Polish Poster. The Collection - Part 2

From 20 June to 27 September 2026 the Poster Museum in Wilanów, a branch of the National Museum in Warsaw, showed the second rotation of its first permanent exhibition, drawn from a Polish poster collection of nearly 36,000 objects.

National Museum on the exhibition:

The Poster Museum in Wilanów is back! From Young Poland-era posters to contemporary graphic design projects - the Polish poster collection numbers nearly 36,000 objects. For the first time in the history of the world’s first poster museum, they will be presented as part of a permanent exhibition.

Because paper is fragile, the display will change every three months. The story it tells, however, will stay the same: a history of social, cultural, and political change that left its mark on posters.

The exhibition is divided into six chapters: from the Young Poland era, through the artistic advertising of the interwar period, postwar propaganda, the artistic phenomenon of the Polish poster school, to contemporary graphic design.

The Poster Museum returns to Warsaw’s map after several years’ absence, during which it underwent a thorough modernization. The new layout was designed by Syfon Studio.

What to expect

This rotation ran from 20 June to 27 September 2026 at the Poster Museum in Wilanów, a National Museum branch in Warsaw’s southern district of Wilanów. It was a rotating presentation of the permanent collection - the objects on view change every three months because paper is fragile, but the underlying structure (six chapters, from Young Poland to contemporary design) stays the same. The first rotation ran from 14 March to 7 June 2026 and reopened the museum after several years of modernisation.

The exhibition description and the programme of accompanying events remain on the National Museum’s website and the Poster Museum’s website (both in Polish).

Updates

• 2026-09-14 - the National Museum now gives a new closing date: this rotation runs until 27 September 2026, not 13 September (source: exhibition page).

After the show

The museum has announced the third rotation, Polish Poster. The Collection - Part 3, for 13 October 2026 to 10 January 2027. The six-chapter story stays; the posters on the walls change. Between 28 September and 12 October the National Museum’s listings show no rotation at the Poster Museum in Wilanów, so check the Poster Museum’s website before you make the trip.

The catalogue, “Plakat polski. Kolekcja”, edited by Bożena Pysiewicz, Mariusz Knorowski and Michał Warda and designed by Kuba Sowiński, was published by the National Museum in Warsaw (2026, 352 pages, paperback with flaps, ISBN 978-83-7100-508-4, in Polish). It costs 140 PLN at the museum bookshop, Al. Jerozolimskie 3, and at the Poster Museum ticket desk, with a choice of two cover designs. It traces the Polish poster from the late 19th century to the 2010s, so if you missed this rotation, the book holds the whole story the rotations split up (catalogue page). English on site: the museum offers an audio guide to the exhibition in Polish and English.

Vogue Polska (14 March 2026, Barbara Siemianowska-Aniol) reported at the opening of the permanent exhibition that the curators had picked 240 objects for about 800 square metres, and that the posters swapped every three months come from a pool of nearly 500 titles - vogue.pl. The author wrote that in the quiet of a museum the posters say more, and say it louder, than in the chaos of the street.

One show still on at the National Museum in Warsaw:

• Adolph Menzel (1815-1905). The Tireless Observer - at the Main Building until 13 December 2026; paintings alongside drawings and prints, graphic art from the century in which the artistic poster was born.

Another current show in Warsaw on print and graphic art:

• Photocopy and Hand Out! Zines and the Independent Press in Poland During the Transition - at the Caricature Museum until 15 November 2026; duplicator and photocopier prints of the 1980s and 1990s, street-level visual communication outside the official channels.

Museum profile: National Museum in Warsaw.