Cost of alcoholism in Warsaw - city budget, 2026 night-sale ban

On 1 June 2026 Warsaw joined the group of Polish cities with a night-time prohibition: a ban on off-trade alcohol sales between 10 PM and 6 AM now applies across the entire city. The Warsaw City Council passed resolution no. XXXIII/1290/2026 on 12 March 2026 by 57 votes to 2, after an earlier pilot in the Srodmiescie and Praga-Polnoc districts. Hard numbers sit behind the decision: the city earmarks about PLN 74 million a year (2025 plan) for its programme to prevent and resolve alcohol problems, and in 2024 spending on it reached nearly PLN 81 million. It is the largest single item among the city's health programmes. The whole sum is financed by fees that alcohol sellers pay. Yet even outlays on this scale are a fraction of the real costs alcohol generates across the capital.

In brief

• Night-time ban from 1 June 2026: resolution no. XXXIII/1290/2026 of the Warsaw City Council of 12 March 2026 (57 in favour, 2 against), 10 PM to 6 AM, all of Warsaw except the duty-free zone at Chopin Airport.
• Pilot from 1 November 2025 in Srodmiescie and Praga-Polnoc cut night-time Municipal Guard interventions by 15.2% and public-drinking offences by 30.4%.
• Alcohol programme budget: about PLN 74 million (2025 plan) and nearly PLN 81 million executed in 2024; the source is alcohol permit fees (2024 plan: PLN 72.5 million).
• Public consultation 2024: 80.78% of participants backed limiting night-time sales, and 96.9% of supporters wanted the ban citywide.
• Retail network: the permit cap was lowered from 16,970 to 16,680; the number of alcohol shops fell from 3,387 (2022) to 3,235 (2025).
• Domestic violence: Warsaw police opened 4,203 Blue Card procedures in 2024; nationwide, 42% of perpetrators acted under the influence of alcohol.
• National cost: the socio-economic cost of alcohol in Poland is PLN 93.3 billion a year (3.45% of GDP), and alcohol excise covers only about 14% of it.

Night-time ban from 1 June 2026 - Warsaw joins the cities with a ban

Since 1 June 2026, alcohol cannot be bought to take away anywhere in Warsaw between 10 PM and 6 AM. The ban covers grocery shops, off-licences, petrol stations and retail stalls in every district. The single exception is the duty-free zone at Chopin Airport.

It rests on resolution no. XXXIII/1290/2026 of the Warsaw City Council of 12 March 2026, passed by a wide margin: 57 councillors for, 2 against. The restriction applies only to off-trade retail. Bars, pubs and restaurants licensed to serve alcohol on the premises operate without change. Warsaw was not a pioneer here. Krakow introduced a citywide night-time ban back in 2023, and the capital reached its decision in stages, first testing the rule in two districts. The same resolution lowered the maximum number of alcohol sales permits from 16,970 to 16,680.

Pilot in Srodmiescie and Praga-Polnoc - what the data showed

Before the ban covered the whole city, it ran as a pilot from 1 November 2025 in two districts (Srodmiescie and Praga-Polnoc) during the same hours of 10 PM to 6 AM. City data for November 2025 to January 2026 showed measurable effects: the number of night-time Municipal Guard interventions in these districts fell by 15.2% (about 23% in January 2026 alone), police interventions by 8%, and public-drinking offences by 30.4%. It was the pilot results that became the main argument for extending the ban across the capital.

What do residents think of the night-time ban?

The decision followed a broad public consultation, "Let's talk about night-time alcohol sales", run from 6 May to 30 June 2024. Nearly 9,000 people took part, and 8,384 residents filled in the online survey. The results were unambiguous: 80.78% of participants favoured limiting night-time sales, and among supporters as many as 96.9% wanted the ban to cover the whole city rather than just selected districts.

2024-2025 budget - how much Warsaw spends on fighting alcoholism

Warsaw funds its alcohol policy from the permit fees that businesses trading alcohol in the city pay each year. The 2024 plan put this at PLN 72.5 million, and almost the entire sum returns to the city as spending on prevention and treatment.

