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Days outside Poland

How long can you stay outside Poland? Count your trips against the limit.

Two different rules, one tool. Applying: the continuous stay you need has limits of 6 months for a single break and 10 months for all breaks together. Holding an EU long-term resident permit: the limits are 12 consecutive months outside the EU (24 after a Blue Card) and 6 years outside Poland.

Choose your question and your permit, enter your trips, and the tool counts the full days away, examines the period the act looks at, and lists every trip in the columns the office's declaration uses. Copy the table or download it.

Your trips against the rule

Days are counted the way the Poznań office counts them: only full days outside Poland, the day you leave and the day you return are days in Poland. A trip still running is counted up to today.

What do you want to check?

Today if you leave it empty. The act looks at the years directly before this day.

Your trips

  1. Leave empty if you are still away.

Counting rule: the day you leave and the day you return count as days in Poland; only the full days in between are days away. This is how the Wielkopolski voivodeship office's own calculator counts; the act does not say.

Questions about counting days away

The act does not say. The Wielkopolski voivodeship office's own calculator instruction says to count only the days you were not in Poland at all: left on 1 January, back on 5 January is 3 days. This tool counts the same way and says so under the trips. If your own office counts differently, the difference is at most two days per trip.

Art. 212 ust. 3 pkt 1: a single break longer than 6 months, or breaks totalling more than 10 months in the 5 years before filing (art. 211 ust. 1). Art. 212 ust. 4 does not count a break caused by work abroad for an employer based in Poland, by accompanying such a person as their spouse or minor child, by a personal situation of at most 6 months, or by a study placement. Permanent residence uses the same numbers over its own period (art. 195 ust. 4).

The act counts in months; an office needs day numbers to add trips up. The Poznań calculator fails a single break at 180 full days and the total at 300, and this tool applies the same numbers as the stricter reading. A break that is close to either number is a question for a consultant, not a calculator.

Art. 215 ust. 1: the permit is withdrawn after an absence from Poland exceeding 6 years (pkt 3), or after 12 consecutive months outside the European Union (pkt 4 lit. a), 24 months if you held an EU Blue Card or are a family member of someone who did (lit. b). Time in another EU country counts as inside the EU for the second rule but as absence for the first.

Art. 199 ust. 1 pkt 5: the permit is withdrawn after an absence from Poland exceeding 6 years. There is no EU rule for permanent residence. The card itself is valid for 10 years (art. 243 ust. 1 pkt 2) and is what you show at the border, so keep it current even while away.

The Wielkopolski office asks EU long-term applicants for a signed declaration of trips in the last 5 years (departure, return, country, purpose). Other offices, including Małopolska, may ask for the same list in their own form or a plain statement. The table this tool produces has those columns; copy it into whatever your office requires.

This calculator covers the two permits whose rules count days away: permanent residence and the EU long-term resident permit. It has no rule for a temporary residence permit, and this page does not invent one. If you hold one and plan a long trip, ask a consultant before you go.