By mid-April, with the registration deadline behind them, thirteen candidates had officially entered the race for the presidency of Poland. Seventeen had applied; four failed to make the cut. Those who remain now compete not only with one another but with the global cacophony – Donald Trump’s tariff saber-rattling, the war in Ukraine, instability across the Middle East, nuclear anxieties with Iran, and the rearming of Europe. Against such a backdrop, it’s worth asking whether a coherent presidential campaign is even possible. In this case, the answer is simple: no.
Rafał Trzaskowski, the urbane mayor of Warsaw and a standard-bearer for the liberal Civic Platform (PO), has led the polls for months. Trailing him are Karol Nawrocki, a Law and Justice (PiS) loyalist with nationalist leanings, and Sławomir Mentzen of the far-right Confederation party – a libertarian with a thirst for ideological confrontation and a style modeled, rather transparently, on Donald Trump. These three form the presumed front line. But the field is broader and stranger: it includes fringe candidates, provocateurs, and political hobbyists, some with Kremlin sympathies, others with YouTube channels.
CANDIDATES: scandalmonger, sports journalist, brewery owner
Grzegorz Braun is, by now, a fixture of Poland’s more surreal electoral subplots. A member of the European Parliament and a former MP, Braun gained international notoriety when he extinguished Hanukkah candles in the Polish Sejm using a fire extinguisher – an act equal parts performance art and hate speech. He has disrupted moments of silence for Holocaust victims and amplified conspiracies about vaccines, Jews, and the European Union, which he derides as a "Eurokolkhoz." His base includes followers of his Korona (Crown) party and anti-vaccination groups like "Stop NOP." This is Braun’s third presidential run. He is unlikely to do any better than in 2015, when he earned 0.83 percent of the vote, but electoral success may never have been the point.
Maciej Maciak, another fringe candidate, appears more interested in geopolitics than governance. A self-styled journalist and founder of the Prosperity and Peace Movement, he calls Russia “a mainstay of normality,” denies Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea and Donbas, and regularly warns of an impending civil war between Poles and Ukrainian refugees. His economic platform blends protectionism with populism: state-issued commodity vouchers for domestic use only, punitive tax codes for foreign investors, and low taxes for Polish entrepreneurs. Grotesque, yes – but calculated.
There is also Marek Jakubiak, a brewery magnate turned perennial candidate (0.17 percent of the vote in 2020), and Joanna Senyszyn, a 76-year-old former SLD parliamentarian known for her blistering critiques of the Catholic Church and her unapologetic atheism.
Among the surprise entrants are Artur Bartoszewicz, an economist known more for his media appearances than policy proposals, and Krzysztof Stanowski, a sports journalist-turned-political influencer who admits he doesn’t actually want the job. Stanowski – who claims to have collected four million signatures for his candidacy – spends his campaign not on the trail but on his YouTube show Channel Zero (Kanał Zero), where he interviews his fellow candidates in long, unsparing conversations. In one of them, Sławomir Mentzen managed to ignite national outrage.
STRATEGIES: pushing, pretending, cajoling
When asked by Stanowski whether he supported abortion access in cases of rape, Mentzen responded: “You can’t kill innocent children, even if this child is associated with some unpleasantness.” The phrase – “some unpleasantness” – unleashed fury online. Asked if he would still oppose abortion if a pedophile raped his niece, Mentzen replied that his brother would ensure the child “grew up to be a decent person.” His approval rating has since dipped, but not catastrophically – he’s still polling at around 17 percent, up from 10 percent last year.
Mentzen’s platform includes bold if vague promises: a reallocation of power toward the presidency, weekly Cabinet Councils, and vetoes against any legislation that raises or complicates taxes. “I will push myself like no one else has before,” he declared at a rally in Bełchatów. “It will be a very active presidency.” Think Trump, but with fewer checks.
