Warsaw Registered Poland's First Same-Sex Marriage. Wrocław Followed Within a Week.

Warsaw’s civil registry office transcribed a same-sex marriage certificate on Thursday, May 14 — the first time in the history of the Polish state. Three days later, the registry office in Wrocław did the same. The two registrations end a years-long standoff between Polish administrative practice and a sequence of European and Polish court rulings, and they hand the Tusk coalition government a fait accompli on an issue it has visibly tried to avoid.

Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski announced the first transcription on Thursday morning. “This morning we issued the first transcription of a marriage certificate for a same-sex couple, in accordance with the court rulings,” he wrote on social media, attaching a photograph of the registry document. The couple — two Polish men who had married in Germany — had been waiting since 2018 for their marriage to be recognized at home.

How we got here

The legal chain is now a familiar one for our readers; we have covered it at each step. In November 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled — for the third time in eight years — that EU member states must recognize same-sex marriages validly concluded in another EU member state for purposes of residency, family unity, and freedom of movement. The judgment was directed at no single country, but Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Hungary had all spent the better part of a decade ignoring the previous two CJEU rulings on the same subject.

In March 2026, Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court (Naczelny Sąd Administracyjny) cited the November CJEU ruling and ordered a Warsaw registry office to transcribe the marriage certificate of a couple identified in court documents as JC-T and MT, the two Polish men who had married in Berlin in 2018. The court held that Poland’s constitutional definition of marriage — as a union between a man and a woman — does not relieve administrative bodies of their obligation to recognize, for civil-registry purposes, marriages lawfully concluded abroad.

Between March and May, the Interior Minister signaled publicly that the government might not implement the ruling, citing the constitutional definition. In April, more than 100 Polish NGOs — including Amnesty International Poland, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, and the Supreme Bar Council — signed an open letter telling the Tusk coalition that the rule of law does not operate selectively. Thursday’s transcription in Warsaw and Sunday’s in Wrocław appear to be the answer.

What was actually registered

The Warsaw and Wrocław transcriptions are not Polish same-sex marriages. They are administrative recognitions of marriages that were lawfully concluded in Germany. The distinction matters legally — same-sex marriage remains constitutionally prohibited in Poland, and any couple wishing to be married rather than recognized must still travel to a jurisdiction where same-sex marriage is legal. But the practical effect of registry transcription is significant: the couple in question can now access spousal rights in Poland for inheritance, tax filings, hospital visitation, social insurance, and — critically — residency for non-EU spouses.

This is the same legal architecture that has allowed binational LGBTQ+ couples in other countries that have not legalized marriage (Italy, until 2016; Slovenia, in a transitional period; the Czech Republic, currently) to function as married for most legal purposes through recognition of foreign marriages.

Trzaskowski’s calculation

That Warsaw was first is not an accident. Trzaskowski is the leading candidate of the Civic Platform party for the 2025 presidential election, which is now in its runoff phase. He has been one of the most consistently pro-LGBTQ+ voices in the governing coalition, and he has used the mayoralty of Warsaw as a platform for distinguishing himself from the more cautious Interior Ministry on rights issues. His announcement on Thursday was personally signed and accompanied by a photograph — not a press release attributed to the registry office.

Wrocław’s mayor, Jacek Sutryk, followed on Sunday with a similar public announcement. Both are members of Civic Platform; both have made LGBTQ+ rights part of their public profile. The next city to watch is Kraków, which has historically been more conservative on these issues but where the registry office is now under direct legal pressure to follow Warsaw and Wrocław.

What this does not yet do

It does not legalize same-sex marriage in Poland. It does not establish civil partnerships, which the Tusk coalition has been promising to introduce since taking office in late 2023 and has so far failed to pass. It does not address adoption rights, which remain blocked for same-sex couples regardless of where they were married. And it does not prevent a future Polish government — particularly one led by Law and Justice or its Confederation allies — from instructing registry offices to stop transcribing same-sex marriages.

What it does do is establish a precedent. Two registry offices in two major Polish cities have now applied the EU and Polish court rulings as written. Every subsequent same-sex couple who has lawfully married abroad and asks for their marriage to be recognized in Poland can now point to Warsaw and Wrocław, and to the legal architecture that supports them. That is not marriage equality. But after a decade of CJEU rulings that Polish authorities simply ignored, it is the first concrete crack in the wall.

The runoff for the Polish presidency is on June 1. Marriage equality has not, until this week, been a central issue in the campaign. It may yet become one.