Poles are drinking alcohol less frequently, according to newly released European data showing that only 0.5% of people aged 16 or over in Poland reported drinking every day in 2025, while around 35% said they had either never consumed alcohol or had not done so during the previous 12 months. The figures add to Polish survey evidence suggesting that abstinence is becoming more common.
The new figures come from Eurostat’s latest data on alcohol-consumption frequency, published on 28 September as part of its 2026 edition of Key figures on European living conditions.
In Poland, just 0.5% of respondents reported consuming alcohol every day. Fewer than 3% drank weekly and around 17% drank monthly.
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By far the largest group of people who drank at all did so relatively rarely: 44.6% reported consuming alcohol less than once a month.
Another 35% fell into Eurostat’s combined category covering people who had either never consumed alcohol or had not consumed it during the previous 12 months.
That definition is important. The figure should not simply be described as the percentage of lifelong abstainers, because it also includes people who may previously have consumed alcohol but had not done so during the preceding year.
The Polish pattern differs substantially from the EU average.
Across the European Union, 4.8% of people aged 16 or over drank alcohol every day in 2025, according to Eurostat. Another 19.2% drank weekly and 21.8% monthly.
Only 20.7% of EU residents drank less frequently than once a month, while 33.5% fell into the never-or-not-in-the-last-year category.
That means regular drinking — particularly daily and weekly consumption — was markedly less common in Poland than across the bloc as a whole.
Poland’s daily drinking rate was also among the lowest recorded in the EU. A comparison of Eurostat data reported by Puls Biznesu found only Lithuania lower, at 0.4%.
The same comparison points to a clear change since Eurostat’s previous survey wave in 2022.
The Polish share of people drinking less than once a month rose from 43.2% in 2022 to 44.6% in 2025, while the share reporting no alcohol consumption during the previous year or never drinking increased from 29.5% to around 35%.
That 5.5-percentage-point increase was reported as the third largest in the EU, behind Malta, where the equivalent share rose by 6.2 points, and Luxembourg, where it increased by six points.
The Eurostat findings also broadly match a separate shift identified this summer by Poland’s Centre for Public Opinion Research.
A CBOS study published in July found that 23% of Polish adults described themselves as abstainers, seven percentage points more than when the organisation last examined the issue in 2019.
At the same time, 73% said they consumed alcohol at least occasionally, down eight percentage points from 2019 and the lowest share recorded in almost three decades of the CBOS series.
The two statistics measure different things and should not be treated as interchangeable. Eurostat’s 35% category combines people who never drink with those who had consumed no alcohol during the preceding year, while CBOS asked Polish adults about their own drinking status.
Nevertheless, both point in the same direction: fewer people report drinking regularly, while the population avoiding alcohol altogether appears to be growing.
Health appears to be an important factor.
Among abstainers questioned by CBOS, 57% cited health as a reason for not drinking, while 51% said they simply felt no need to consume alcohol.
The cultural position of different drinks is also shifting. Wine was named as the preferred alcoholic drink by 32% of respondents who drink, narrowly ahead of beer at 30%. Beer had fallen nine percentage points since the previous CBOS measurement, while vodka was preferred by 13%, three points fewer than before.
The emerging trend may also have fiscal consequences, although the available figures do not establish that changing drinking habits alone are responsible.
Puls Biznesu, citing fiscal data, reported that excise receipts from spirits reached around PLN 3.9 billion in the first half of 2026, compared with PLN 4.5 billion in the same period a year earlier. Beer excise receipts were also slightly lower, at around PLN 1.71 billion versus PLN 1.77 billion.
However, those figures need to be interpreted carefully. The Finance Ministry’s overall budget data show total excise revenue from all products actually increased by 2.3% year on year in the first half of 2026, reaching PLN 44 billion.
Alcohol-specific tax receipts can also be affected by changes in prices, tax rates, the balance between beer, wine and spirits, cross-border purchases and other market factors. The Eurostat survey itself measures frequency, not the volume of alcohol consumed on each occasion.
The latest figures therefore do not show that Poland has stopped drinking, nor do they provide a direct measure of litres of alcohol consumed.
What they do show is a substantial change in how often Poles say they drink — with daily and weekly consumption unusually rare by European standards and a growing proportion of people reporting no recent alcohol use at all.
