Poland’s construction industry recorded a sharp contraction in September 2026, with output falling 9% year-on-year as building construction plunged by 19.2%, according to new official figures.
The decline was substantially worse than economists had expected, raising fresh questions about the strength of construction activity despite Poland’s continuing investment in transport, energy and other infrastructure.
Figures published by Statistics Poland (GUS) on 20 October show that construction and assembly production fell across all three major divisions of the industry.
Building construction experienced the steepest decline, while civil engineering and specialist construction work also contracted.
After seasonal adjustment, total construction output was 7.2% below its September 2025 level and 7.3% lower than in August 2026.
For the first nine months of the year, production was down 4.7% compared with the equivalent period of 2025.
However, GUS cautioned that irregular timing of construction settlements and the high comparison base from September last year contributed to the weak result.
Those factors mean the headline contraction should not automatically be interpreted as an equivalent collapse in underlying construction demand.
Construction decline much worse than forecasts
The September figures represent a sharp reversal from the previous month’s performance.
According to the revised figures reported by PAP Biznes, construction output had increased by 6.6% year-on-year in August.
Economists surveyed by PAP Biznes had expected output to rise by 2.4% in September, making the reported 9% contraction a substantial negative surprise.
The figures also require careful interpretation because seasonal adjustment changes the month-on-month comparison.
| Construction output measure | September 2026 |
|---|---|
| Year-on-year, unadjusted | -9.0% |
| Month-on-month, unadjusted | +3.0% |
| Year-on-year, seasonally adjusted | -7.2% |
| Month-on-month, seasonally adjusted | -7.3% |
| January–September, year-on-year | -4.7% |
All figures measure changes in construction and assembly production in constant prices, meaning the effects of construction-price changes are removed.
The unadjusted 3% monthly increase might initially appear to suggest an improvement between August and September.
However, construction activity follows a seasonal pattern influenced by working days, weather conditions and the timing of projects.
After adjusting for those factors, GUS reported a 7.3% monthly contraction.
This is therefore a materially weaker result than the unadjusted monthly comparison alone would suggest.
The statistics cover construction and assembly production carried out by construction enterprises employing more than nine people. They are not a direct count of construction sites, housing developments or individual building contracts.
Building construction falls 19.2%
The industry’s three main divisions all reported lower production than in September 2025.
| Construction division | Year-on-year change |
|---|---|
| Construction of buildings | -19.2% |
| Specialised construction activities | -6.1% |
| Civil engineering | -4.1% |
| Total construction and assembly production | -9.0% |
Building construction includes work associated with residential and non-residential buildings.
Its 19.2% fall represents the most pronounced weakness among the principal categories.
Specialised construction activities, which include various technical and installation works, declined by 6.1%.
Civil engineering, covering infrastructure such as roads, bridges, railway structures and utility networks, fell by 4.1%.
The civil engineering result was especially striking because that division had recorded growth of 29% in August.
The reversal illustrates how sharply reported monthly production can fluctuate when major infrastructure contracts reach particular construction or settlement stages.
The data do not establish that all infrastructure development stopped in September, or that every contractor experienced falling activity.
Indeed, GUS’s survey found that almost 32% of responding construction enterprises reported a lower value of production than a year earlier.
Within the surveyed divisions, the corresponding proportions were approximately 34% for building construction, almost 39% for civil engineering and more than 23% for specialised construction work.
Those survey responses refer to reported production values at current prices, rather than the constant-price output measure used for the headline 9% contraction.
They should not be confused with the percentage change in the industry’s total production.
Why construction is struggling despite infrastructure investment
The September downturn follows a longer period of uneven performance in Poland’s construction market.
On 19 October, one day before the GUS release, the Polish Development Fund (PFR) published its latest assessment of the construction industry.
The assessment described a sector that had weakened following particularly strong activity in 2021–2023.
Construction and assembly production fell 7.7% in 2024 and recorded only a modest 0.7% recovery in 2025.
During January–August 2026, output declined by 2.1% year-on-year.
However, performance varied significantly between different types of construction.
According to PFR, civil engineering production increased by 1.6% during the first eight months of 2026, supported by infrastructure projects financed partly through European Union funds.
Building construction declined by 6.2% over the same period, while specialised construction activity fell by 2.7%.
PFR also identified a sharp divergence between investment-related construction work and renovation activity.
Production associated with investment work increased by 9.7% during January–August, while renovation-related work declined by 28.1%.
That helps explain why large infrastructure investment programmes can continue even as the construction industry as a whole experiences weaker output.
Infrastructure activity has been supporting parts of the market, but it has not been sufficient to offset weakness elsewhere.
September’s data show that even civil engineering was not immune to short-term volatility.
