkthrough for where this sits in the sequence, and the new employment act guide for what else changed.
