The Polish Border Guard’s latest operational bulletin, analysed by the news portal Onet, shows that pressure on the country’s eastern frontier has eased dramatically in the new year. According to the figures, fewer than 20 attempts to cross the Polish-Belarusian border irregularly were registered between 1 and 23 January 2026—down from several hundred during the same period a year earlier and from daily peaks of 700–800 in late-2023.
Officials attribute the decline to three main factors. First, Belarus has tightened controls on organised migrant movements after new EU sanctions threatened to curtail trade in potash and other key exports; Minsk can ill afford additional economic pain. Second, Poland completed the final phase of its 186-kilometre “electronically enhanced” steel barrier in December 2025, adding 1,300 night-vision cameras and motion sensors along river sections previously considered porous. Third, Warsaw continues to run spot checks on its internal Schengen borders with Germany and Lithuania, making it harder for secondary movements to proceed westwards and reducing the incentive to enter Poland in the first place.
![Poland records sharp drop in attempted illegal crossings from Belarus in January]()
For corporate mobility teams the lull offers breathing-space but not a licence to relax compliance protocols. While the risk of large-scale, politically motivated flows has lessened for now, Polish authorities stress that each detected attempt is still processed under accelerated return or asylum procedures, and carriers found transporting undocumented migrants face fines of up to PLN 30,000 per person. Employers bringing in third-country nationals should therefore double-check that contractors and logistics partners observe document-verification rules—particularly on the Warsaw–Białystok and Terespol road corridors highlighted in the Border Guard report.
For companies and individuals who need to move personnel through official channels rather than risk costly sanctions, VisaHQ’s Poland portal (https://www.visahq.com/poland/) offers a streamlined way to verify current entry requirements, assemble the correct paperwork, and lodge visa applications. The online service gives mobility managers real-time updates on processing times and can arrange courier pick-ups anywhere in the EU, helping them stay compliant while the border situation evolves.
The government also warns that numbers could rise again when weather improves in spring or if Minsk resumes what Warsaw terms “state-sponsored migration pressure”. Contingency planning—such as factoring extra time for lorry queues at the Kukuryki/Kozłowicze freight crossing or budgeting for overnight accommodation near the Koroszczyn terminal—remains prudent for mobility and supply-chain managers. Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry is expected to decide in February whether to prolong temporary checks on the German and Lithuanian frontiers beyond the current 4 April 2026 expiry date, a move business-travel associations say would add predictability for multinational staff shuttling between Polish plants and western European headquarters.
Officials attribute the decline to three main factors. First, Belarus has tightened controls on organised migrant movements after new EU sanctions threatened to curtail trade in potash and other key exports; Minsk can ill afford additional economic pain. Second, Poland completed the final phase of its 186-kilometre “electronically enhanced” steel barrier in December 2025, adding 1,300 night-vision cameras and motion sensors along river sections previously considered porous. Third, Warsaw continues to run spot checks on its internal Schengen borders with Germany and Lithuania, making it harder for secondary movements to proceed westwards and reducing the incentive to enter Poland in the first place.
For corporate mobility teams the lull offers breathing-space but not a licence to relax compliance protocols. While the risk of large-scale, politically motivated flows has lessened for now, Polish authorities stress that each detected attempt is still processed under accelerated return or asylum procedures, and carriers found transporting undocumented migrants face fines of up to PLN 30,000 per person. Employers bringing in third-country nationals should therefore double-check that contractors and logistics partners observe document-verification rules—particularly on the Warsaw–Białystok and Terespol road corridors highlighted in the Border Guard report.
For companies and individuals who need to move personnel through official channels rather than risk costly sanctions, VisaHQ’s Poland portal (https://www.visahq.com/poland/) offers a streamlined way to verify current entry requirements, assemble the correct paperwork, and lodge visa applications. The online service gives mobility managers real-time updates on processing times and can arrange courier pick-ups anywhere in the EU, helping them stay compliant while the border situation evolves.
The government also warns that numbers could rise again when weather improves in spring or if Minsk resumes what Warsaw terms “state-sponsored migration pressure”. Contingency planning—such as factoring extra time for lorry queues at the Kukuryki/Kozłowicze freight crossing or budgeting for overnight accommodation near the Koroszczyn terminal—remains prudent for mobility and supply-chain managers. Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry is expected to decide in February whether to prolong temporary checks on the German and Lithuanian frontiers beyond the current 4 April 2026 expiry date, a move business-travel associations say would add predictability for multinational staff shuttling between Polish plants and western European headquarters.
