New companies in Poland in Q3 2026: fewer sole traders, more limited companies

Between July and September 2026 the Polish REGON register recorded 83,442 new business entities, 7,330 fewer (minus 8.1%) than in the same quarter of 2025. The decline is concentrated in one group: natural persons starting a sole proprietorship, down 9,712 (minus 13.6%). New limited liability companies moved the other way, up 2,074 (plus 16%). This is the picture from the monthly REGON tables published by Statistics Poland (GUS), summed by quarter and compared year on year. The bazy.biz warehouse adds the next layer: which activity codes the new businesses chose and how many of them can be reached with a public contact.

Key findings

• Fewer new businesses than a year ago. 83,442 registrations in Q3 2026 versus 90,772 in Q3 2025.
• Companies up, sole traders down. 61,729 new sole proprietorships (minus 13.6%) and 15,044 new limited liability companies (plus 16.0%). The share of limited companies among new entities with an activity code rose from 14.5% to 18.3%.
• Construction is still the largest source of new businesses and the largest loss. Section F produced 14,779 new entities, 18% of the total, and 1,565 fewer than a year earlier.
• Suspensions grow faster than the register. 863,700 entities had suspended activity at the end of September, 7.4% more than a year earlier, while the whole register grew 2.2%.
• Only a quarter of new businesses have a public contact. In the bazy.biz warehouse, 26.1% of entities founded in Q3 2026 have an e-mail, phone or website. Among new limited companies the share is 38.1%, among new sole traders 21.9%.

Registrations by legal form

Source: GUS, monthly information on entities in the REGON register, July to September 2025 and 2026, tables 5 to 7; bazy.biz calculation.

September alone shows the same direction more sharply: 21,369 new sole proprietorships against 26,059 a year earlier (minus 18.0%), and 5,039 new limited companies against 4,528 (plus 11.3%). The data show what changed, not why. The shift from sole traders to companies may reflect social insurance costs, taxation, counterparty requirements or the mix of industries in which businesses are founded; the REGON tables settle none of these, so we report it as an observation.

Which industries drove the decline

In 12 of the 14 PKD sections that produced at least a thousand new entities a quarter last year, registrations fell. Construction lost the most in absolute terms: 14,779 against 16,344 (minus 9.6%). Professional, scientific and technical activities lost 980 and administrative and support services 901. In percentage terms the sharpest drop was in accommodation and food service: 2,253 against 2,835 (minus 20.5%). Only two large sections grew: finance and insurance (plus 169) and real estate (plus 71).

Source: GUS REGON tables 5, 7 and 11; bazy.biz calculation. Sections with fewer than 1,000 new entities in Q3 2025 omitted.

In trade, deregistrations (9,523) almost matched registrations (9,774), so the net flow in the section was only 251 entities. Construction, despite the drop, still added 5,872 entities above the number deregistered.

Regions

In absolute numbers the largest losses were in Mazowieckie, the Warsaw region (minus 1,910), and Małopolskie, the Kraków region (minus 1,489). In percentage terms registrations fell most in Małopolskie (minus 16.2%), Pomorskie (minus 15.1%) and Lubuskie (minus 11.8%). Only two of the sixteen voivodeships grew: Podkarpackie (plus 4.3%) and Opolskie (plus 2.5%). Relative to the stock of registered entities, Poland recorded 15.1 new entities per 1,000 registered; the highest rate was in Podkarpackie (16.7), the lowest in Opolskie (12.6).

What the new businesses do: the top activity codes

GUS tables stop at the PKD division. The bazy.biz warehouse holds the full main activity code of each new business, already in the PKD 2025 classification. The ten most frequent classes in Q3 2026:

Source: bazy.biz warehouse as of 27 October 2026, main PKD code. Construction divisions 41 to 43 account for 14,387 new entities, 17.5% of the cohort. The exception to the sole trader pattern is residential building construction (41.00.A), where 40.5% of new entities are limited companies.

How many new businesses can be contacted

Source: bazy.biz warehouse, entities with a start date between 1 July and 30 September 2026, as of 27 October 2026. A missing e-mail or website does not mean the business is inactive; it means the data were not published in the sources we use at the time of the analysis. For young businesses the share usually rises over the following months as websites and addresses appear.

Business sentiment in October

In its October 2026 business tendency survey GUS reports deterioration or stabilisation of sentiment in all sectors compared with September, most strongly in accommodation and food service and in construction. In construction the share of firms naming material costs as a barrier rose to 51.7% from 41.8% a year earlier. Compared with October 2025, however, every sector except information and communication reports a higher indicator, so part of the monthly decline is seasonal.

From 1 November 2026 a new sole proprietorship can only be registered online

Under the act of 13 March 2026 amending the CEIDG law, applications for a new entry are accepted only in electronic form from 1 November 2026. Paper applications filed at a municipal office after 31 October will not be processed, with an exception for applications naming a statutory representative. Changes, suspensions and deletions can still be filed at a municipal office until 31 October 2028. The change may shift some registrations between months in the November and December data.

What this means for B2B sales and marketing in Poland

A PKD code, a registration date and an e-mail address in a register are not evidence of purchase intent or consent to marketing. Contact with sole traders is subject to GDPR and to the Polish Electronic Communications Law, so the form of the first contact needs checking in each case.

Method and limitations

External data come from the XML tables of the GUS monthly REGON publication for July, August and September 2025 and 2026 (tables 5, 6, 7, 10 and 11) and from the GUS business tendency survey for October 2026. A quarter is the sum of three months. Sums by PKD section omit entities without an activity code and are therefore slightly lower than the territorial totals. Own data come from the bazy.biz warehouse as of 27 October 2026; the cohort is all entities with a start date between 1 July and 30 September 2026, each with a unique REGON or NIP. For sole traders the start date is the date of commencement from CEIDG, for other forms the date of creation from REGON, so the cohort is close to, but not identical with, the GUS registrations. New businesses carry PKD 2025 codes while GUS tables use PKD 2007, so we do not compare the two at section level. We do not attribute causes that the data do not show.

Lists of new Polish companies by industry or region

If you sell to businesses in their first months, new registrations by industry, region and legal form are a list we prepare every month, with the NIP and REGON of every record and the contact fields that are available. Describe your target and we will reply with the count and the price.

Sources: GUS, monthly information on entities in the REGON register, July to September 2025 and 2026; GUS, business tendency survey, October 2026; act of 13 March 2026 amending the CEIDG law (Journal of Laws 2026, item 507); bazy.biz warehouse as of 27 October 2026. The full Polish version of this report, with charts and regional tables, is linked above.