In 2025, theatres and music institutions attracted larger audiences. Attendance rose to 13 million people.
Polish theatres and music institutions ended 2025 with a clearly better attendance result than a year earlier. Although the number of operating venues remained unchanged, the sector recorded growth both in the number of events organised and in the number of viewers and listeners. The data shows that audiences were increasingly willing to attend performances and concerts, while cultural institutions maintained an important place in social and educational life.
In 2025, 206 theatres and music institutions were engaged in stage activity. Of these, 179 had their own artistic ensemble. The highest number of such entities operated in the Mazowieckie Voivodeship, where there were 42, while the fewest were in the Lubuskie, Opolskie, Podkarpackie and Świętokrzyskie voivodeships, with four in each.
The vast majority of the market continued to be made up of public institutions. This sector included 174 entities, representing 84.5% of all theatres and music institutions. In the case of 162 of them, the organiser was a local government unit. This shows that stage activity in Poland still relies to a large extent on public funding and public-sector organisation.
Throughout 2025, theatres and music institutions organised 63.1 thousand performances and concerts. This was 4.3% higher than in 2024. At the same time, the number of attendees also increased. A total of 13.0 million viewers and listeners took part in these events, up 6.7% year on year. This means that the improvement concerned not only the activity of institutions, but also genuine audience interest in the cultural offer.
Against the national backdrop, the Mazowieckie Voivodeship stood out clearly. This was where the largest share of theatrical and musical life took place, and the region accounted for 31.1% of the total number of viewers and listeners. This means that nearly every third participant in a stage event in Poland visited an institution based in this voivodeship in 2025. Altogether, venues in Mazovia attracted around 4.0 million people. The smallest audience, meanwhile, was recorded in the Lubelskie Voivodeship, where the number of viewers and listeners amounted to 142.7 thousand.
An interesting comparison also emerges when looking at attendance per event. In this respect, the leader was the Zachodniopomorskie Voivodeship, where an average of 722 viewers and listeners attended each performance or concert. At the other end of the scale was the Lubuskie Voivodeship, with 79 people per event. These differences show that participation in performing arts culture remains highly uneven across Poland.
In 2025, a total of 766 premiere events were also organised, but this was one area where a decline was recorded. Compared with 2024, the number of premieres fell by 8.9%. The highest number of new productions was prepared by drama theatres. This points to a situation in which institutions increased the number of events staged and attracted larger audiences, while at the same time taking a more cautious approach to introducing new repertoire.
An important part of stage activity remained the offer directed at children and young people. In 2025, 20.7 thousand performances and concerts were organised for this group, accounting for around one third of all events. More than half of this offer consisted of school music programmes, underlining the educational role of cultural institutions.
At the end of 2025, theatres and music institutions had a total of 379 stages and 102.1 thousand seats in permanent auditoriums. The scale of this infrastructure confirms that stage activity remains one of the key segments of Poland’s institutional cultural sector. The increase in attendance may indicate growing interest in live events and the sector’s gradual strengthening.
This material was prepared on the basis of statistical data on artistic and entertainment activity collected במסגרת official public statistics surveys.
Prepared on the basis of Statistics Poland (GUS) data.