Nawrocki, the candidate from PiS, has embraced a more muscular image. A former director of the Museum of the Second World War and current head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), he has been photographed boxing, running, doing push-ups. But his polished patriot act has been undermined by revelations of murky associations with organized crime and the curious case of “Tadeusz Batyr” – a pseudonym under which he once appeared on television with a blurred face to praise, improbably, himself.
A series of damning audits by the Supreme Audit Office accuse Nawrocki of turning the IPN into a political clubhouse and mismanaging over PLN 15 million (3,7 million EUR) in public funds. He has echoed Kremlin talking points about Ukraine and criticized European defense efforts as naïve. In a saner campaign, these would be disqualifying.
And then there is Trzaskowski: eloquent, urbane, and, critics argue, insubstantial. He speaks fluent French, German, and English. He supports the LGBT community and advocates for increased defense spending – 5 percent of GDP, half of it directed toward the domestic arms industry. He calls for a National Security Council to convene every two months. But for some voters, especially in Poland’s rural heartlands, he remains a symbol of cosmopolitan detachment, more admired abroad than at home. His message feels crafted to offend no one – and to inspire no one.
He rarely confronts the defining issue of Poland’s strategic future: whether Europe can build an independent defense system in an era of American withdrawal. Trzaskowski’s opponents are not so shy. Nawrocki and Mentzen outright reject European self-reliance, insisting NATO must remain the only guarantor of Polish security. For PiS and its sympathizers, the specter of a federalized EU is worse than Russian tanks.
PROGRAMS: vague, unreal, grotesque
The presidential debates – broadcast in shifting configurations depending on the host network’s political leanings – have covered abortion, immigration, housing, and entrepreneurship. These are pressing concerns, no doubt, but largely irrelevant to the president’s actual constitutional role, which centers on foreign policy, national security, and symbolic unity. Yet the debates rage on, complete with flexing biceps, fear-mongering, and the occasional promise of a new constitution.
What is missing from the conversation is what should arguably be at its center. Foreign policy and national defense – domains where the Polish president actually holds considerable power – are either handled in passing or reduced to cartoonish simplifications. Nowhere is this void more glaring than in the candidates’ treatment of Europe’s fledgling attempts to create a defense architecture independent of American guarantees. In the wake of the U.S.’s inward turn and Washington’s growing unpredictability, the European Union has begun to quietly acknowledge what was once unspeakable: it may need to defend itself.
Yet this existential topic has become background noise in the Polish campaign. The main opposition Law and Justice party (PiS) frames the EU’s defense ambitions as both futile and dangerous – doomed to fail and likely to alienate Washington. In their telling, the push for strategic autonomy is little more than a Trojan horse for federalization, a covert Brussels plot to strip member states of sovereignty. This narrative is mostly unchallenged, which offers it some extra-weight.
And where is Rafał Trzaskowski, the liberal frontrunner, in all this? For someone who embodies Poland’s European aspirations, who is fluent in Brussels’ idiom and has long presented himself as a cosmopolitan counterweight to nationalist populism, his avoidance of the issue is both puzzling and disappointing. Instead, he offers vague reassurances: that the Polish arms industry will benefit, that things are more or less under control. It is not a vision – it’s a shrug dressed up as pragmatism.
Meanwhile, Trzaskowski’s rivals offer little more than derision. Sławomir Mentzen dismisses the war in Ukraine as someone else’s problem, a distant quarrel irrelevant to Polish interests – a stance that reveals both geopolitical naivety and moral indifference. Karol Nawrocki, parroting PiS orthodoxy, lionizes Donald Trump and echoes his economic nationalism, even when it runs counter to Poland’s economic self-interest. His alignment with Trumpian tariffs and protectionism risks pushing Poland into the slipstream of a looming global slowdown – or worse, a full-blown recession.
In an era defined by spectacle, the Polish presidential campaign is not immune. Candidates lift weights on screen. They quote themselves under aliases. They promise to lead governments they would have no power to command.
More likely, Poles will vote against someone – rather than for one.
