Poland’s biggest home sporting date in 2026 is the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Toruń, set against a year dominated globally by the Winter Olympics in Italy and the FIFA World Cup in North America.
Poland will host the World Athletics Indoor Championships on March 20–22 in Toruń, a mid-sized city in north-central Poland known for staging top-level indoor track events.
For Polish organisers, it is the country’s most prominent international sports event of the year, with global stars expected across a range of track-and-field events.
The year’s first global showpiece comes earlier, with the Winter Olympics in Italy from February 6 to 22
The Games, branded Milan-Cortina 2026, will be spread across multiple venues, with Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo as the main hubs and competition sites grouped into four zones.
Athletes will compete across 16 sports, including ski mountaineering, a discipline combining uphill climbing on skis with technical downhill racing.
Ski mountaineering is a new Olympic discipline—it will make its debut at Milano Cortina 2026 in three events: men’s sprint, women’s sprint and a mixed relay.
Italy is hosting the Winter Olympics for the third time, after Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1956 and Turin in 2006.
Polish attention is again expected to focus on ski jumping, one of the country’s most followed winter sports, with events in Predazzo likely to draw the biggest audiences at home.
Poland is not widely expected to arrive as a top favourite, but the Games could still carry strong symbolism, including what is being described as a final major career chapter for three-time Olympic champion Kamil Stoch.
Polish medal hopes may be stronger in other disciplines, particularly snowboarding and speed skating, with snowboarders Aleksandra Król-Walas and Oskar Kwiatkowski as potential high finishers, while speed skaters Damian Żurek and Vladimir Semirunniy, along with Poland’s mixed relay team in short-track speed skating, are presented as leading podium contenders.
Semirunniy left Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He began training with Poland’s national team, though served a 14-month competition suspension.
In 2024-2025 he won Poland’s all-round title, set a national 10,000-metre record, and went on to take silver (10,000m) and bronze (5,000m) at the 2025 World Championships in Hamar. He received Polish citizenship on August 26, 2025.
The Olympic hockey tournament is also set to feature a major draw for fans worldwide, the return of National Hockey League (NHL) players after their absence from the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang and the 2022 Games in Beijing.
Before the Olympics, Poland will stage two winter-sports events that traditionally bring large crowds.
The European Speed Skating Championships are scheduled for January 9-11 in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, while Zakopane, the mountain resort in southern Poland, is set to host Ski Jumping World Cup competitions the same weekend on the Wielka Krokiew hill.
Football’s main event is the FIFA World Cup, scheduled for June 11-July 19 across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Poland’s participation is not guaranteed. Polish fans are expected to learn in March whether the national team has qualified, after a series of playoff matches in Europe.
If Poland advances, the team’s potential group fixtures are described as a June 15 game in Monterrey against Tunisia, a June 20 match in Houston against the Netherlands, and a June 26 meeting with Japan in Dallas.
Poland will also host a major women’s football tournament, with 24 national teams competing for the under-20 world title from September 5 to 27.
In club football, Polish teams are set to return to European competition in early 2026.
The UEFA Conference League, Europe’s third-tier club tournament run by the Union of European Football Associations, is expected to resume in February after the winter break, with Polish clubs learning their knockout opponents in mid-January.
Tennis will again centre on Iga Świątek, Poland’s biggest sporting name of recent years, with Hubert Hurkacz also highlighted as returning after a long break.
Both are expected to play early in the season at the United Cup in Sydney before the Australian Open in Melbourne, scheduled from January 18 to February 1.
Key US spring tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami are also listed, followed by the European clay season.
Świątek is expected to aim for another title run at Roland Garros in Paris in early June, before Wimbledon from June 29 to July 12 and the US Open from August 30 to September 13.
The WTA Finals, the season-ending tournament for the top eight women, are scheduled for November 7-14 in Riyadh, with the men’s ATP Finals listed for November 15-22 in Turin.
Polish volleyball teams will be defending European credentials in late summer. The men’s national team, which won the European Championship in 2023, is set to begin its title defence on September 9 in Sofia, Bulgaria, at a tournament co-hosted by Italy, Bulgaria, Finland and Romania.
The women’s European Championship is listed for August 21-Sept. 6 across the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Sweden and Turkey, where Poland’s group games are expected to start.
Both teams are also slated to play in the Volleyball Nations League in June and July, the annual international competition that feeds into summer peaks.
Poland will host several other international championships.
Warsaw is scheduled to stage the FIBA 3x3 Basketball World Cup from June 1–7, with games planned outdoors near the Palace of Culture and Science, a landmark from the Soviet era that has become a visual shortcut for the city's identity.
The western city of Poznań is set to host the canoe sprint world championships on August 26-30 at Lake Malta, while Sosnowiec in the country's south is listed as the venue for the men’s ice hockey Division I Group A world championship tournament from May 2 to 8, a key event for Poland’s national team.
Speedway, one of Poland’s most popular motorsports, is expected to bring three rounds of the Grand Prix series to Wrocław, Łódź and Toruń, with the Team Speedway World Cup final scheduled for August 29 at Warsaw’s National Stadium.
Across the wider European calendar, other competitions that promise fans much excitement are the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham in mid-August, the Diamond League meeting in Chorzów, southern Poland, a week later, and Poland’s Tour de Pologne signature road cycling race from August 3 to 9.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP