Polish Television (TVP)

Polish Television (Telewizja Polska, TVP) is Poland’s national public television broadcaster. Since late December 2023 it has operated under the legal name Telewizja Polska S.A. w likwidacji, a company in liquidation, and that status remained in force in October 2026. Daniel Maksymilian Gorgosz has been liquidator and Tomasz Sygut director general since December 2023. TVP is wholly owned by the State Treasury, with shareholder rights exercised by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. It operates national and thematic channels, a network of sixteen regional services under the TVP3 banner, and an international service.

Media assets

Television, national and thematic: TVP1, TVP2, TVP Info, TVP3, TVP Historia, TVP Historia 2, TVP Kultura, TVP Kultura 2, TVP Rozrywka, TVP Seriale, TVP Sport, TVP HD, TVP ABC, TVP ABC 2, TVP Dokument, TVP Nauka, TVP Kobieta, Alfa TVP

Regional television: TVP3’s sixteen regional services, in Białystok, Bydgoszcz, Gdańsk, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Katowice, Kielce, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź, Olsztyn, Opole, Poznań, Rzeszów, Szczecin, Warszawa and Wrocław

International: TVP World, Belsat, TVP Polonia and TVP Wilno, together with the Ukrainian-language Slawa TV and Russian-language Vot Tak services operated within TVP’s international media structure

Digital: tvp.pl, TVP VOD, tvpworld.com and TVP Parlament

The international channels have been managed since November 2024 through an Overseas Media Centre (Ośrodek Mediów dla Zagranicy) headed by Michał Broniatowski. TVP World is the English-language service that replaced Poland In in November 2021; it was taken off air on 20 December 2023 and relaunched on 11 March 2024. TVP Polonia was brought into the centre at the end of 2025 and TVP Wilno, launched in September 2019, ceased to operate as a separate unit in March 2026. Both remain on air; the changes concern internal organisational units rather than the channels themselves, a distinction TVP set out before a Senate committee in January 2026, and TVP Wilno was still producing and broadcasting in September 2026.

Ownership and governance

Public broadcasting in Poland, including TVP and Polish Radio, is regulated by the Broadcasting Act of 1992, amended over time. TVP functions as a state-owned joint-stock company under the control of the State Treasury. The National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT) is a five-member constitutional regulator, distinct from the National Media Council (RMN), the body created in 2016 to appoint public-media leadership.

In 2015 the Sejm passed the Small Media Act, amending the 1992 Broadcasting Act. Members of the Board of Management, including its President, and members of the Supervisory Board were to be appointed by the Minister of the Treasury instead of the KRRiT. These changes gave the government direct power to appoint the governance structures of the public media, with an immediate negative effect on their editorial independence. Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, expressed concern about the law’s impact on the independence of public media, and Dunja Mijatović, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, criticised the government’s direct control over the governance structures.

In 2016 the PiS-dominated Sejm passed a law establishing the RMN, made responsible for appointing the governing bodies of TVP, Polish Radio and the Polish Press Agency (PAP). Three of the newly appointed council members were Law and Justice lawmakers, which allowed the government to retain control over those bodies. Unwanted employees had already been removed from the public media and replacements appointed to lead the institutions.

After the elections of 15 October 2023 the coalition of the Civic Coalition, Third Way and The Left, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, began reforming the public media. In late December 2023 President Andrzej Duda vetoed a bill on state media subsidies, describing the coalition’s actions as an illegal seizure of public media. On 27 December 2023 the culture minister placed TVP, Polish Radio and PAP into liquidation. The management of TVP had been replaced before Christmas 2023. In April 2024 a court confirmed that TVP was in liquidation, and subsequent rulings in 2024 and 2025 reaffirmed the liquidator’s authority. Warsaw courts upheld the validity of the December 2023 appointments in rulings between December 2024 and February 2025; the PiS-backed RMN had attempted to counter-appoint Maciej Łopiński on 25 December 2023, which the Culture Ministry declared void.

The company’s supervisory board comprises Piotr Zemła as chairman, Anisa Gnacikowska as deputy chair and Marta Seredyńska. In October 2024 the Sejm dismissed RMN chair Krzysztof Czabański over conflict-of-interest concerns, and Wojciech Król of the Civic Coalition was appointed to the council in December 2024 and elected its chair on 12 December 2024; he has said that he expects to serve as its liquidator.

Karol Nawrocki, supported by Law and Justice, succeeded Duda as President on 6 August 2025. His frequent use of the presidential veto has complicated the Tusk government’s legislative agenda, including efforts to reform public media.

The regulator’s position has also been contested. The KRRiT’s six-year term began on 3 October 2022 and runs to 3 October 2028. The Senate rejected its 2025 annual report on 8 July 2026 and the Sejm on 18 September 2026; under the Broadcasting Act the members’ terms would expire within fourteen days if the president also rejected the report, but in a statement published on 28 September 2026 Nawrocki said that he did not confirm the expiry of their terms. Agnieszka Glapiak has chaired the council since July 2025, when the other members removed Maciej Świrski from the chair, and Hanna Karp is deputy chair. Four members take part in its work: Glapiak, Karp, Marzena Paczuska and Tadeusz Kowalski. Świrski remains formally a member but does not participate after the Sejm referred him to the State Tribunal. Under Article 9 of the Broadcasting Act resolutions require a two-thirds majority of the five statutory members, so all four participating members must support a resolution for it to pass. The council does not select TVP’s liquidator or director general.

