Poland 2026 — three toll sections in the whole country, and e-TOLL is not for your car

The three that charge

• A4 Katowice – Kraków, concession of Stalexport Autostrada Małopolska
• A2 Świecko – Konin, concession of Autostrada Wielkopolska (two companies, one road)
• A1 north of Toruń, Gdańsk direction, concession of AmberOne

Everything else the state runs. The statement that the state-run sections are free for cars — A2 Konin–Stryków and A4 Wrocław–Sośnica since 1 July 2023 — is from our 24 August 2026 reading of the road authority and the government portal. We could not re-open those pages on 2 October 2026: they answer with a bot-protection page or a generic shell. Before you rely on it, check the road authority's own pages.

A4 Katowice – Kraków: the number, and what it is a number for

The operator's price list, headed as the charge for a journey with videotolling and in force from 1 April 2026, gives category 1 — a car, motorcycles excluded — as 18 zł.

That 18 zł is not the price of the road. The operator's own footnote says it is half the charge for the whole Katowice–Kraków section, and that it is collected at each of the two plazas, Mysłowice and Balice. Drive the section end to end and you pay it twice: 36 zł.

Stalexport Autostrada Małopolska, price list, read 2 October 2026.

A2 Świecko – Konin: not free from the border

This is the correction worth making loudly, because the opposite is widely repeated.

The concession starts at the German border. The operator's category 1 tariff table, the file it publishes for two-axle vehicles and which states it is in force from 11 September 2026, reads:

• Świecko to Konin — 141 zł, over 255 km
• Świecko to Nowy Tomyśl — 18 zł
• Świecko to Rzepin — 0 zł

So the first stretch inside Poland genuinely is free, but the western half as a whole is not, and a car pays on it.

Operator tariff table for category 1, file dated 09.2026, read 2 October 2026 from Autostrada Wielkopolska. The rates have changed before and the operator says they change until 2037 — check the table for the date you drive.

How you pay on it, and the trap in the ticket

Two systems on one road. Between Świecko and Poznań it is closed: you take a ticket at one end and pay at the exit for what you actually drove. Between Poznań and Konin it is open.

The ticket is where money is lost:

• it is valid for 48 hours. Exceed that and you pay for the whole closed section on the way out, even if you leave at an earlier junction;
• present a ticket at the same point where you took it and you are charged the maximum rate for that point — and an additional charge may be added on top.

Payment: cash, bank card or fuel card. Cash may be złoty, euro or dollars — but euro and dollars are accepted as banknotes only, and change comes back in złoty at the national bank's current mean rate. Videotolling works only between Poznań and Konin, not on the western half; the operator announces that from 11 September 2026 drivers using it there pay less.

Autostrada Wielkopolska, operating rules and FAQ, read 2 October 2026.

A1 towards Gdańsk

The northern A1 is the AmberOne concession. The operator publishes a journey planner and toll calculator rather than a rate table, so this page prints no figure for it: a number that only exists inside a calculator is a number nobody can be pointed at.

AmberOne A1, toll calculator and journey planning, reachable 2 October 2026.

⚠️ e-TOLL: it is almost certainly not about you

This is the single most common misunderstanding about driving in Poland.

Registration in e-TOLL is mandatory for vehicles and vehicle combinations above 3.5 tonnes, and for all buses regardless of mass. A car does not register. And because it does not have to register, there is no penalty for not having registered.

e-TOLL, who it applies to, read 2 October 2026.

The other half of the same misunderstanding: e-TOLL is not how you pay a concession barrier. The A2 operator states it plainly — e-TOLL does not operate on concession motorways, and what works there is cash, a bank card or a fuel card.

And on a concession section there is no such thing as driving through without paying. There is a barrier.

What this page does not print

No euro figures. The operators publish złoty; we have no exchange rate with a date attached, and putting one in would be inventing a number as surely as inventing a price.

No A1 rate, for the reason above.

Nothing from GDDKiA. The road authority's toll pages answered with a bot-protection page rather than content. That is a statement about the connection, not about Poland — the sections listed here come from the concession operators themselves.

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