Pharmacies on Polish Holidays: When Are They Open?

It’s 24 December, three in the afternoon. Your mum is already sitting at your Christmas Eve table and realises her medicines are at home, 300 kilometres away. Her prescription is on her phone. But which pharmacy is open today? Or you’ve driven to your in-laws on the other side of Poland and your child has run out of plasters. It’s a question people type into search engines every year.

Yes, pharmacies in Poland can open on any public holiday. The Act on restricting trade on Sundays and public holidays does not cover pharmacies or pharmacy outlets (Article 6(1)(3)). But “can” doesn’t mean “must”. On a day off, the ones open are mainly on-duty pharmacies, designated by the county, and those that decide to work anyway. The rest are closed. Below you’ll find the 2026/2027 calendar of public holidays in Poland, the rules, and a simple plan that saves you a last-minute search.

The 2026/2027 holiday calendar and what it means for pharmacies

Polish public holidays are listed in the Act on public holidays (ustawa o dniach wolnych od pracy). On each of them, shops in Poland must stay closed, while pharmacies follow their own rules.

Date	Day	What day it is	What it means for you
11 November 2026	Wednesday	National Independence Day	A day off midweek. Many pharmacies that open on a normal Wednesday stay closed
6, 13 and 20 December 2026	Sundays	Trading Sundays	Shops open; pharmacies in shopping centres may open along with the centre
24 December 2026	Thursday	Christmas Eve (Wigilia), a day off since 2025	Shops closed all day; pharmacies exempt from the ban
25–26 December 2026	Friday, Saturday	Christmas	With Christmas Eve and Sunday 27 December, four days in a row: the longest break of the year
1 January 2027	Friday	New Year’s Day	Right after New Year’s Eve; a day off just before the weekend
6 January 2027	Wednesday	Epiphany (Three Kings’ Day)	A day off midweek
27 March 2027	Saturday	Holy Saturday	Shops close at 14:00; pharmacies are exempt from this limit
28–29 March 2027	Sunday, Monday	Easter	Two days off in a row
1 and 3 May 2027	Saturday, Monday	Labour Day, Constitution Day	The May long weekend
16 May 2027	Sunday	Pentecost Sunday	A public holiday on a Sunday
27 May 2027	Thursday	Corpus Christi	Often a long weekend with the Friday
15 August 2027	Sunday	Assumption of Mary	A public holiday on a Sunday
1 November 2027	Monday	All Saints’ Day	Check the duty roster in the town where you’re visiting family graves

The end of December is the hardest stretch. In 2026, Christmas Eve falls on a Thursday, followed by two days of Christmas (Friday and Saturday), then an ordinary Sunday, 27 December. Thursday to Sunday is four days in a row when most pharmacies are closed or keep shorter hours. If someone in your family takes regular medicines, this is the time to check how much they have left early, not on the afternoon of 24 December.

Christmas Eve: what changed in 2025

Up to and including 2024, shops in Poland could open on Christmas Eve until 14:00. The Act of 6 December 2024 added 24 December to the list of statutory public holidays. Since 2025, Christmas Eve has been treated just like Christmas Day for trading purposes: shops stay closed all day.

Pharmacies were left out of this ban, as on every other public holiday. But Christmas Eve is now a day off for staff, so some pharmacies that used to open until 14:00 may not open at all. Nobody collects this data. So on Christmas Eve, treat the pharmacy as you would on a Sunday: check the duty roster and call ahead.

The same law changed the December trading Sundays. In 2026, shops are open on 6, 13 and 20 December, the three Sundays before Christmas Eve. Pharmacies in shopping centres may open along with the centre, but each one decides for itself.

Why no search tool knows “holiday hours”

The official source of pharmacy data in Poland is the Pharmacy Register (Rejestr Aptek), run by the Ministry of Health. Every pharmacy lists its hours there for each weekday from Monday to Friday, for Saturday and for Sunday. There is no separate field for public holidays. There is a field for trading Sundays, but in the register as of 9 February 2026, not one of the 13,819 active pharmacies had filled it in.

So on a day off, your best guide is the Sunday hours. And there aren’t many:

• 236 active pharmacies across Poland list any opening hours at all for an ordinary (non-trading) Sunday,
• 6 pharmacies declare they are open 24 hours a day, every day of the week,
• for comparison: on an ordinary Friday at 13:41, around 12,000 pharmacies were open.

These figures come from our own analysis of the register. They reflect what pharmacies declare, not whether they actually open on a given day. A pharmacy can be on leave or change its hours for the holidays, and the register won’t show it. For more on the difference between a 24-hour pharmacy and an on-duty one, see our guide to 24h and on-duty pharmacies in Poland.

