Warsaw at 16,393 PLN/m²: the 2026-Q1 city price ranking

Warsaw sets the pace, Łódź anchors the bottom

The 2026-Q1 city ranking leaves little room for ambiguity: Warsaw is the most expensive market in the NBP BaRN secondary-market dataset, at 16,393 PLN/m². Kraków follows at 15,110 PLN/m², then Gdańsk at 13,870 PLN/m². At the other end, Łódź is the cheapest of the five-city low end shown here, at 7,971 PLN/m².

That puts the spread between the top and bottom of this ranking at 8,422 PLN/m². The middle of the pack is not especially compressed either: Wrocław comes in at 12,632 PLN/m², Gdynia at 12,357 PLN/m², Rzeszów at 10,881 PLN/m², Poznań at 10,677 PLN/m², and Lublin at 9,879 PLN/m².

What the ranking shows

This is a straight city-by-city comparison of transaction prices from NBP BaRN for 2026-Q1. It is not an asking-price list, and it should be read as a snapshot of completed sales on the secondary market.

The headline pattern is clear:

• Warsaw stays far ahead of every other city in the ranking.
• Kraków remains the closest chaser, but still trails Warsaw by 1,283 PLN/m².
• Gdańsk holds third place at 13,870 PLN/m², still above the 13,000 PLN/m² mark.
• Wrocław and Gdynia sit in a relatively tight band just above 12,000 PLN/m².
• Lublin is the lowest-priced city in the ranking shown, at 9,879 PLN/m².

The broader context matters too. The dataset’s median price is 9,378 PLN/m², which sits below the seven-city group from Gdańsk upward and just under Lublin’s level in this ranking. That tells you the market is still split between a high-cost coastal/metro cluster and a much cheaper tail.

The cheapest cities and the price floor

The low end of the market is narrow but distinct. The five most affordable cities in the dataset are:

The gap between Łódź and Zielona Góra is only 557 PLN/m², which shows how tightly packed the cheapest group is compared with the high end.

The expensive end stays well ahead

The top five cities in the ranking are separated from the rest by a meaningful step down:

The top five all clear 12,000 PLN/m², while the bottom five in the affordability list all stay below 8,600 PLN/m². That is a clean divide, and it is visible without any extra interpretation.

Transit, neighbourhood and city-centre context

For readers comparing districts, streets or central corridors inside a given city, the city average is only a starting point. A central location in Warsaw can behave very differently from a peripheral one, and the same is true in Kraków, Gdańsk or Wrocław.

For address-level context, use the live property price explorer from our site: Housing market. If you are checking a specific street or neighbourhood, the explorer is the right place to start, because city averages do not show individual address-level variation.

Developer register: what to watch alongside city rankings

This city ranking is a secondary-market snapshot. If you are watching the new-build side, the mandatory asking-price records in the developer register are the other dataset to keep open alongside it. The key distinction is simple: those are asking prices for new units, not transaction prices.

No developer register entries were provided for this topic period, so there is nothing specific to cite here. For city-level comparison, the NBP BaRN ranking remains the cleanest benchmark in this article.

Practical takeaway

If you are comparing cities, the ranking says three things plainly:

1. Warsaw is still in a league of its own at 16,393 PLN/m².
2. Kraków, Gdańsk, Wrocław and Gdynia make up the high-price band beneath it.
3. Łódź, Bydgoszcz, Katowice, Kielce and Zielona Góra form the low-price cluster, with only a few hundred złoty per square metre between them.

For a quick screen, start with the city ranking. For a decision at street level, move to the address-level explorer and compare neighbourhoods directly. City averages can tell you where the market sits; they cannot tell you what a flat by one specific junction, station or riverfront is actually trading for.