Residence card in Kraków 2026 — Przy Rondzie 6 office, INFO.OPT hotline, card pickup, case status

In Kraków residence cases are handled by the Department for Foreigners of the Małopolska Voivodeship Office at ul. Przy Rondzie 6 — and that is where you go to give fingerprints and collect your card. The application is filed electronically in MOS, but the rest of the case happens on site: the office itself sets the fingerprint date, the card is collected only after an online booking, and you ask about the status by phone, because there is no case search for foreigners here. Below are the addresses, numbers and hours we checked on the office websites on 6 October 2026. If you would rather have a representative run the case from the start, see residence legalisation online.

Which office in Kraków handles your case

Foreigners' cases in Małopolska are handled by the Department for Foreigners of the Małopolska Voivodeship Office. The office's main seat is at ul. Basztowa 22, but the department has its own address: ul. Przy Rondzie 6, 31-547 Kraków — and the office asks expressly that correspondence in foreigners' cases be sent there, not to Basztowa. Under one roof work the Foreigners' Service Division with a service hall on the ground floor, the Residence Legalisation Division, the Work Permits Division and the division serving European Union citizens.

The Małopolska voivode serves the whole province. Outside Kraków there is a Foreigners' Division in Nowy Sącz at ul. Jagiellońska 52 (room 113, tel. 18 54 02 347), and in Tarnów at Al. Solidarności 5-9 — an INFO.OPT information point where you can check the status of a case and get help with an application. How offices in other cities work is described in our article residence card in Kraków, Wrocław and Katowice.

Address, phone numbers and hours — as of October 2026

• seat of the department and correspondence address: Małopolski Urząd Wojewódzki w Krakowie, Wydział Spraw Cudzoziemców, ul. Przy Rondzie 6, 31-547 Kraków;
• INFO.OPT hotline: 12 210 20 20, on working days 7:30–15:30, e-mail info.opt@muw.pl; an automated phone assistant 12 210 20 22 (Polish and English) works around the clock and answers general questions, but not about your case;
• direct information desk and the point for submitting additional documents: Monday 7:30–18:00, Tuesday to Friday 7:30–15:30;
• residence card pickup: Monday to Friday 7:00–15:00, only after booking a date at okp.muw.pl and after receiving the SMS that the card is ready;
• information points outside Kraków: Nowy Sącz, ul. Jagiellońska 52 (a division of the department, also card replacement) and Tarnów, Al. Solidarności 5-9 — Monday 8:00–18:00, Tuesday to Friday 7:30–15:30.

The office also runs INFO.OPT open days on selected Saturdays 9:00–15:00 — without booking you can then add documents to a pending case and ask about its status; the last one took place on 12 September 2026. On single days the department is closed (in 2026 among others on 14 August), and outages of the nationwide Pobyt system can halt fingerprinting. We remind our clients of such changes before their visit.

Collecting a residence card in Kraków step by step

In Kraków there is no ticket machine and no walk-in queue: the office serves only people it has contacted itself. When the card is ready, an SMS arrives at the phone number given in the application, and only then do you book a pickup date at okp.muw.pl. The form asks for your name, date of birth as in your passport, the type of application and the case reference number.

• wait for the SMS that the card is ready — cards are produced centrally after a positive decision, so extra time passes between the decision and the SMS;
• book a date at okp.muw.pl separately for each family member and pay 100 zł for the card (50 zł reduced) if you did not do so with the application — the confirmation can be shown at pickup;
• come on time with a valid passport to the service hall on the ground floor at Rondzie 6 — being late cancels the booking, and swapping the slot with another person is not allowed.

The most common problem at pickup is not the booking but the data: a typo in the surname, an outdated passport number or an old address in the file. A card with an error goes back to production, and you wait for another SMS. That is why we check the data in the decision before the card is personalised.

Fingerprints and card replacement

After the application is filed in MOS, the office summons you in person to give fingerprints — only on a date it sets itself. Summonses for MOS applications are sent by e-mail from MOSkrakow@malopolska.uw.gov.pl in the order the applications came in, and documents are added to the case at the fingerprint visit or in reply to a written summons. The case stands still until that visit, so the date in the summons is not worth postponing, and the mailbox must be checked together with the spam folder.

Replacing a residence card — after a change of data, loss or before expiry — still happens in person, after booking by e-mail to rezerwacja.opt@muw.pl (subject “wymiana karty” and your name). The office replies within a few working days and sets a date in Kraków or in Nowy Sącz. As the representative we handle this correspondence for the client — you do not have to watch your inbox to avoid missing the date.

Fees in Kraków: two accounts and a rule that changed in 2026

A residence case involves two different fees paid to two different accounts, and a transfer to the wrong account is one of the more common formal defects:

• stamp duty for the permit — 340 zł for temporary residence, 440 zł for temporary residence and work, 640 zł for permanent residence or EU long-term residence — to the account of Kraków City Hall at PKO Bank Polski: 49 1020 2892 2276 3005 0000 0000;
• the residence card fee — 100 zł — to the account of the Małopolska Voivodeship Office at NBP O/O Kraków: 08 1010 1270 0051 2222 3100 0000, with the foreigner's name and “karta pobytu” in the transfer title.

Confirmations of both fees are attached to the application in MOS — nothing can be paid inside the system. Since 5 March 2026 the stamp duty for a residence application is not refunded if the case ends in refusal or discontinuance. A wrongly chosen legal basis therefore costs not only months but also 340, 440 or 640 zł — the next application is paid for again.

Case status and the office's silence

The Małopolska Voivodeship Office has a case search, but with an express note that it does not cover foreigners' cases. The stage of the application is visible in your MOS account; details are asked for at the INFO.OPT hotline or at the information points in Kraków, Tarnów and Nowy Sącz. That shows the stage, but not what is missing from the file or whether the official is preparing a refusal. What each stage means is explained in our article residence card case status — what the stages mean.

The statutory term for a decision is 60 days from the completion of formal defects (Article 112a(1) of the Act on Foreigners). In Małopolska this has extra weight: from 7 October 2025 to 4 March 2026 the running of deadlines in residence cases was suspended by statute and formal reminders were not even forwarded to the Head of the Office for Foreigners. Since 5 March 2026 the deadlines run again, so a ponaglenie (formal reminder) once more goes into the file and obliges the office to respond. A ready ponaglenie signed by a legal counsel costs 199 zł with us, and handling the case together with a complaint about inaction costs 1199 zł; see the online ponaglenie.

How we handle cases in Kraków and what it costs

Kancelaria Radców Prawnych Bartosz Krajewski handles cases before the Małopolska voivode remotely. Our office is in Warsaw, but the application goes through MOS, correspondence comes to the firm's address, and the appeal authority for the whole country is the Head of the Office for Foreigners in Warsaw. We determine the legal basis of stay, assemble documents from phone photos, file the application, answer summonses and watch the deadlines. You go to Przy Rondzie only for fingerprints and to collect the card. We handle residence legalisation for 2200 zł, or 1900 zł at the promotional rate in online mode; official fees are paid separately.

Already have a summons from the Kraków office, or has your case been standing for months? Send us the letter — usually one conversation is enough to know what to do next. The full scope of our help is described on the page foreigners' cases — scope of the firm's help.