While the Baltic Sea breeze blows through the streets along the Motława River in Gdańsk, steam from freshly cooked pierogi rises among the market stalls in Kraków. Although the two countries are geographically close, for a long time many German retailers hardly considered Poland a target market in its own right. It was viewed more as a place of transit than as a market that could be actively tapped. Poland, with a population of nearly 38 million, is now one of the largest e-commerce markets in Central and Eastern Europe.
Addresses in Poland consist of four lines: the recipient's name, the street name with the house number (followed by the apartment number after a slash, if applicable), the ZIP code with the city, and the country. In rural areas, the street name is often omitted. In such cases, the town name and house number are used instead.
According to ecommercenews.eu 78 % of Polish Internet users shop online. According to ECDB In 2025, online retail sales totaled approximately 32 billion U.S. dollars, representing year-over-year growth of 15 to 20 percent.
It sounds like a promising market. However, anyone who sends their first package to Poland without familiarizing themselves with the address format will quickly discover that there are a few pitfalls.
How do you write addresses correctly in Poland?
The structure of a Polish address follows a specific order.
Line 1: Recipient name
The first line contains the recipient's full name. For individuals, this includes the first and last name; for companies, it includes the company name.
Line 2: Street, house number, and apartment number
The second line contains the street name and house number. An abbreviation always precedes the street name. The most common ones are:
ul. (ulica, street)
et al. (aleja, avenue)
pl. (plac, Platz)
os. (housing development)
These abbreviations are part of the official address and must therefore always be included.
The house number is listed after the street name. If there is an apartment number, it is separated from the house number by a slash:
8/34 Marszałkowska Street → The 8 represents the building number, which 34 the apartment number.
Line 3: Postal code and city
The Polish ZIP code comes before the city name. The format is XX-XXX, that is, two digits, a hyphen, three digits.
Example: 00-950 Warsaw
Line 4: Country
For international shipments, the country name should be entered on the last line. It is best to use uppercase letters: POLAND or POLSKA. This line is not required for shipments within Poland.
Address examples at a glance
Home address in the city
| Recipient Name | Jan Kowalski |
| Street, House Number/Apartment | 8/34 Marszałkowska Street |
| Zip Code and City | 00-590 Warsaw |
| Country (for international shipping) | POLAND |
Business address
| Company name | ABC Spółka z o.o. |
| Street and house number | 45 Nowy Świat Street |
| Zip Code and City | 00-042 Warsaw |
| Country (for international shipping) | POLAND |
Limited Liability Company. is the Polish equivalent of the German GmbH. This abbreviation appears regularly in business addresses and is part of the full company name.
Rural address without a street name
| Recipient Name | Anna Wiśniewska |
| Street name and house number | Karsewo 12 |
| Zip Code and City | 62-220 Niechanowo |
| Country (for international shipping) | POLAND |
In rural areas, streets often do not have official names. In such cases, the address consists only of the town name and a house number. Although the recipient lives in Karsewo, the ZIP code indicates the local post office in Niechanowo.
Postal Code System in Poland
The Polish ZIP code, zip code, has the format XX-XXX. The hyphen is an integral part of the word and is not an optional separator.
In large cities such as Warsaw or Krakow, there are hundreds of ZIP codes, and individual streets or sections of streets may have their own codes. In rural areas, the situation is different: a single ZIP code there often covers several villages. The system comprises a total of about 20,000 ZIP codes, distributed across more than 51,000 locations, according to GeoPostcodes. A ZIP code can apply to up to five different place names.
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Address Formatting in Poland
The Slash Trap in Apartment Numbers
There are numerous large apartment buildings in Polish cities. This is particularly evident in the prefabricated housing estates built after the war and in the suburbs. There, house numbers such as 12/34 This is common. The delivery person knows the building but not the apartment if the number 34 after the slash is missing. In large apartment buildings, this can mean that your package will be left somewhere in the building or, in some cases, even sent back.
In addition to the slash, the abbreviations m. (mieszkanie, apartment) as well as loc. (local, spatial) is common. „m.“ usually refers to private residences, whereas „lok.“ used for business premises or other units in the building. In the address, however, both pieces of information are equivalent: they follow the building number.
Włościańska Street 2/19
Strzemińskiego Street 11 m. 10
Tytusa Chałubińskiego Street 8 loc. 4652
Rural addresses without street names
In rural areas, streets often do not have official names. In the street field, customers should then enter the place name along with the house number. Furthermore, in such cases, the ZIP code may refer to a location other than the recipient’s place of residence, as it is assigned to the nearest post office.
Special Characters in the Polish Alphabet
The Polish alphabet has nine special letters that do not appear in German:
ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż
These appear in first and last names, street names, and place names.
„Łódź“ without the ł becomes „Lodz,“ and „Wrocław“ without the ł becomes „Wroclaw“
Parcel delivery services can usually handle this. However, if your online store system replaces these special characters with question marks or spaces, you'll end up with garbage on the label.
Parcel Delivery Services and Package Pickup Locations in Poland
There is hardly any other European country with as many package lockers as Poland. Since the networks sometimes overlap (as in the case of the Allegro Delivery network), the total number cannot simply be added up. The most significant providers are summarized here.
| Vendor | Role in the Polish market |
| InPost | Largest package delivery service in Poland. Over 30,000 Paczkomat kiosks (as of September 2026), 709 million shipments in Poland in 2024. Source: trans.info, Polish Radio |
| DPD Poland | Part of Geopost, operating in Poland since 1991. Over 10,000 package lockers and approximately 32,000 pickup locations in total (as of 2025). Source: Geopost Press Release |
| DHL | Just under 10,000 package lockers (DHL BOX 24/7) and 22,000 partner locations (DHL POP). Part of the Allegro Delivery Program since April 2025. Source: DHL Poland, DHL Group |
| GLS Poland | Own network plus a partnership with Orlen Paczka (approximately 7,000 package lockers, as of 2025). Source: Parcel and Postal Technology Internationalal |
| Allegro One Box | Allegro's own package lockers; over 6,000 units by mid-2025. Source: PAP |
| Poczta Polska | State-owned postal service with approximately 7,600 branches and several thousand partner locations. Relevant for cross-border shipping when the last mile is handled by the state-owned postal service. Source: Pocztex.pl |
| UPS | A smaller market share, particularly for B2B and express deliveries. |
Your next step
Addresses in Poland have a few peculiarities that German address fields don’t always handle correctly. The quickest way to find out if your checkout process can handle this is to place a test order from Poland. Does your ZIP code field allow hyphens in the format XX-XXX? Does it accept a slash between the house number and apartment number—for example, entries like 8/34? And does your store system correctly store the special characters ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, and ż—all the way through to the shipping label? If Łódź becomes L?d?, that creates a problem for the package delivery service.
You can read how address validation works across national borders in our article International address verification explained in compact form.
Do you ship to other countries as well? If so, feel free to check out our posts on shipping to Italy, Spain and Bulgaria to.
endereco: Address validation for international shipping
Other countries, other address formats. Our Address validation checks customer addresses in real time, directly when they are entered in the checkout. Typing errors, missing zip codes, incorrect place names: Corrections are made before the order goes out. For over 200 countries worldwide.
Want to know how this would work for your store? Get in touch with us.