Poznań is once again asking residents to look around their neighbourhoods, workplaces and communities and nominate the women who are making a difference.
Nominations for Poznanianki 2026 are now open, with residents able to put forward a woman, or a woman-led group or non-governmental organisation they believe deserves wider recognition. The deadline is 15 September.
The annual campaign will lead into Poznański Tydzień Kobiet, which will take place from 17 to 25 October. A programme of events is being prepared with local NGOs, with the Poznanianki final gala scheduled for 25 October.
The full programme has not yet been announced, but the City says more details will follow, and there is also a concert planned as part of this year's celebrations.
Who deserves to be called a Poznanianka?
The campaign is not simply looking for well-known names.
A candidate might be running a business on one of Poznań's streets, organising activities for a local community, working with migrants, supporting people experiencing difficult circumstances, developing a cultural project or encouraging more women to get into technology.
She might also be someone whose contribution is largely invisible outside the people who benefit from it. That is particularly relevant in a city like Poznań, where so much community activity happens through neighbourhood groups, foundations, associations, independent businesses and informal networks.
The City is also accepting nominations for organisations working for Poznań and its residents. The criteria include activities connected with openness, tolerance, equality and democratic values, as well as work supporting women, local communities and civic participation.
Nominations can be made through the official Poznanianki page on the City of Poznań website until 15 September.
Five stories will be chosen this autumn
Once nominations close, a selection panel will choose five women or organisations by 30 September.
Each will receive a PLN 7,000 award, while their work will become part of the public Poznanianki campaign.
The idea is not only to celebrate women, but also to give residents a chance to discover the people they may live near, work alongside or pass every day without knowing what they do for the city. That local element has always been important to the campaign. Poznań is large enough to have very different communities and neighbourhoods, but small enough for individual initiatives to have a visible effect on everyday life.
Last year's Poznanianki came from very different parts of Poznań life
The 2025 edition included five women whose work illustrates just how wide the campaign's scope can be:
Maria Sadowska is connected with the Barka Mutual Aid Foundation, which works with people experiencing homelessness, former prisoners, people affected by addiction, unemployed people and migrants.
Kamila Lenczewska has spent almost two decades working with the Centre for Intercultural Initiatives Horyzonty, helping develop local and international projects focused on openness, inclusion and active citizenship.
Dominika Mroczek-Dąbrowska combines her work as a lawyer, court mediator and social dialogue specialist with long-term work supporting the Deaf community in Poland.
Technology was represented by Małgorzata "Rita" Łyczywek, a software engineer, mentor and technology communicator who founded the Nerds Coding Gang community in Poznań.
And Jagoda Żurawska, who has managed Umberto restaurant in Poznań for 17 years, has used the restaurant as a place for community initiatives as well as running the business itself.
Their backgrounds are very different, but there is a distinctly Poznań thread running through them: practical involvement in the city and its communities.
Women are the majority in Poznań
The campaign also comes at a time when women make up the majority of Poznań's population.
City figures based on GUS data show that 285,200 women lived in Poznań in mid-2025, compared with 249,700 men. The City points out that the difference may be greater in reality because official statistics do not fully capture the foreign population.
Women also make up a majority of students at Poznań's universities. In the 2024/25 academic year, women accounted for 58.29 per cent of students, with 58,544 female students studying at higher education institutions in the city.
Those numbers are part of the everyday reality of Poznań. Women are a visible presence in the city's universities, businesses, schools, cultural institutions, hospitals, offices, community organisations and neighbourhood initiatives.
Poznanianki puts some of those individual stories in the spotlight.
Poznański Tydzień Kobiet returns in October
The campaign will reach its public stage during Poznański Tydzień Kobiet from 17 to 25 October.
The City has invited NGOs to help shape the programme, which will focus on issues relevant to women living in Poznań. The detailed schedule is still to be announced.
For international residents, the week should also be worth watching. Many of the organisations involved in Poznań's social and community life work across language and cultural boundaries, and previous Poznanianki recipients have included people involved in migrant support and intercultural projects.
The week will end with the Poznanianki gala on 25 October, when this year's five recipients will be formally recognised.
Who would you nominate?
There is still time to put forward someone from your part of Poznań.
It could be a colleague, neighbour, community organiser, business owner, campaigner, teacher, artist, volunteer or someone working quietly behind the scenes. The nomination does not have to come from an organisation, and the campaign is open to residents.
The important thing is to explain what the candidate has done and why their contribution deserves to be recognised.
Nominations close on 15 September. The five selected recipients will be announced after the selection process, ahead of Poznański Tydzień Kobiet in October.
For a city with hundreds of thousands of women living, working and studying here, it is a simple question with plenty of possible answers: who is making Poznań a better place to live?
See more: Get involved and make your neighbourhood a better place with Poznań's 2026 World Clean-up Campaign!
Source and image credit: poznan.pl