Every company selling alcohol in the capital (a shop, bar or restaurant) pays an annual permit fee whose size depends on alcohol turnover. The 2024 budget of the City of Warsaw planned PLN 72,520,719 in revenue from this source (of which about PLN 70.6 million for the alcohol programme and PLN 1.8 million for drug-abuse prevention). By law this money cannot be spent on anything else, which is why in the budget tables the revenue from alcohol fees equals the spending on the programme.

In practice, execution tends to be higher than the fee revenue alone. According to the 2024 budget execution report, the city spent nearly PLN 81 million on the Municipal Programme for the Prevention and Resolution of Alcohol Problems. It was the largest item among all the city's health programmes (Warsaw spent about PLN 276 million on health care overall in 2024). The 2025 plan secured about PLN 74 million for the alcohol programme.

What the law says. Under the Act of 26 October 1982 on Upbringing in Sobriety and Counteracting Alcoholism, revenue from alcohol permit fees must be used solely to deliver the municipal programme for the prevention and resolution of alcohol problems and for drug-abuse prevention. The city cannot spend it on anything else, though it may top up the programme from the general budget if needs are greater.

A separate line is the Warsaw Centre for Intoxicated Persons (the former sobering-up station). The 2024 budget planned PLN 12.3 million for the "sobering-up facilities" section, and another PLN 11.6 million for the actual stay of intoxicated people at the centre.

A dense retail network - one of the arguments for the restriction

Access to alcohol in Warsaw is very wide. At the end of 2025 the city had 3,235 alcohol shops, fewer than the 3,387 three years earlier, but still enough that there was about one outlet per 575 residents. For comparison, Sweden's state monopoly chain Systembolaget runs just over 450 shops in the entire country. Warsaw has more than seven times as many (figures from the Warsaw City Press Office cited by the fact-checking service Demagog).

It was precisely the density of the retail network that became one of the main arguments of those backing the night-time ban. Along with the prohibition, the City Council lowered the maximum cap on retail sales permits, though the number of permits itself (16,680 after the change) still far exceeds the number of physical shops, because a single outlet can hold several permits for different categories of alcohol.

The Alcohol Problems Commission and mandatory treatment

The most important link in the support system is the Warsaw Commission for the Resolution of Alcohol Problems. In the capital it works in an extended structure: alongside the city commission (14 members appointed by the Mayor), there are 18 district teams, one in each district, and it is they who run the procedure for referral to mandatory addiction treatment.

When can the commission order mandatory treatment?

The commission can file a motion to court to compel addiction treatment when a dependent person meets one of the statutory criteria: breakdown of family life, demoralisation of minors, shirking of work, or systematic disturbance of public peace. The notification can be filed by the family, a social welfare centre, the police or a prosecutor. The decision to treat, however, belongs to the court. The commission gathers the evidence and files the motion, but it is the court that rules on the obligation to undergo therapy.

The scale of the city's preventive work is large. In 2024, 311,000 people used the Programme for the Prevention and Resolution of Alcohol Problems and Counteracting Drug Addiction: from consultation points and clinics, through socio-therapeutic day centres, to education campaigns.

Domestic violence and drunk drivers - alcohol in police data

The phenomenon that almost always goes hand in hand with alcohol is domestic violence. In 2024 Warsaw police opened 4,203 Blue Card procedures. The national picture shows how strong the link with alcohol is: of 60,535 perpetrators of domestic violence in Poland in 2024, as many as 25,704 (about 42%) acted under the influence of alcohol. Across the country, the Blue Card procedure covered 86,920 people experiencing violence, including 25,723 minors.

Examining the years 2021-2023, the Supreme Audit Office (NIK) found that, depending on the unit, between 45% and 82% of Blue Cards were opened where the perpetrator was intoxicated. Excessive drinking remains the most common circumstance accompanying violence in the family.

How many drunk drivers do Warsaw police stop?

The second area is road safety. In Warsaw itself, police in 2024 stopped 583 drunk drivers who committed a criminal offence, 23% fewer than a year earlier (758). Across the whole Warsaw metropolitan command (the city and 9 surrounding poviats) the figure was 1,470. When limiting availability is not enough, an intervention by those closest may be needed. We describe how to carry it out in our article How to deal with an alcoholic - tips for the family.

