Residence card for Ukrainians with UKR status in 2026: the CUKR card, a regular permit and the 4 March 2027 deadline

UKR status protects your stay in Poland until 4 March 2028, but it is temporary protection, not a residence card: it expires on one day for everyone, and a single trip abroad of more than 30 days ends it earlier. The law gives UKR status holders two routes to a card: the simplified CUKR procedure under art. 42c of the special act, and a regular temporary residence permit. Below we describe the conditions of both, the fees, the deadlines and the mistakes that sink an application. If you would rather have the law firm choose the route and prepare the application while you only upload photos of your documents from your phone, for 2300 PLN or a promotional 1999 PLN online, see online residence legalisation.

Why it is not worth waiting until 2028

Temporary protection was extended by Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1912 until 4 March 2028, and until that day UKR status alone makes your stay legal. The problem is that it is a collective basis: it does not depend on your job, family or years spent in Poland, and it will end for everyone at once. A residence card works the other way round: it is yours, it has its own validity date and it counts towards permanent residence and EU long-term resident status.

The legislator itself encourages you not to delay: under art. 42x of the special act, if you file the CUKR card application by 4 March 2027, your stay is legal until you collect the card or until a refusal becomes final, whatever happens to temporary protection. Until the same date, 4 March 2027, art. 42(11) also extends the stay of people whose visa-free period or visa ran out after 24 February 2022. The closer these dates come, the longer the queues at the offices, so the best moment to apply is when nothing is chasing you yet.

The CUKR card: a simplified card for UKR status holders (art. 42c)

The CUKR procedure is a residence card issued on application to a Ukrainian citizen whose stay is legal under art. 106 of the Act on Granting Protection to Foreigners. You do not have to prove employment, income or insurance: the office checks three things in the registers, and all three must be met together:

• on 4 June 2025 you held UKR status;
• on the day you file the application you still hold UKR status;
• your UKR status has lasted without interruption for at least 365 days.

The CUKR card is valid for 3 years from issue (art. 42p) and carries the annotation “Formerly a holder of temporary protection”. On the day you collect it, your temporary protection becomes by law a temporary residence permit (art. 42r), you work without a work permit (art. 42v) and you run a business on the same terms as Polish citizens (art. 42w). A child born in Poland to a mother under protection also receives the card if the child holds UKR status on the day of the application and the mother has been issued a CUKR card (art. 42d). Exactly how long UKR status lasts and what its change to NUE means, we described in the article temporary protection for Ukrainian citizens until 4 March 2028.

What the CUKR card application looks like

The application is filed only electronically, in the system of the Head of the Office for Foreigners (MOS), and signed with a trusted profile or a qualified signature (art. 42f). An application filed in any other way is left unexamined by the voivode. You attach a photograph and proof of two fees paid BEFORE filing: 340 PLN stamp duty for the temporary residence permit (art. 42s) and 100 PLN for issuing the card (art. 42n). Missing either of them is an independent ground for refusal (art. 42e).

There is one more condition people discover only with a refusal: your data in the PESEL register must be complete, meaning a valid travel document, and the UKR register must hold your fingerprints and signature specimen (art. 42g). If your PESEL UKR was assigned on a declaration without a passport, the data must first be completed at the municipal office. The office has 180 days to issue the card or refuse (art. 42l), and the card must be collected within 60 days of the office notifying you that it is ready for collection, otherwise it is invalidated and both fees are lost (art. 42r(2)). We check each of these conditions before anything is sent, because a flawed application means lost fees and more months. How to set up an account and navigate the system is shown in our article residence card application in MOS step by step.

A regular residence card: when CUKR is not an option

The CUKR procedure is not available to someone who obtained UKR status after 4 June 2025, had a break in it, or lost it after a longer trip abroad. What remains is a regular temporary residence permit, also filed in MOS, but with documents matched to the purpose of stay:

• residence and work: a contract with the employer, stamp duty of 440 PLN, a card usually for the length of the contract, up to 3 years;
• business activity: CEIDG or a company, income and insurance, a fee of 340 PLN;
• family: the spouse or child of a card holder or of a Polish citizen, civil status records, a fee of 340 PLN.

This route needs more documents and takes longer, but it is sometimes the only one possible and sometimes simply better: a residence and work permit with a specific employer does not expire with the end of temporary protection and does not depend on an EU Council decision. In both procedures you keep using temporary protection until the decision, for as long as the protection lasts, so you work and live as before. Choosing the purpose of stay and the full set of documents is the difference between a card and a series of requests to supplement, which is why in online legalisation we do it for you. What the office really wants to see for each purpose, we collected in the article documents for a residence card in 2026.

Traps that sink the application

Most refusals and discontinuations in cases of UKR status holders do not come from gaps in the paperwork but from four situations that can be foreseen:

• leaving Poland for more than 30 days before filing: temporary protection expires (art. 109b of the Act on Protection), and with it the condition of holding UKR status on the filing day; the 365-day counter starts again;
• filing a CUKR application while your proceedings for a regular permit are already pending: those proceedings are discontinued by law (art. 42i), and the fee paid in them is not refunded;
• after collecting the CUKR card, leaving Poland for at least 6 months: the permit is withdrawn (art. 42t); a change of address must be reported to the voivode within 15 working days (art. 42u);
• NUE status instead of UKR: whoever did not confirm their identity with a passport in time lost the basis under art. 106 and does not meet the CUKR conditions; then only another basis of legal stay counts.

How to check whether you still hold UKR status and what to do after a change to NUE, we write in the article NUE status: what it means and whether you can return to UKR.

How long it takes and what to do when the office is silent

In the CUKR procedure the act gives the voivode 180 days from a complete application. For a regular permit the statutory term is 60 days from a complete application (art. 112a of the Act on Foreigners), but the voivodeship offices publish no average times, and a case can sit for months waiting for the opinions of the Border Guard, the Police and the Internal Security Agency. When the statutory deadline has passed and there is no decision, you file a reminder under art. 37 of the Code of Administrative Procedure to the Head of the Office for Foreigners through the voivode. We prepare it online for 199 PLN, with the data of your case. Details and ordering: reminder in a residence card case.

Refusal of the CUKR card or the regular permit: what next

A refusal to issue the CUKR card takes the form of a voivode's decision, which can be appealed to the Head of the Office for Foreigners within 14 days of delivery. The most common reasons are the unmet 365-day condition, no status on the filing day, incomplete data in the PESEL register or no proof of fees. Some of these can be fixed and the application refiled, others require an appeal. The stamp duty is not refunded when the case ends in any way other than issuing the card (art. 42s), so an appeal is usually cheaper than a new application. We analyse the decision and write the appeal as part of the service appeal against a residence card refusal.

What we do and how much it costs

We start by checking whether you meet the CUKR conditions or whether a regular application is the better choice, because an application filed in the wrong procedure costs a fee and months. Then we prepare a document list for your situation, fill in the application in MOS for your signature, watch the fees and deadlines, and receive the office's correspondence at the law firm's address. You go to the office only when the act requires it: to collect the card.

Kancelaria Radców Prawnych Bartosz Krajewski handles residence legalisation for 2300 PLN, and in the online mode, where you upload photos of your documents from your phone to the panel, at a promotional 1999 PLN. Official fees (340 or 440 PLN for the permit, 100 PLN for the card, 17 PLN for the power of attorney) are paid separately. The full scope of help for foreigners is described on the page foreigners' cases in Warsaw and remotely across Poland.