Andrzej Duda in the context of "2015 Polish presidential election"

Beata Maria Szydło (Polish: [bɛˈata ˈmarja ˈʂɨdwɔ] , née Kusińska [kuˈɕij̃ska]; born 15 April 1963) is a Polish politician who has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2019. A member of Law and Justice (PiS), she previously served as the prime minister of Poland from 2015 to 2017. Szydło became the third woman to hold the office, after Hanna Suchocka and her immediate predecessor Ewa Kopacz. She currently is a vice-chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament. She is considered to have been a de jure leader of Poland, with the de facto leader being Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the party Szydło is a member of.

She successfully led the presidential campaign of Andrzej Duda, Law and Justice's nominee for President of Poland, to victory. In June 2015, Szydło won internal endorsement to be her party's candidate for prime minister at the forthcoming parliamentary election. On 25 October, Law and Justice went on to win majority government for the first time in the country's history; Szydło was duly appointed Prime Minister on 16 November by President Duda.

Bronisław Maria Komorowski (born 4 June 1952) is a Polish politician and historian who served as the 5th president of Poland from 2010 to 2015. Komorowski previously served as Marshal of the Sejm from 2007 to 2010 and in this position Komorowski exercised the powers and duties of acting president following the death of President Lech Kaczyński in a plane crash on 10 April 2010. Earlier, from 2000 to 2001, he served as Minister of National Defence.

Komorowski was then the governing Civic Platform party's candidate in the resulting presidential election, which he won in the second round of voting on 4 July 2010. He was sworn in as president on 6 August 2010. Komorowski thus became the second person to serve on two occasions as Polish head of state since 1918, after Maciej Rataj. On 24 May 2015, Komorowski was defeated in the second round by Andrzej Duda in the 2015 presidential election. As a result, Komorowski was succeeded by Duda on 6 August 2015.

The Civic Platform (Polish: Platforma Obywatelska, PO) was a centre-right liberal conservative political party in Poland. The party's most prominent leader was Donald Tusk, party chairman between 2003–2014 and 2021–2025.

It was formed in 2001 by splinter factions from the Solidarity Electoral Action, the Freedom Union and the Conservative People's Party, and it later placed second in the 2001 Polish parliamentary election. It remained at the opposition until the 2007 Polish parliamentary opposition, when it overtook Law and Justice, won 209 seats, and Tusk was elected as Prime Minister of Poland. Following the Smolensk air disaster in 2010, Bronisław Komorowski served as acting president of Poland and later won the 2010 Polish presidential election. Tusk continued to serve as prime minister and leader of Civic Platform until he resigned in 2014 to assume the post of the president of the European Council. The party was defeated in the 2015 Polish parliamentary and presidential elections. It placed second in the 2019 Polish parliamentary election, and its 2020 Polish presidential election candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski, won 49% of the popular vote in the second round and lost the election to Andrzej Duda.

Presidential elections were held in Poland on 28 June 2020. As no candidate received a majority of the vote, a second round was held on 12 July, in which incumbent president Andrzej Duda, running with the support of the incumbent government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, faced off against Civic Platform vice-chairman and Mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski. In the second round Duda was re-elected for a second term with 51% of the vote, becoming the first incumbent to win re-election since Aleksander Kwaśniewski in 2000.

The first round of voting was due to be held on 10 May 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland. On 6 May 2020 the Agreement party, which was in a governing alliance with their senior alliance partner Law and Justice (PiS) party and was opposed to pursuing the original election date, reached an arrangement to set new dates for the election. The following day, the PKW declared that the election would not take place on 10 May 2020. On 3 June 2020, the Marshal of the Sejm, Elżbieta Witek, ordered the first round of the election to be held on 28 June 2020 and scheduled the second round on 12 July 2020.

Presidential elections were held in Poland on 18 May 2025. As no candidate received a majority of the vote, a second round was held on 1 June 2025. Incumbent president Andrzej Duda was ineligible for re-election to a third term. The second round was won by conservative Institute of National Remembrance director Karol Nawrocki, with 50.89% of the vote, who was backed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party. Nawrocki defeated the progressive-liberal Mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, who received 49.11% of the vote, nominated for the second time by the Civic Coalition (KO). It was the third consecutive victory for a candidate supported by Law and Justice in the presidential elections.

In the first round, Trzaskowski narrowly came first with 31.4% of the vote, while the right-wing candidates, Nawrocki, Sławomir Mentzen (Confederation) and Grzegorz Braun (KKP) overperformed polls, winning 29.5%, 14.8% and 6.3% respectively, coming in second, third and fourth. Other candidates of the ruling coalition underperformed and fell below expectations; the centre-right candidate Szymon Hołownia (PL2050) received 4.99% of the vote while the left-wing candidates together secured 10.2%, with coalition candidate Magdalena Biejat (The Left) coming below opposition Adrian Zandberg (Razem).

The third Cabinet of Mateusz Morawiecki was the caretaker government of Poland, headed by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, after his re-appointment by President Andrzej Duda on 27 November 2023. Two weeks later, on December 11, 2023, Morawiecki failed to receive a vote of confidence, with 266 of the 460 MPs voting against.

The government was supported by the United Right coalition composed of Morawiecki's Law and Justice, Sovereign Poland and support from Renew PR, Polish Affairs and the Republican Party. It also had the support of some independent MPs. Members of Law and Justice and Sovereign Poland held cabinet posts.

The Third Cabinet of Donald Tusk is the coalition government of Poland headed by Donald Tusk who was officially nominated and confirmed as the Prime Minister of Poland on 11 December 2023 by the members of the Sejm following the failure of Mateusz Morawiecki's Third Cabinet to secure a vote of confidence. On 12 December, Tusk addressed the parliament and announced members of his cabinet, later that day Tusk's cabinet successfully obtained a vote of confidence with 248 of the 460 MPs voting in the affirmative. He and his cabinet were officially sworn in by president Andrzej Duda on 13 December 2023.

Tusk previously served as Prime Minister of Poland between 2007 and 2014, President of the European Council between 2014 and 2019, and the president of the European People's Party (EPP) from 2019 to 2022. The opposition's victory in the 2023 Polish parliamentary election and Tusk's return to power in Poland were mostly positively received by the international community, with multiple news outlets pointing to the erosion of certain democratic structures in Poland and the worsening of the country's relationship with the European Union under the former right-wing government led by Law and Justice.