List of Polish gminas

Poland has had a long history of having gminas as an administrative division. In Interwar Poland, for instance, gminas also were local self-government entities. This stayed after World War II until the administrative reform in 1950.[5]

Borders of gminas of Poland, as of 1 January 2020

That year, a large overhaul of local administration has been made. While the administrative divisions remained three-tier, gminas were substituted with almost 8,800 gromady, osiedla, and towns. The largest change, however, was that the local administrative units were stripped of their self-governing functions, were not legal entities on their own and instead became the executors of the will of higher administrative organs and, in practice, also of local party organs.[6][7]

Over time, over half of these gromadas were merged into larger entities, until the larger gminas were reinstated in 1973, getting the number of municipalities at just 3,201^ . Further reductions brought the number down to below 2,900 by 1977. In the meanwhile, Poland abolished counties completely and introduced a new, two-tier administrative division, with 49 smaller voivodeships and gminas.[7] Ostensibly the reforms of 1973 and 1975 were made in order to guide Poland through an accelerated period of growth, however, the real intent seemed to be the fear of what the government in Warsaw and party organs saw as excessive decentralisation.[7] As a result, Poland became a country with local units possessing no degrees of self-government whatsoever.[6]

This was an immediate concern with the fall of Communism, and in 1990, gminas were handed over powers of self-government and gained some autonomy.[8] Quickly though, over 500 towns that previously had been separate municipalities were merged into urban-rural gminas; that made the number close to what is in 2021.[9][10] The last major change happened with the return to three-tier administrative division in 1999, when counties were returned and some of the largest cities became city with powiat rights. Since then, the vast majority of changes was made with the Council of Ministry granting city rights to smaller settlements that previously lost their city rights, even as small as 330 inhabitants.[11][12]

As of 1 January 2021, the number of gminas according to its type is the following:[2]

The list contains 2,477 municipalities sorted by increasing TERYT (Polish for National Register of Territorial Land Apportionment Journal) code of such units, which is not given in the table. It is roughly sorted alphabetically by voivodeships, powiats and then gminas (with urban gminas first) as they appear in Polish.

• The data for the local administrative units' names and their status (urban, rural-urban, rural) is given as of 1 January 2021.[13] The cities on county rights, for emphasis, have been given in bold.
• Population count and population density is given as of 30 June 2020.[14]
• Area, in km², is given as of 1 January 2020[15]
• Average population increase is given in per milles (‰) and has been averaged per annum for 2017-2020.