A draft amendment to the Broadcasting Act, prepared by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and published in December 2025, would abolish the licence fee, abolish the RMN and transfer its powers to the KRRiT, and expand the council from five to nine members. Members would serve six-year terms with one third rotating every two years, four appointed by the Sejm, two by the Senate and three by the President, each candidate requiring the support of industry organisations and facing a public hearing. Management boards would become single-person bodies appointed for five years by the KRRiT on the recommendation of a competition committee, with candidates barred from party membership for the preceding five years and from candidacy in general elections for at least ten. The culture minister said the liquidation would end when the law took effect.

The bill was adopted by the Committee for European Affairs in June 2026 and was at the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers in September 2026, having not been sent to the Sejm. No date for its submission has been set, and the KRRiT stated that its comments on the draft were not taken into account. The European Commission’s 2026 Rule of Law Report, dated 17 July 2026, records that the liquidation initiated in 2023 is ongoing with liquidators appointed directly by the Minister of Culture, that the governance of public service media structures continues to reflect political choices, and that the National Media Council’s effectiveness is contested pending the reform.

The European Media Freedom Act, which has applied since August 2025, sets binding standards on transparent, merit-based appointments and editorial safeguards in public service media, and provides an external compliance benchmark.

Source of funding and budget

TVP is funded through a licence fee, state-budget subsidies and commercial revenue. Under the Licence Fees Act of 2005 the KRRiT determines the level of the fee each year, not later than 30 June. The fee was designed to cover the larger part of the broadcaster’s budget, but low collection has made state-budget transfers the dominant source for years, and the government regularly uses budget funds to fill the gap. In February 2020 the Sejm approved a PLN 2 billion subsidy for the public media, of which about 60 per cent went to TVP, lifting the state subsidy above half of the station’s budget; local experts reported that only 8 per cent of households paid the fee that year. In November 2022 the governing party raised TVP’s budget by around PLN 800 million to over PLN 2 billion, which opposition members said was intended to fund the election campaign.

In March 2024 the KRRiT suspended transfers from the licence-fee system amid the governance dispute, and courts later confirmed that it could hold the proceeds in escrow while litigation ran. The Culture Ministry confirmed PLN 2.341 billion in total public-media transfers in 2024.

TVP’s audited result for 2025 was a net loss of PLN 176.33 million, 26.1 per cent smaller than the PLN 238.6 million loss of 2024. The company-register financial data report net sales revenue of PLN 3.734 billion and total income of approximately PLN 3.854 billion, against total costs of approximately PLN 4.03 billion. Culture Ministry grants amounted to approximately PLN 1.66 billion, from which TVP returned unused sums of PLN 22.5 million in June 2025 and PLN 79.2 million in March 2026. Advertising, sponsorship and information campaigns produced PLN 1.07 billion. Recognised licence-fee-related income was PLN 415.8 million against PLN 130.5 million in 2024; separately reported transfers of PLN 308.4 million in current receipts and PLN 70.7 million returned from sums withheld in 2024 form part of that figure but do not reconcile it in full. Foreign Ministry grants covered TVP World with PLN 84.4 million, Belsat with PLN 59 million, TVP Wilno with PLN 35.5 million and TVP Polonia with PLN 22 million.

In the first half of 2026 the Culture Ministry paid the public broadcasters PLN 1.2 billion, of which TVP received PLN 900 million, Polish Radio PLN 150 million and the regional stations PLN 150 million, while the KRRiT transferred PLN 291.248 million. Of the regulator’s transfers, PLN 241.325 million came from current licence-fee receipts, divided as PLN 123.378 million for TVP, PLN 59.319 million for Polish Radio and PLN 58.628 million for the seventeen regional stations, with a further PLN 49.923 million released from court deposits. The KRRiT planned to transfer another PLN 361.987 million in the second half of the year, for a licence-fee total of PLN 603.312 million. Deposit proceedings still covered more than PLN 316 million of 2024 licence fees, about PLN 174 million of it for TVP, and by July courts had returned 62 deposits worth more than PLN 142 million.

TVP received a further PLN 250 million Culture Ministry grant in August 2026, taking its cumulative ministry support for the year to PLN 1.15 billion, and on 23 September 2026 the culture minister granted it PLN 180 million more from the state budget reserve, bringing the total to PLN 1.33 billion. TVP acknowledged in September 2026 that payments to some collaborators were delayed, attributing this in an internal communiqué to the pending tranche and stating that it was in final arrangements with the ministry. The ministry said that pay decisions fall within the liquidator’s exclusive competence, described the grants as an ad hoc solution, and cited the episode in support of its draft amendment.