On-duty pharmacies over the holidays: how to find one

In many Polish towns, the only pharmacy open on a public holiday is the on-duty one. Duty rosters are set by the county (powiat) in a resolution, under Article 94 of the Pharmaceutical Law. The roster usually covers nights, Sundays and public holidays, and pharmacies take turns.

Where to look:

1. The Public Information Bulletin (BIP) of the county office (starostwo powiatowe), or of the city council in cities with county status. Search for “dyżury aptek” (pharmacy duty rosters) and the resolution for the current year.
2. The town or municipality website. Many local councils post the roster in their news section before the holidays.
3. The notice on the pharmacy door. If your pharmacy has put up a list of local on-duty pharmacies before the holidays, take a photo of it on your phone.

Most important: check the roster for the county where you are spending the holidays. If you’re going to your parents or in-laws, your local list won’t help you. Family who live there often don’t know which pharmacy is on duty this year either.

A plan for days off: five steps before the holidays

This is an organisational checklist, not a medical one. It isn’t about what to take. It’s about not having to hunt for a pharmacy in a rush on a day off.

1. Check your regular medicines a few days before the holiday. Count whether the packs will last until the first working day after the break. If not, talk to your doctor about a prescription before the holidays start.
2. Go through the expiry dates in your home medicine cabinet. Especially the things you rarely reach for. Over the holidays, you don’t want to find out that your only pack expired in the spring. Our guide to the markings on medicine packaging will help.
3. Note down two pharmacies where you’re staying. One on-duty pharmacy from the county roster and one that lists Sunday hours. Save their phone numbers straight away.
4. Pack regular medicines in the bag you keep with you. On the way to family, a suitcase in the boot can be out of reach for half a day. If you’re flying, we cover the rules in our article on medicines in hand luggage.
5. Agree within the family who checks an older relative’s medicines. If you look after a parent from a distance, decide who will look through their medicine cabinet before the holidays and who keeps a list of their medicines to hand.

How mojApteczka helps

In the mojApteczka app for iOS and Android, the pharmacy map shows pharmacies within a chosen radius, on a map or in a list. The data comes from Poland’s official Pharmacy Register and is refreshed daily. On days off, a few things come in handy:

• Public holidays recognised automatically. On a statutory public holiday in Poland, Christmas Eve included, the app works out whether a pharmacy is open from its Sunday opening hours. You don’t have to remember that today is a holiday.
• On-duty pharmacy filter. On-duty pharmacies, marked as night, holiday or 24-hour duty, appear in the counties whose rosters we pull from the BIP, which currently means about half the country.
• A phone number on every pharmacy card. One tap and you can call to confirm the hours.
• Works without internet. After the first sync, the pharmacy search works offline, which helps when you’re travelling.

The medicine cabinet features are useful before the holidays too. Low stock shows which packs are running out, and expiry alerts remind you of dates before they pass. If you look after a parent from a distance, the shared family kit lets you see their medicine list from another city. We write more about this kind of care on our page for caregivers.

What the app doesn’t know

Over the holidays, these limits matter most:

• Actual holiday opening hours. The register doesn’t contain them, so a pharmacy’s status on a day off is inferred from its Sunday hours, not confirmed. A pharmacy that opens for shorter or longer on Christmas Eve than on a Sunday may look different in the app from how things really are.
• Duty rosters in every county. We show rosters from about half of Poland’s counties (165 of 342, as of October 2026) and refresh them once a week. If there’s no duty marker, that doesn’t mean no pharmacy nearby is on duty.
• Temporary closures. A pharmacist’s leave or illness doesn’t make it into any database in real time.

That’s why, on a day off, you should always call the pharmacy before you leave. Thirty seconds on the phone saves you a trip to a locked door.

When you need a doctor, not a pharmacy

A pharmacy is no substitute for seeing a doctor when symptoms come on suddenly or get worse. On statutory public holidays in Poland, night and holiday healthcare (nocna i świąteczna opieka zdrowotna) clinics are open around the clock, with no referral needed and no catchment area, so you can go to the nearest one even in another city. The list is published by the NFZ, Poland’s National Health Fund, and the NFZ helpline 800 190 590 runs 24 hours a day. These clinics don’t issue prescriptions for long-term medicines, which is why step one on the list above is worth doing before the holidays.

If someone’s life is in danger, don’t look for a pharmacy or a clinic. Call 112 or go to a hospital emergency department (SOR).

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mojApteczka is an organisational and informational tool. It does not replace consultation with a pharmacist or doctor. If symptoms need urgent help, call 112.