Warsaw marked Poland’s Independence Day with a march that city authorities say drew upwards of 250,000 participants. As The Insider’s Warsaw correspondent Witold Reszka reported, the procession ultimately turned into a rally in support of President Karol Nawrocki and against current Prime Minister Donald Tusk. According to the organizers’ estimates, half a million people took to the streets of the Polish capital on Nov. 11.
Hundreds of thousands of conservatives took to the streets
Every Independence Day, Warsaw holds a march that draws a variety of right-wing forces. In recent years, it has been attended by several tens of thousands of people. For example, in 2023 the authorities put the number of participants at 40,000, in 2024 at 90,000, and in 2025 at 100,000. The 2018 march, when Poland celebrated the 100th anniversary of its regained independence, was the largest, with 250,000 participants. However, The Insider’s correspondent who witnessed the Nov. 11 march believes that in 2026 the number of participants may have exceeded the figures from eight years ago.
The march organizers claim that more than 500,000 people walked the streets of Warsaw on Wednesday, while city authorities put the figure at half that much. However, even if the organizers’ figures are exaggerated, participation in the event still represents a record.
In the past, such Independence Day processions mainly attracted nationalists and football hooligans, but today the nature of the event has changed markedly, with many families choosing to spend their day off at the rally. However, the political content of the march — a reflection of Poland’s right-wing patriotic landscape — has remained the same.
As Jan, a law student at one of the capital’s universities, told The Insider:
“Over the years, the march has attracted more and more families with children and ‘normal’ people in general. I would also say that more and more young people take part from year to year. There are football fans and all kinds of radicals, but not in great numbers. The makeup of the participants does not change; the proportions do.”
This year’s Independence Day procession turned into a rally in support of the country’s conservative President Nawrocki, who is currently in a state of open conflict with the liberal Prime Minister Tusk.
At the end of October, Poland saw another round of confrontation between its president and government when Constitutional Tribunal judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska suspended the tribunal’s president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański, from their duties. Tusk’s government does not recognize the tribunal’s rulings because the tribunal still includes judges who, in the government’s view, were appointed illegally under the rule of the Law and Justice party. Nawrocki and Święczkowski, for their part, do not recognize the judges elected by the Sejm in 2026, including Korwin-Piotrowska. After the tribunal’s president was suspended, Nawrocki even spoke of an attempted coup d’état.
In this context, the Nov.11 march acquired additional meaning, with the dispute between the government and the president over the composition of the Constitutional Tribunal becoming the key topic of conversation among the participants. In the demonstrators’ view, Poland has indeed been confronted with a “creeping coup d’état” headed by the prime minister.
Fears were voiced that the crowd gathering on the capital’s streets would at some point storm the Constitutional Tribunal, but this did not happen. Moreover, protesters reined in some especially active participants who tried to disturb public order. When one activist tried to climb the Palm at the Charles de Gaulle Roundabout, the others began shouting at him:
“Do you want us to be seen as savages?”
On the whole, as police noted, very few incidents were recorded during the march, apart from the mass disregard of the ban on flares and firecrackers.
No place for leftists and liberals
The hundreds of thousands of conservatives who had gathered did not hold back from harsh words about members of the government. Also in attendance were Catholic prayer circles, whose members pray in time with their steps “for the well-being of the Fatherland.” Between prayers, they shouted: “F*** Tusk!”, “God, honor, and fatherland!” and “Honor and glory to the heroes!”
Other anti-government statements were heard as well. Participants in the procession said that “the country is being plundered” and reminded one another that “Poland is not Brussels.” The latter fit well with the official slogan of the march: “A Pole is the master in Poland.”
The event took place against the backdrop of two days of national mourning — Nov. 8 and 9 — following a terrorist attack in Kraków that saw a man open fire in the square, killing six random passersby and wounding at least 15, after earlier killing his own family. For that reason, representatives of the Tusk government also decided to address the crowd. However, when Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz wanted to tell the citizens gathered in Piłsudski Square about the importance of unity, he was booed off the stage.
By contrast, the speech by Nawrocki, who called on Poles to unite in the face of the tragedy, was received with enthusiasm.
The left-wing movement Antifa organized its own counterdemonstration. As Antoni, a rock band drummer who took part in the parallel protest in the ranks of Antifa, explained to The Insider, the need for such an action arose because of the large number of radicals who use the Independence Day march for their own purposes. He said:
“The Independence March is exploited by far-right organizations: ONR (National Radical Camp), All-Polish Youth, and other fascist and even neo-Nazi groups. People on the left are aware of this problem, which is why they are protesting. I would take part in the march if xenophobia and nationalism could be eradicated from it. An independent Poland does not mean a Poland exclusively for Poles, and nationalism is not patriotism.”
Janek, a participant in the march, believes that for many years the event has actually suffered from “negative coverage in the press,” which mainly drew attention to disorder and racist slogans. He assured The Insider that:
“The march has changed. It is no longer as vocal as it used to be, but many people still believe the media’s manipulations.”
In previous years, racist and antisemitic symbols did often appear at such processions, along with slogans about a “pure race” and “white blood.” In 2017, representatives of the organization Forza Nuova (New Force), which glorifies the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and holds antisemitic and extreme Italian nationalist views, took part in the march, with its leader even speaking during the procession.
Outbreaks of violence have also occurred. In 2020, a group of hooligans with white-and-red flags clashed with police.
However, as The Insider’s correspondent observed, lately such incidents have been rare, and the presence of radical groups in the procession is often condemned by other participants. At the same time, the Celtic cross is still a common symbol.
The Independence March has divided Poles for many years. According to SW Research, 42% of Poles believe that the march unites the country, while 37% are convinced that it deepens divisions in society. At the same time, 62% of Poles currently consider Nov. 11 the country’s most important national holiday, whereas in 2014 only about 30% held that view.
