Poland is intensifying its campaign for permanent membership of the G20, with President Karol Nawrocki using his visit to the United Nations in New York to argue that Central Europe should have a stronger voice in the world’s main forum for economic cooperation.
Addressing the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Nawrocki said Poland wanted to use the G20 not only to represent its own economic interests but also to bring the perspective of Central Europe into a forum in which he said the region remained underrepresented.
“Now it is time for the voice of Central Europe to be heard in the G20,” Nawrocki told the assembly.
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He argued that Poland’s economic transformation, the rapid development of Central European economies and the emergence of the Three Seas region as an increasingly important industrial and investment centre justified a greater role in global economic governance.
Nawrocki described Poland as the world’s 20th-largest economy and said the country wanted to represent a region whose economic weight had grown faster than its influence in international institutions.
Economic rankings can vary depending on the measure, exchange rates and forecast vintage used. Recent IMF-linked nominal GDP estimates place Poland around the boundary of the world’s 20 largest economies, while Poland’s long-term economic convergence with Western Europe is well established.
Poland is already at the G20 table in 2026
Poland is not currently a permanent G20 member.
The group consists of 19 individual countries together with the European Union and African Union. It represents roughly 85% of global economic output and more than three-quarters of world trade.
However, Poland has been invited to participate at all levels of G20 work during the United States’ 2026 presidency.
The invitation means Polish officials are taking part in the group’s meetings this year and Nawrocki is expected to attend the leaders’ summit in Miami in December.
Warsaw wants that temporary participation converted into a lasting position.
The Presidential Chancellery has made clear that the longer-term objective is permanent membership rather than simply another invitation from a future G20 presidency.
United States publicly backs Poland
Poland has already secured the explicit support of at least one major G20 member.
In a joint statement issued following the Polish-US Strategic Dialogue in April, Washington said it “strongly” supported Poland joining the G20 as a permanent member.
The United States also invited Poland to participate throughout its 2026 presidency.
That backing is significant, but it does not by itself give Poland a permanent seat.
The G20 is not a treaty-based organisation with a formal accession mechanism comparable to the European Union or NATO.
It operates as an informal forum and makes decisions on the basis of consensus. Its leaders reaffirmed that principle in their New Delhi declaration, when the African Union was also admitted as a permanent member.
In practice, Poland would therefore need to build sufficient political agreement among the existing G20 members for the group to expand again.
There is no publicly announced timetable for completing that process.
Nawrocki uses New York meetings to build support
Nawrocki’s New York programme showed that the campaign has moved beyond speeches about Poland’s economic size.
During talks with African Union chair and Burundian President Évariste Ndayishimiye, the Polish side specifically discussed the African Union’s experience of securing permanent G20 membership in 2023.
Nawrocki said the objective of those conversations was to build on Poland’s participation this year and eventually secure permanent membership.
He also discussed Poland’s role in the G20 during a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Türkiye is an existing G20 member and therefore one of the governments whose support would matter in any expansion.
However, the official Turkish account of the meeting did not announce support for Poland’s membership bid. It said the two presidents discussed bilateral, regional and global issues, while the Polish presidency separately confirmed that Poland’s G20 role formed part of their talks.
The Polish president has also raised G20 participation in talks with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar this month. India is another existing member, but the published Polish account did not state that New Delhi had formally endorsed permanent Polish membership.
On the evidence publicly available so far, the United States remains the clearest documented supporter among current G20 members.
Poland presents itself as Central Europe’s voice
Nawrocki has increasingly framed Poland’s bid as a regional project rather than simply a campaign for national prestige.
At a Warsaw meeting with businesses from Three Seas Initiative countries earlier in September, he said Poland wanted the voice of the wider region to be heard at the December G20 summit.
He argued that Central European economies had grown rapidly over the past decade but that their political and economic influence at global level had not kept pace.
The presidency says Poland could bring to the G20 the perspective of countries that underwent post-communist economic transformation, joined Western economic structures and are now becoming increasingly important manufacturing, logistics and investment centres.
The argument also reflects the unusual composition of the G20.
Several large European economies — Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom — participate individually, while the European Union also has its own seat.
No Central or Eastern European EU member currently participates as a permanent national member.
Campaign has support beyond the presidency
The push for a larger Polish role in the G20 is not confined to Nawrocki’s presidential office.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Nawrocki agreed earlier this year that the government and presidency would cooperate in promoting Poland during its participation in G20 meetings in the United States.
The Ministry of Development and Technology has likewise described Poland’s 2026 participation as an opportunity to turn the country’s economic rise into greater global influence and establish a durable position within the organisation.
That gives the campaign an element of institutional continuity despite political differences between the president and government.
The immediate test will be whether Poland can turn its unusually extensive participation during the US presidency into support from a wider group of existing members.
Nawrocki will attend the leaders’ summit in Miami in December, but neither the Polish presidency nor the G20 has announced that a decision on permanent membership is expected there.
For now, Poland has secured access to the table and explicit US backing.
Its larger challenge is persuading the rest of the G20 that the table itself should be expanded.
