Rail operator licensing in Poland
To run trains on the Polish network, a railway undertaking needs a licence from the Office of Rail Transport (Urząd Transportu Kolejowego, UTK). UTK publishes its register of licensed carriers as open data, under a CC0 licence, on the national portal dane.gov.pl. The file dated 4 March 2026 lists 155 licence holders: 145 with an active licence and 10 with a suspended one.
Three kinds of licence
| Activity | Operators licensed |
|---|---|
| Freight transport (przewozy rzeczy) | 142 |
| Traction services (usługi trakcyjne) | 123 |
| Passenger transport (przewozy osób) | 34 |
Most operators hold more than one. Freight together with traction services is the most common combination in the register.
Licence numbers tell the history
Current licences are numbered L/nnn/yyyy, with the year of issue. A few carriers still hold older licences with separate numbers per activity, such as WPR for freight, WPO for passengers and UPT for traction, issued in the 2000s. The year in the number gives a quick view of when an operator entered the market; several licences date from 2023 to 2025.
Who is in the register
- Passenger operators: the long-distance carrier PKP Intercity and regional operators such as Koleje Dolnośląskie.
- Large freight groups, including PKP Cargo and DB Cargo Polska.
- Industrial in-house carriers belonging to refining, chemicals, mining and construction groups, such as Orlen Kolej and track construction companies.
- Independent private freight operators of various sizes.
How the list is used
Lessors of locomotives and wagons, entities in charge of maintenance (ECM), rail insurers, driver training centres and ETCS equipment suppliers treat the register as their full addressable market in Poland. Shippers use it to widen a freight tender beyond the few best-known carriers. UTK publishes safety certificates and ECM certificates in separate registers in the same dataset.