What changed in your business over the last year and what was your biggest achievement?
2025 was an exceptional year for the Warsaw Stock Exchange. We delivered record-high index levels, with the WIG rising by 47 percent and the dollar-based MSCI Poland by 68 percent, making the Polish equity market one of the strongest performers globally. At the same time, our daily trading volumes exceeded USD 500 million, we saw unprecedented activity in accelerated bookbuild transactions, and we recorded the highest passive inflows in our history. These results reflect the strength of the Polish economy, which is now the 20th largest economy in the world.
Our biggest achievement was reviving and expanding investor engagement. We saw a surge of interest from global institutions, including an increasing number of international funds beyond traditional emerging market portfolios as well as a growing base of younger domestic investors. The number of brokerage accounts rose by 500,000 to 2.5 million and ETF trading reached all-time highs. This momentum strengthens our long-term vision of positioning Warsaw as a leading and mature financial centre in the region.
What was the most important project in 2025 (regulatory or otherwise)?
In 2025, we placed strong emphasis on developing our ETF offering. We implemented a zero-fee programme, complemented by a marketing campaign promoting passive investing and raising awareness of ETFs listed on the WSE. We have worked closely with ETF issuers on the development and listing of new products such as a dividend ETF, a defence-sector ETF and a bitcoin ETF. These initiatives contributed to a year-on-year increase of more than 100 percent in ETF turnover.
We also launched the first edition of the WSE IPO Academy. This is a comprehensive programme designed to prepare companies for a public listing, from the decision to go public, through documentation to PR and investor relations strategies. The programme included a series of workshops for companies planning an IPO and we are pleased that dozens of firms have already joined.
Additionally, we expanded our sponsorship programme focused on analytical coverage for smaller listed companies and extended the scope of our educational activities. More than 100,000 young students took part last year.
What are you most excited for in 2026?
We’re entering a period of what I call “strategic acceleration” in several areas, including technology and AI. We are preparing for the launch of WATS, our new proprietary trading system, which represents a fundamental upgrade to the exchange’s technological backbone. WATS will bring low latency, greater scalability and enhanced operational resilience across equities, bonds and derivatives. Its implementation marks a defining milestone in strengthening GPW’s long-term market infrastructure and aligning it with the world’s most advanced trading venues.
We are increasingly focused on the opportunities created by AI. Over the coming year, we intend to explore AI-driven solutions that can support smarter internal operations, improve efficiency and unlock new value for market-data users. AI is reshaping the global exchange landscape and we see significant potential for GPW to play an active role in this evolution, bringing cutting-edge innovation to Poland’s capital market.
Looking at the market more broadly, we expect 2026 to mark a clear revival of the IPO landscape, supported by strong secondary-market activity and improved valuations. We also expect increased activity from Central and Eastern European issuers, including the possibility of a significant defence-sector IPO toward the end of the year.
We hope that new IPOs and an expanded ETF offering will attract more individual investors and help make investing on the Warsaw Stock Exchange a mainstream theme once again.
What are your biggest opportunities?
Mobilising domestic capital is the biggest opportunity. Last August, Andrzej Domański, Poland’s Finance Minister, announced the Personal Investment Account (OKI), a new savings and investment scheme inspired by Sweden’s ISK accounts. More than half of Polish household financial assets are currently held in cash and bank deposits. This is the highest share among large EU economies, compared with an EU average of 31 percent and 12 percent in Sweden. The OKI scheme, due to launch in the middle of this year, will allow individuals to invest up to PLN 100,000 tax-free and could attract up to PLN 100 billion within three years, according to the ministry. We hope that a significant share of these inflows will be directed to the domestic stock market.
On the global side, and in the medium-term, an upgrade of Poland to MSCI-developed-market status would be a key catalyst. We see a clear path to achieving this within three to five years, which would open the door to substantial inflows from benchmark-driven institutional investors.
What do you see as the key themes and trends for your exchange and market infrastructure in 2026?
Looking ahead, we expect a continuation of the major trends that gained momentum in 2025, especially in technology. AI has been a dominant theme across global markets and while last year was largely about exploration and experimentation, 2026 will be more about implementing these tools and, equally importantly, evaluating where they genuinely add value.
At GPW, we want to take a much deeper dive into this space. We see real potential in digitalisation, AI-powered solutions and automation to make our operations more efficient and ultimately improve the experience for everyone who interacts with our markets.
On the product side, we expect another strong year for ETFs and passive investments. We anticipate more thematic ETFs coming to market, including new products from major domestic institutions.
From a regulatory perspective, 2026 will also be a very important year. Deregulation efforts in Europe are gaining momentum, and the Listing Act is set to simplify the IPO process in a meaningful way. At the same time, we’re encouraged by the initiatives under the European Savings and Investment Union, especially those aimed at mobilising private and public capital.
We are also seeing concrete steps to reduce fragmentation - such as the development of a consolidated tape and closer post-trade integration, which have the potential to improve market efficiency and connectivity across the EU.
That said, it’s important to maintain the right balance. Greater integration is certainly valuable, but consolidation should not endanger the ability of our SMEs to access capital through local and regional exchanges. For many of these companies, that’s where their growth journey begins, and these channels need to remain strong.
Finally, we also see real potential in closer regional cooperation. The memorandum we signed with seven other Central European exchanges gives us a solid platform to build on. We aim to advance regulatory harmonisation and operational cooperation to make cross-border activity smoother across CEE markets, while keeping a strong focus on supporting smaller and high-growth companies, which are such an important part of our regional economy.