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Administrative divisions of Poland

Voivodeships Counties (list) Gminas (list)

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Map of Polish counties

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A county (Polish: powiat, pronounced "povyat"; plural, powiaty) is the Polish second-level unit of administration, equivalent to a county, district or prefecture (NUTS-4 or rather LAU-1) in other countries. A county is part of a larger unit or province called a voivodeship (Polish województwo). In turn a county usually comprises several communes, each called a gmina (plural: gminy). However the more important towns and cities function as separate counties in their own right, with no subdivision into gminas.

Those towns and cities with county status (urban counties) are not normally referred to as powiats. These simply take the name of the city, and the city's structures additionally perform the functions normally reserved for counties.

In nearly all other cases, a Polish county is named after its capital city, or county seat. The county's name is the masculine-gender adjective formed from that city's name (to go with the masculine gender of the word "powiat"). Thus the County with its seat at the city of Kutno is named powiat kutnowski (both parts of the name being written lower-case). If the city's name comprises a noun followed by an adjective, as in Maków Mazowiecki ("Mazovian Maków"), the adjectival county name will generally be formed from the city's noun name alone ("powiat makowski").

There is more than one way to render Polish counties into English. One way yields "Powiat of Kutno." But since "powiat" is not an English word (unless regarded as being such by adoption), it is commonly rendered as "county," thus yielding either "Kutno County" or "County of Kutno."

Note that the seat is sometimes not part of the county. For example, Poznań County (powiat poznański) has its seat and offices in Poznań, although Poznań is itself a city with county status, and is therefore not part of Poznań County.

If a county seat has a double-barreled name, as with "Maków Mazowiecki," the county may become either "Maków County" or "Maków-Mazowiecki County." Due, in all but the first case, to the existence, respectively, of two "double-barreled" county seats with the identical noun name, the corresponding adjectives "bielski," "grodziski," "ostrowski" and "tomaszowski" each denote two distinct counties.

Some Polish urban communes constitute administrative entities called the "urban county" (powiat grodzki), similar in local administration and self-governance to "land counties." An average county (the largest being the powiat of Białystok) comprises 5 – 8 communes. The largest urban county, in terms of population and area, is the city of Warsaw.

Legislative power within the county is vested in a "county council" (rada powiatu) or "city council" (rada miasta), while local executive power is vested in the starosta, who in urban counties is called the mayor (burmistrz) or "president."

The history of Polish counties goes back to the second half of the 14th century. They remained the basic units of territorial organization in Poland, then in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, until the latter's total dismemberment by its neighbors in 1795.

In the 19th century, the county continued to function in the part of Poland that had been incorporated into the Russian Empire ("Congress Poland"), and as the Polish equivalent of the German "Kreis" in the German-governed Grand Duchy of Poznań.

After Poland regained independence in 1918, the county again became the basic territorial unit throughout Poland.

Powiats (counties) were abolished in 1975 in favor of a larger number of voivodeships, but were reintroduced in 1999. There are now 314 "land counties" (powiat ziemski) and 65 "urban counties" (powiat grodzki), more formally "municipalities with county status" (miasto na prawach powiatu).

• List of counties in Poland

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