Chapter 9
Iga Świątek, the volleyball team, ski jumpers, female athletes — Polish sport has a narrow but very strong band of success and an increasingly female face. Fans are back in the stadiums; the national football team will miss the World Cup.
For a foreigner, sport is the simplest way into the Polish brand — the names Lewandowski and Świątek are known to people who could not find Poland on a map. This chapter gathers the numbers: records, titles, medals and attendance — and one honest counterpoint about football.
Fig. 9.1
Poland's most important sporting achievements of recent years
Fig. 9.2
Average attendance at Ekstraklasa football matches, seasons 2021/22–2025/26
One of the sharpest upward trends in the whole dataset: in four seasons average league attendance rose 85%, and Lech Poznań became the first club in history to average over 30,000. The new Euro 2012 stadiums have stopped standing empty.
An honest counterpoint: the fans are in the stands, the national team's results are not — Poland lost the play-off to Sweden and, after two consecutive World Cups (2018, 2022), will miss the 2026 tournament.
Polish sport has a narrow but very strong band of success — and an increasingly female face. Iga Świątek, with six Grand Slam titles and 125 weeks at the top of the ranking, is the most successful Polish sportswoman in history; in Paris eight of ten medals were won by women.
The volleyball team is the most consistent team discipline: three world golds and three Nations League titles in the last four editions. Robert Lewandowski broke Gerd Müller's 49-year-old record. The national football team — as above — remains the weak point.