PLN 93.3 billion a year - what alcohol costs Poland and Warsaw

The socio-economic cost of excessive alcohol consumption in Poland is estimated at PLN 93.3 billion a year, or about 3.45% of GDP. State revenue from alcohol excise (PLN 13.4 billion) covers only about one seventh of that amount.

The most frequently cited official estimate comes from an analysis prepared for the State Agency for the Prevention of Alcohol-Related Problems (now KCPU) by researchers from the Warsaw School of Economics. It put the social costs of alcohol (lost productivity, treatment, accidents, crime, premature deaths) at PLN 93.3 billion for 2020, more than PLN 79 billion above what the state earned from alcohol excise that year.

The heaviest element of this bill is premature deaths. According to the national KCPU and GUS statistics, in 2021 14,048 people in Poland died from causes directly linked to alcohol. It was a record, 40% more than a year earlier. Broader World Health Organization estimates, which also account for alcohol's indirect role, attribute about 7.1% of all deaths in the country to it.

On top of that come hospitalisations. NFZ data for 2023 show that 25,560 patients were treated in hospital for alcoholic liver disease (4,046 of these hospitalisations ended in death), and another 19,967 people for the toxic effects of alcohol. In the Mazovia voivodeship alone, 2023 saw 2,467 services with a diagnosis of alcoholic liver disease and 2,680 with mental disorders caused by alcohol.

Warsaw, with 1.86 million residents (end of 2024), accounts for nearly 5% of Poland's population. A cautious proportional extrapolation of the national PLN 93.3 billion yields an order of magnitude of PLN 4-5 billion in annual social costs of alcohol at the level of the capital. That is dozens of times more than the city spends on prevention. It shows why no local government can close this balance on its own.

Children and young people - the heaviest part of the bill

The costs of alcohol do not end with adults. The National Centre for Addiction Prevention estimates that foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) affects at least 20 in 1,000 people in Poland, about 2% of the population, of which full-blown foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is about 4 in 1,000. It is the result of drinking during pregnancy, which, according to KCPU data, between 15% and 39% of Polish women admit to.

Young people and alcohol - ESPAD 2024 data

The European ESPAD study, carried out in 2024 by the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology and KCPU, found that 72.9% of students aged 15-16 and 91.3% of students aged 17-18 had ever drunk alcohol. In the 30 days before the survey, 39.1% of the younger and 73.3% of the older teenagers reached for alcohol. Part of this cohort will enter adulthood with an entrenched pattern of risky drinking.

Adult children of alcoholics return to psychotherapists' offices many years later, with chronic stress, difficulty in close relationships and a heightened susceptibility to their own addictions. We develop the topic in our article Adult children of alcoholics - the ACoA syndrome.

Alcoholism treatment methods available in Warsaw

Residents of the capital have several complementary methods at their disposal that work well together:

• Alcohol detox - outpatient IV detoxification under medical supervision that replenishes electrolytes and B vitamins and eases withdrawal symptoms. It is usually the first step when the body is worn down by drinking.
• Esperal (alcohol implant) - a disulfiram implant that triggers a strong aversive reaction after drinking alcohol. It requires at least 24 hours of complete abstinence before the procedure, and its effect lasts about 8 months, after which reimplantation is possible.
• New-generation pharmacotherapy - naltrexone, acamprosate and nalmefene. They do not induce aversion but reduce alcohol cravings and stabilise the nervous system after years of drinking.
• Addiction psychotherapy - individual and group, in the cognitive-behavioural or motivational stream. Without work on thinking patterns and emotion regulation, abstinence alone rarely lasts longer than a few months.

We have gathered the full picture of available options on our page on alcohol addiction treatment in Warsaw. The choice of method depends on drinking history, health status and family situation, which is why the first step should always be a consultation with a specialist, not buying medication on your own.

Frequently asked questions

When did the night-time alcohol sales ban come into force in Warsaw?

The night-time ban on off-trade alcohol sales has applied across Warsaw since 1 June 2026. It was introduced by resolution no. XXXIII/1290/2026 of the Warsaw City Council of 12 March 2026, passed by 57 votes to 2. Earlier, from 1 November 2025, the ban ran as a pilot in two districts: Srodmiescie and Praga-Polnoc.

