Company registration in Poland for foreigners

It depends on liability, scale and who the owners are. A sp. z o.o. keeps business risk inside the company and is the normal choice where the shareholders are foreign or where there is more than one of them; it costs more to run because it requires full accounting. A JDG is cheaper and faster, but you are personally liable for the debts and it is only open to individuals — for non-EU nationals, only with certain Polish residence titles. If you expect to hire, take on contracts with real exposure, or bring in a partner, the limited company usually wins by the second year even if it looks expensive in the first.

No. There is no residence or nationality requirement for shareholders or, in most cases, for board members. What you do need is a Polish registered address for the company, a way to sign electronically or through a notary, and a plan for how official correspondence will reach you. A large share of the companies we work with are owned and directed from abroad.

For a sp. z o.o. it is PLN 5,000, with a minimum nominal value of PLN 50 per share. It does not have to sit untouched in the bank — it is capital contributed to the company, and it can be spent on the business once trading starts. A JDG has no capital requirement at all.

Through the S24 online system, once everything is signed, a straightforward sp. z o.o. is registered within 2 days of filing, using the standard template articles. Preparing the documents and the signatures comes first — how long that takes depends mostly on how you sign from abroad. A notarial deed, which you need for bespoke articles, contributions in kind, a more complex shareholder structure or signing through an attorney, takes longer.

Yes. Every company must have an address entered in the register, and it is the address to which courts and offices deliver. This matters more than it sounds: a deadline runs from the moment delivery is deemed effective, not from the moment you read the letter, so an address nobody checks is a genuine risk. A registered-address service with same-day scanning removes that problem.

From registration you have a reporting calendar whether or not you have started trading: monthly or quarterly JPK_V7 files if you are VAT-registered, CIT at company level, ZUS from the first employee (from registration if you are the sole shareholder), and an annual financial statement filed to the KRS. There are also one-off registrations shortly after formation — the beneficial-owner register (CRBR) among them — that carry real penalties for being late. We set the calendar up with you so nothing is discovered after the deadline.

Yes. Banks ask foreign-owned companies for a set of documents — the registration extract, the shareholders’ and board members’ identity documents and sometimes a description of the business — and we prepare them with you so the application goes through without back-and-forth. Some banks also want to identify a board member in person. Whether to open the account is always the bank’s own decision.