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Who still gets free NFZ care after 5 March 2026
Since 5 March 2026, temporary protection for people displaced by the war runs under Poland's permanent Act on Granting Protection to Foreigners, which replaced the earlier emergency specustawa. Your right to stay hasn't gone anywhere: EU-level temporary protection continues at least through 4 March 2027, and a provisional 2026 EU Council decision extends that a further year, to 4 March 2028, for anyone who already held protection status before the year's eligibility changes took effect. The rules for keeping protection status come from Polish law and EU decisions and can change, so check the current conditions at gov.pl and udsc.gov.pl.
What did narrow is healthcare. Free NFZ access tied to PESEL UKR status is now limited to four groups: minors, pregnant women and women in the postpartum period, survivors of torture or rape, and residents of collective accommodation centers. Emergency, life-saving treatment stays free for everyone in Poland regardless of status; that part hasn't changed. But if you're an adult outside those four groups and not living in a collective center, PESEL UKR by itself no longer gets you a free GP appointment, a specialist referral, or planned hospital treatment.
You have three realistic ways back into the system: NFZ access through legal employment, a registered business, or unemployment registration; a voluntary NFZ contribution you arrange and pay yourself; or private insurance that covers actual treatment. Employment is usually simplest if you already have a job lined up, though the contract type matters: umowa o pracę and most umowa zlecenie arrangements bring automatic NFZ access through contributions, while umowa o dzieło, a piece-work contract, generally doesn't, so it's worth checking which one you're actually being offered.
- The specustawa gives automatic free access to NFZ
- Automatic free access no longer applies to everyone
- EU temporary protection status extended
The CUKR card: what it is, and why it isn't an insurance requirement
CUKR is the name almost everyone uses, but it isn't an official statutory acronym, just informal shorthand for a 3-year temporary residence card whose formal name is karta pobytu z adnotacją "Poprzednio posiadacz ochrony czasowej." Applications go through the MOS e-portal, open from 4 May 2026 through 4 March 2027, and the fee is 440 PLN. To qualify you need active UKR protection status on your application date, active status specifically on 4 June 2025, active status at issuance, and at least 365 cumulative days of protection status, so it isn't automatically open to everyone who currently holds PESEL UKR, only to those who meet that continuity condition. Get it, and you gain full labor-market access, business rights equal to a Polish citizen's, Schengen travel, and time that counts toward a future EU long-term residence permit.
Here's the part worth planning around: getting CUKR ends your PESEL UKR and temporary protection status. You don't keep both. Once you hold CUKR, you move into the ordinary foreigner regime, including for healthcare, and lose the UKR-linked NFZ carve-outs described above. From that point you're in the same position as anyone holding a standard Polish residence card: you need NFZ-equivalent cover through work, or a private insurer's confirmation that it covers actual treatment in Poland, exactly the condition that Article 114 work-based permits and study-based karta pobytu already carry as a formal legal requirement. That's the real contrast with PESEL UKR itself: no office asks you for proof of insurance to grant or renew PESEL UKR, and none asks for it to grant or renew CUKR either. Insurance here is a practical necessity for closing the healthcare gap, not a document requirement of either application. What changes once you hold CUKR is your surrounding situation, not CUKR's own paperwork: you're now in the standard foreigner regime, so if you go on to apply for a further permit such as an Art. 114 work-based karta pobytu, proof of insurance becomes a formal legal condition of that specific application, the same way it already is for anyone applying for one of those permits today.
Two situations, two different policies
The moment you hold CUKR, or you're pursuing a standard temporary residence permit some other way (through employment under Article 114, for instance), the PESEL UKR healthcare rules stop applying and the karta pobytu insurance requirement takes over: proof of NFZ-equivalent cover, or a private insurer confirming it covers actual treatment in Poland. We run a dedicated program built for exactly that requirement. And if you have a family member still in Ukraine who needs a Schengen visa (type C) or Polish national visa (type D) insurance policy to join you, rather than a residence-permit product, that's a separate, simpler purchase. Here's where each of those leads:
Karta Pobytu Insurance in Poland: Which Policy You Need and How It Differs From Visa Insurance
Work Visa Insurance for Poland
The private option that covers treatment
If employment-based or voluntary NFZ doesn't fit your situation yet, private insurance is the fastest way to have real cover in hand today. The program we run for actual treatment costs in Poland was built around the karta pobytu insurance condition, but the coverage itself closes the same healthcare gap PESEL UKR now leaves you with after 5 March 2026. In the calculator, set your location to "I'm abroad," then manually select Kniazha from the narrowed insurer list that appears; that specific combination is what applies this program rather than a standard visa policy.
See the treatment-coverage program