What hours and where does the ban apply?

The ban covers off-trade retail alcohol sales between 10 PM and 6 AM and applies to grocery shops, off-licences, petrol stations and retail stalls in every district of Warsaw, except the duty-free zone at Chopin Airport. It does not cover restaurants, bars and pubs licensed to serve alcohol for on-premises consumption.

How much does Warsaw spend on its anti-alcoholism programme?

In the 2025 plan the city allocated about PLN 74 million to the Municipal Programme for the Prevention and Resolution of Alcohol Problems, and execution for 2024 reached nearly PLN 81 million. It is the largest item among the city's health programmes. The funds come from fees paid by businesses selling alcohol (PLN 72.5 million in the 2024 plan) and, by law, can be spent only on prevention and addiction treatment.

How did the night-time prohibition pilot affect safety?

In the districts covered by the pilot (Srodmiescie and Praga-Polnoc), from November 2025 to January 2026 the number of night-time Municipal Guard interventions fell by 15.2%, police interventions by 8%, and public-drinking offences by 30.4%. These results were the main argument for extending the ban to the whole city.

When can the commission order mandatory addiction treatment?

The Commission for the Resolution of Alcohol Problems can file a motion to court to compel treatment when a dependent person causes breakdown of family life, demoralises minors, shirks work or systematically disturbs public peace. The notification can be filed by the family, a social welfare centre, the police or a prosecutor. In Warsaw the procedure is run by district commission teams, one in each of the 18 districts. The final decision to treat is taken by the court.

Is Esperal reimbursed by the NFZ in Warsaw?

No. Disulfiram implantation (Esperal) is not in the NFZ basket of guaranteed services and in Warsaw is performed only in private clinics. The NFZ does, however, fund addiction therapy (outpatient, day and inpatient) and pharmacotherapy at addiction clinics. We describe the cost of a private implant in our article Esperal - the price and cost of the implant.

Sources

• Resolution no. XXXIII/1290/2026 of the Warsaw City Council of 12 March 2026 on restrictions during the night-time hours of alcoholic beverage sales (in force from 1 June 2026).
• City of Warsaw - "Restriction of night-time alcohol sales across Warsaw from 1 June" and "Night-time alcohol trade ban in two Warsaw districts" (um.warszawa.pl).
• City of Warsaw - results of the public consultation "Warsaw residents want night-time alcohol sales limited" (30 August 2024).
• 2024 budget of the City of Warsaw - Compendium (resolution no. XCII/3017/2023 of the Warsaw City Council of 14 December 2023), Table no. 11; City of Warsaw - 2024 budget execution, Health care section, and Health care 2025.
• Demagog / Warsaw City Press Office - data on the number of alcohol shops in Warsaw; Zycie Warszawy - permit limits.
• Warsaw Metropolitan Police - 2024 summary (Blue Cards, drunk drivers).
• National Police Headquarters - "Domestic violence - 2024 data" (Blue Card procedure).
• Supreme Audit Office - audit "Counteracting domestic violence. Blue Cards" (P/24/080).
• K. Oblakowska, A. Bartoszewicz (Warsaw School of Economics) - "Factors affecting demand for alcohol in the context of social and economic costs in Poland", PARPA 2021 (PLN 93.3 billion); Sejm Bureau of Research - INFOS no. 9(322), 2024.
• KCPU, 2023 report "Addictions in Poland" (deaths); KCPU / IPiN - ESPAD 2024 report; KCPU - "FASD. A handbook for education staff" (2024).
• NFZ / e-Health Centre (ezdrowie.gov.pl) - data on alcohol-related hospitalisations (2023).
• GUS / Statistical Office in Warsaw - "Population size and vital statistics in the Mazovia voivodeship in 2024" (population).
• Warsaw Support (Office of Social Assistance and Projects) - structure of the Commission for the Resolution of Alcohol Problems; Report on the State of the City - Warsaw 2024.

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This article is for information only and does not replace a medical or legal consultation. If you or someone close to you is struggling with an addiction, please contact a specialist.