Irregular settlements complicate the picture
One of the main qualifications in the GUS release concerns the way construction companies record and settle completed work.
Construction contracts often involve staged payments, certification of completed work and accounting settlements linked to contractual milestones.
As a result, recorded production can vary significantly between months even where work on projects is progressing.
GUS said businesses identified irregular settlement patterns and the relatively high level of recorded production in September 2025 as contributing factors behind the latest declines.
Economists at Bank Pekao also cautioned against interpreting the full contraction as a fundamental collapse in activity.
The bank’s analysts argued that irregular settlements had affected construction output earlier in the summer and could again be distorting the monthly figures.
Pekao expects some of the activity not reflected in September’s results to appear in October, although that remains a forecast rather than an established outcome.
Credit Agricole offered a different, but partly complementary, explanation.
In its 20 October economic analysis, the bank suggested that activity had been temporarily boosted in August by the completion of projects receiving funding through Poland’s National Recovery Plan.
According to that interpretation, the end of the August boost contributed to September’s sharp slowdown, particularly in civil engineering.
Both assessments point towards caution when using one month’s construction data to assess longer-term investment trends.
They do not remove the underlying weakness recorded in building construction throughout much of 2026.
Construction costs continue rising
The contraction in construction output comes alongside continued increases in production prices.
In a separate release published on 20 October, Statistics Poland reported that construction and assembly production prices increased by 6.9% year-on-year in September.
Prices were also 0.7% higher than in August.
The annual increases differed between divisions:
- Specialised construction activities: 7.7%.
- Building construction: 6.7%.
- Civil engineering: 6.5%.
These are construction production-price indices, not direct measures of individual contractors’ profit margins.
Nevertheless, they demonstrate that the industry is operating in an environment where construction work is becoming more expensive even as the volume of production has fallen.
The PFR assessment identified elevated financing costs, higher construction expenses and weaker profitability as important factors behind the prolonged downturn in building construction.
For developers and contractors, the combination creates difficult commercial conditions.
Project budgets must account for higher construction costs, while demand, financing availability and the timing of client investment decisions influence whether projects proceed.
Subcontractors and building-material suppliers may also be affected when construction activity weakens or contracts are delayed.
However, the GUS figures do not establish the financial performance of individual companies.
Housing activity tells a more complicated story
The weak construction-output figures should not be confused with a comparable decline in the number of homes being completed or approved.
Separate GUS housing statistics released on 20 October show that 149,200 dwellings were completed during January–September 2026.
That represented an increase of 3.1% compared with the same period of 2025.
The number of homes on which construction began increased by 4.5%, while the number of dwellings covered by building permits or registered projects rose by 12.3%.
These figures measure different stages of housing development.
A home completed during 2026 may have been under construction for several years, meaning its completion does not necessarily reflect the volume of construction work undertaken in September.
Likewise, an increase in building permits does not guarantee that every permitted development will immediately enter construction.
The simultaneous rise in housing completions and decline in construction production therefore does not represent a statistical contradiction.
It highlights the difference between the flow of construction work during a particular month and the completion or approval of individual housing projects.
Polish construction diverges from industrial production
The construction downturn also contrasts with stronger activity in Poland’s wider industrial sector.
Statistics Poland’s September industrial figures showed that sold industrial production increased by 4.6% year-on-year.
Bank Pekao noted that industrial activity was strengthening across several sectors, including manufacturing connected with investment and exports.
Credit Agricole similarly identified improving industrial production despite the weaker construction result.
The divergence matters because construction influences demand across European supply chains, including for cement, steel, electrical equipment, industrial machinery and specialist engineering services.
Poland’s integration with EU manufacturing and investment markets means that changes in construction activity may affect both domestic suppliers and businesses elsewhere in Europe.
However, the September figures do not establish that international construction suppliers experienced a corresponding decline in sales.
A stronger industrial sector and weaker construction output can coexist, particularly where export demand and domestic building investment are moving in different directions.
October figures will be important
The latest official data confirm that Poland’s construction industry experienced a substantial contraction in September and that output remained below the previous year’s level over the first nine months of 2026.
The decline was especially pronounced in building construction, where weakness has persisted beyond a single month.
At the same time, GUS’s explanation of irregular settlement patterns, the high September 2025 comparison base and the divergent performance of construction divisions complicate the interpretation of the figures.
The next monthly construction release will help establish whether September’s fall was amplified by temporary accounting and project-timing effects or signals a more sustained deterioration in activity.
For contractors, developers and suppliers, the central commercial question remains whether infrastructure investment and a gradual recovery in housing development will produce a more consistent increase in construction work.
For now, the official figures show that substantial investment programmes have not prevented a weak September reading for Poland’s construction industry.