The pending bill would set a floor of PLN 2.5 billion a year from the state budget for public broadcasting as a whole, indexed for inflation, transferred by the finance minister to an account managed by the KRRiT for distribution among the companies, with a spending ceiling for 2027 to 2036. In a letter of 29 December 2025 the Ministry of Finance and Economy estimated the model would add about PLN 25 billion to state spending over a decade, including PLN 2.5 billion in 2027, noted that the bill identifies no funding source, and proposed making its entry into force conditional on the general government balance.

TVP’s last agreed public-service performance charter covers 2020 to 2024. No charter for 2025 to 2029 had been agreed by October 2026. The KRRiT rejected TVP’s draft charter for that period in November 2024. On 29 October 2025 it stated that there was no legal possibility of amending the earlier charter and that extending it to cover 2025 and 2026 was legally impermissible, calling for a new agreement and linking it to the end of the liquidation and to stable funding for mission costs. The practical effect is that TVP must continue to provide the full channel portfolio set out in the 2020 to 2024 charter. The regulator rejected TVP’s 2025 mission report in June 2026, a decision that does not withdraw licence-fee funding. On 28 July 2026 it unanimously rejected the broadcaster’s request to amend its 2026 programme-financial plan for TVP Polonia and TVP Wilno, finding that TVP had not demonstrated a significant change of circumstances and had not supplied requested documents.

Editorial independence

The Broadcasting Act requires public broadcasters to respect pluralism, impartiality, balance and editorial autonomy. TVP has a Programme Council and is subject to oversight by the KRRiT, but these arrangements have not established an effective and politically independent system for assessing newsroom autonomy. The extent to which TVP’s present editorial output satisfies the statutory standards remains contested.

The government exerted significant influence over the editorial affairs of TVP and Polish Radio for years. The legal changes of 2015 and 2016 granted it control over the outlets’ employment structures, and large numbers of journalists and newsroom managers were dismissed or replaced after the 2015 amendments. Journalists supportive of the governing party were employed, turning TVP and Polish Radio into openly pro-government outlets. Reporters Without Borders described the Polish public media as government propaganda mouthpieces. Politicians from the governing party were appointed to top management positions; under Jacek Kurski, re-appointed as head of TVP in July 2020, news output became overtly supportive of the government and critical of the opposition.

After the October 2023 elections the Tusk coalition dismantled that system, liquidated the existing management and relaunched the flagship news programme with a stated commitment to impartiality. TVP Info went off air on 20 December 2023, and the following day the new 19:30 bulletin promised to end propaganda and restore factual reporting. An analysis by the Demagog association of the January 2024 editions of 19:30, compared against the main bulletins of Polsat and TVN, found omissions and asymmetric treatment: pro-opposition demonstrations and an opposition motion went unreported, an unconfirmed claim about the president was aired, and internet memes mocking him were broadcast with no equivalent on competing channels.

The European Commission’s 2026 Rule of Law assessment recorded a decrease in polarising and biased content in public service media over the preceding two years. The KRRiT published a monitoring study on 20 January 2026 covering 30 episodes of six current-affairs programmes on TVP Info and TVP3 broadcast between 29 September and 4 November 2025. It concluded that the programmes did not meet public media standards, finding one-sided coverage favouring the governing coalition, selective choice of guests and experts, and hosts expressing private views rather than moderating. It recorded 71 per cent of coverage of the opposition as negative and accusatory, 19 per cent as defensive and 10 per cent as neutral and analytical, and 78 per cent of discussions as focused on evaluating individuals rather than on social, legal or economic processes. The study examined a sample of six selected programmes rather than the whole of TVP’s news output, and the regulator’s own impartiality is contested: both chambers of parliament rejected its 2025 report, its chair was removed by the other members in July 2025, and one member has been referred to the State Tribunal.

These findings point to unresolved concerns over impartiality, but do not by themselves establish that current editorial decisions are systematically directed by the government.

Classification rationale

Polish Television remains classified Independent State Funded and State Managed/Owned (ISFM), provisionally.

TVP is wholly owned by the Polish State Treasury and receives substantial public financing through state-budget grants and licence-fee proceeds. Its institutional position remains unsettled following the December 2023 replacement of management and entry into liquidation. The liquidator was appointed through the state shareholder’s authority, while the National Media Council, responsible under the 2016 legislation for public-media appointments, continues to exist despite its contested role.

The change of management ended the established system through which the former Law and Justice government exercised extensive control over public television. The subsequent editorial record, however, does not establish complete independence from political influence. The KRRiT’s monitoring of selected current-affairs programmes found coverage favouring the governing coalition, while the European Commission’s 2026 assessment recognised improvements in public-media content alongside continuing risks to impartiality and governance.

The present evidence establishes concerns about editorial bias and politically exposed governance, but does not conclusively demonstrate a sustained editorial line imposed or approved by the incumbent state authorities. This distinction supports retaining ISFM rather than assigning State-Controlled status at this review.

The classification remains provisional because TVP continues to operate in liquidation, its leadership has not been selected through a competitive independent procedure, no successor to the 2020 to 2024 public-service performance charter has been agreed, and the proposed media legislation has not been enacted.

October 2026