Twenty years ago, researching Polish genealogy often meant flying to Warsaw, sitting in an archive reading room with a researcher’s permit, and manually requesting records one box at a time. Today, millions of those records are accessible online from anywhere in the world — many for free, with more being added every month.
Poland’s network of state archives has undergone a remarkable digital transformation, and the pace of digitisation is accelerating. Knowing what’s been digitised, where to find it, and how to request what isn’t yet online can save you months of research time and, in some cases, a transatlantic flight. This guide covers the Polish state archive system, the Szukaj w Archiwach portal, what’s currently available online, and how to work with the archives directly when you need something that isn’t yet digitised.
Table of Contents
- Poland’s State Archive System: An Overview
- Szukaj w Archiwach: The Central Portal
- How to Navigate Szukaj w Archiwach
- What’s Currently Digitised and Online
- Key Regional Archives and Their Holdings
- When Records Aren’t Yet Online
- How to Request Records From Polish Archives
- Getting Certified Copies for Citizenship Applications
- Final Thoughts
Poland’s State Archive System: An Overview
Poland’s state archives are administered by the Head Office of State Archives (Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwów Państwowych, NDAP). The network consists of the Central Archives of Historical Records (Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, AGAD) in Warsaw — which holds the oldest and most historically significant collections — and approximately 30 regional state archives (Archiwa Państwowe) located in major cities across Poland, each serving the records of their geographic area.
Each regional archive holds records from its catchment area — civil registration records, church (metrical) books transferred from parishes, land records, court records, and administrative documents going back centuries in some cases. Understanding which regional archive covers your ancestor’s area of origin is the key to knowing where to direct your research requests.
Szukaj w Archiwach: The Central Portal
Szukaj w Archiwach (“Search in Archives”) is the official online portal of Poland’s state archive network. It serves two functions: a finding aid (letting you search the catalogue of what each archive holds) and a digital image repository (hosting scanned images of records that have been digitised).
The portal is entirely free to use. No account is required to search the catalogue or view scanned images, though creating a free account enables some additional features like saving searches and ordering reproductions. The interface is in Polish, but most modern browsers handle translation adequately for basic navigation.
How to Navigate Szukaj w Archiwach
Searching the Catalogue
The main search bar at the top of the page searches across the entire archive catalogue. Searching for a place name in Polish (for example, “Lublin” or “Kraków” or the name of a specific village) will return catalogue entries referencing that place. You can filter results by archive, record type, and date range.
Each catalogue entry represents a fond (collection) or a series within a fond. The catalogue entry tells you: what the collection contains, the date range it covers, the physical quantity of records, and — crucially — whether digital scans are available and how to access them.
Browsing Digitised Records
When scans are available, a “See digitised materials” link appears in the catalogue entry. Clicking it takes you to the image browser, where you can navigate through the scanned pages of the original register. Images are high-resolution and zoomable — usually enough to read even faded 19th-century handwriting clearly.
The browser organises records hierarchically: archive → fond → series → volume → page. Once you’ve navigated to the right volume (for example, the birth register for a specific parish and year range), you can scroll through individual pages in order.
Workflow tip: Use Geneteka to identify that a record exists and get the approximate year and record number, then go to Szukaj w Archiwach to view the actual scan. The two tools are designed to work together — Geneteka often links directly to the relevant scan on Szukaj w Archiwach.
What’s Currently Digitised and Online
The scope of what’s been digitised expands constantly, but as of 2026 the following types of records are well-represented in online Polish archives:
- 19th-century civil registration records — birth, marriage, and death registers from the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian partition periods are extensively digitised for many regions
- Catholic parish registers (metrical books) — particularly from Galicia and the Poznań region, often available through both Szukaj w Archiwach and the Metryki portal
- Land and property records — useful for establishing where a family lived and owned property
- Some court and notarial records — relevant for estate, guardianship, and legal proceedings
- Military conscription records — particularly for the Russian and Austrian partition periods
Significant gaps remain: many records from the Warsaw area (destroyed in WWII), some remote regions with less digitisation funding, and records held by diocesan archives rather than state archives. Coverage of the Kresy (eastern borderlands, now in Ukraine and Belarus) is particularly limited in Polish online archives.
Key Regional Archives and Their Holdings
Each regional archive covers the records of its area. Here are the most genealogically relevant:
- Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie — Warsaw region, including pre-war records that survived WWII (significant losses)
- Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie — Kraków and western Galicia; excellent holdings, well-digitised
- Archiwum Państwowe w Rzeszowie — Eastern Galicia region within Poland’s current borders
- Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu — Poznań and western Poland (Prussian partition); strong holdings
- Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi — Łódź and surrounding region; important for industrial-era emigrants
- Archiwum Państwowe w Lublinie — Lublin region and parts of the Russian partition
- Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach — Kielce gubernia records
Each archive’s holdings are searchable through Szukaj w Archiwach by filtering on the specific archive name.
When Records Aren’t Yet Online
If the catalogue shows that a record exists but no digital scan is available, several options remain:
- FamilySearch — the LDS microfilm program photographed enormous quantities of Polish records, some of which aren’t on Szukaj w Archiwach. Search FamilySearch’s Poland catalogue separately.
- Metryki portal — holds scanned records from some parishes not yet on Szukaj w Archiwach
- Direct archive request — contact the archive by email or through their online request form, providing the specific fond, series, and volume reference from the catalogue entry
- In-person visit — Polish state archives are open to the public (registration required) and allow researchers to view records directly
- Professional researcher — for records in difficult languages or requiring in-person access, hiring a Polish genealogist with archive access is often the most efficient solution
How to Request Records From Polish Archives
Most Polish state archives accept remote records requests — by email, through their website contact form, or by postal mail. The key is providing enough information to identify the specific record: the archive name, the fond and series reference (from the Szukaj w Archiwach catalogue), the year, and ideally the record number. Vague requests (“do you have records for my family named Kowalski from the 19th century?”) are rarely productive.
Response times vary significantly between archives — from a few weeks to several months. Fees for copies vary; most archives charge per page or per record. Communicate in Polish if possible; English requests are often handled but may take longer.
Getting Certified Copies for Citizenship Applications
For Polish citizenship applications, digital scans and photocopies are not sufficient — you need official certified copies (odpisy) issued by the archive or civil registry office holding the original. When contacting an archive to request a record for citizenship purposes, specify that you need a certified copy (poświadczona kopia) for official use. The archive will advise on the format, fee, and any additional requirements.
For post-1945 civil records, certified copies are issued by the local USC office (not the state archive). For pre-war records transferred to state archives, the archive itself issues certified copies. Our guide to Polish citizenship documents explains this distinction in full and covers what format is required at each stage of the application.
Final Thoughts
Poland’s online archive infrastructure has made the country’s genealogical records more accessible than those of almost any other Central European nation. The combination of Szukaj w Archiwach, Geneteka, and Metryki gives researchers free access to tens of millions of records from anywhere in the world — a transformation that was simply impossible a generation ago.
Use the online tools as far as they take you, then contact archives directly for what remains offline. The records are there — finding them is a matter of knowing where to look and how to ask. Continue with our guide on how to read old Polish records for the scripts and languages you’ll encounter once you start accessing the scans. Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly Polish heritage guides.
