Polish Passport in the UK After Citizenship: Step by Step

A decision confirming your Polish citizenship does not come with a passport. If you were born in Britain, Poland has no record of your birth and no PESEL number for you. You get your first Polish passport in the UK in three further steps: have your British birth certificate (and marriage certificate, if you are married) transcribed into the Polish civil register, obtain a PESEL number, and then apply in person at the Polish Embassy in London or a Polish consulate general in Belfast, Edinburgh or Manchester.

The rules below are those published by the Polish consular posts in the UK, checked in September 2026. If you are not yet sure you are Polish by descent, start with our guide to Polish citizenship for British citizens, which explains the confirmation decision.

The order of steps, from confirmation to passport

For someone born abroad who has never had a Polish passport or identity card, the consulate sets out this sequence:

Confirmation of citizenship. A voivode (provincial governor), usually the Mazowieckie Voivode in Warsaw, issues a decision confirming that you hold Polish citizenship.
Transcription. Your British birth certificate, and your marriage certificate if you have one, are copied into the Polish civil register by a Polish register office (urząd stanu cywilnego). The result is a Polish birth certificate and, where relevant, a Polish marriage certificate.
PESEL. The Polish national identification number is assigned on the basis of the Polish birth certificate.
Passport application. You attend a passport appointment with the Polish certificates, the confirmation decision, a photo and your British passport as identity document.

Steps 1 and 2 can overlap. The consulate explains that certificates can be transcribed while confirmation proceedings are still running, but a positive decision from the voivode is an extra condition before a passport application is accepted and a PESEL number assigned.

Step 2: transcribing your British certificates

Transcription (transkrypcja) turns a foreign civil record into a Polish one. You can apply through your local Polish consular post in the UK, in person or by post, or directly at a register office of your choice in Poland. When you apply through a consulate, the consul forwards your application straight to the register office you choose; any office in Poland will do.

What the consulate asks for

The transcription application form, in Polish (downloadable from the consulate’s page).
The original British birth certificate showing the forenames and surnames of your parents. In England and Wales the short certificate does not show parents, so you need the full certificate; see our guide to birth, marriage and death certificates in England and Wales for how to order one from the GRO.
A Polish translation by a sworn translator on the Polish Ministry of Justice list, a sworn translator authorised in an EU or EEA state, or a consul.
Where a parent has no Polish birth certificate and the parents’ marriage was never registered in Poland, the consulate recommends also presenting that parent’s original birth certificate with a sworn translation (an apostille may be needed). Without it the transcription can still go ahead, but the Polish certificate may lack details, and the consulate warns that a PESEL number and passport might then not be possible.

Apostilles and sworn translations of British documents are covered in more detail in our guide to UK documents for Polish citizenship. Marriage certificates follow the same procedure on a separate application.

Fees and timing

At the time of writing (September 2026), the consular fee for transcribing a foreign civil status certificate is £53 per certificate, under the consular fees regulation in force from 5 November 2025. The consulate gives no fixed processing time for the register office; it only says the application is forwarded immediately. The Polish copy can be collected or posted to you.

Names, diacritics and married surnames

A transcription copies the British record faithfully, which causes three common problems.

Missing Polish letters. A British registrar will have written Łukaszewicz as Lukaszewicz. With the transcription application you can ask for the spelling to be adapted to Polish rules, or corrected from a Polish birth or marriage certificate of the parents. The consulate warns that register offices readily correct the parents’ details but do not always correct the child’s, so you can end up with Polish characters for your parents and none for yourself.
Anglicised surnames. If your father was born Szczepański and registered you in Britain as Shepansky, the Polish register will record Shepansky, because that is what your certificate says. See our guide to anglicised Polish surnames.
Married names. A British marriage certificate usually says nothing about the surname each spouse will use. When the marriage is transcribed you can declare your surname: keep your own, take your spouse’s, or combine both with a hyphen. If only one spouse applies, only that spouse can make a surname declaration, and the consulate notes that children of the marriage would then carry a hyphenated surname made up of the mother’s surname and her husband’s, unless the foreign marriage certificate already recorded the choice.

Decide on the married surname before the appointment. A later change means a new passport: the consulate states that a passport becomes invalid 120 days after personal data are amended in the PESEL register.

Steps 3 and 4: PESEL and the passport appointment

For an adult born in Britain, PESEL is assigned in connection with the passport application once the Polish birth certificate exists and the citizenship decision is positive. The consul does not apply for PESEL numbers for any other purpose.

Where to apply and how to book

Passports are issued by the Embassy’s Consular Section at 10 Bouverie Street, London, and by the Consulates General in Belfast, Edinburgh and Manchester. Honorary consuls do not issue passports. Each has a consular district, but the passport pages state you can apply at any Polish consular post. You must collect the passport at the same post where you applied.

Passport appointments are booked through the e-Konsulat system (secure.e-konsulat.gov.pl). Manchester and Edinburgh run a virtual passport queue: you register and the system later offers you a date. At the time of writing, Manchester says an offer arrives within up to four weeks and caps its queue at 3,000 people; Edinburgh says up to eight weeks.

What to bring

A biometric colour photo, 35 x 45 mm, taken within the last six months, on a white background, mouth closed and a natural expression. The consul will not accept the application without a photo that meets the rules.
Your Polish birth certificate (abridged or full copy) and, if married, the Polish marriage certificate.
The voivode’s decision confirming your Polish citizenship.
A valid photo ID, in practice your British passport.
Proof of entitlement to a reduced fee, if any.

The application is made electronically at the counter. A consular employee fills in the form, you check and sign it on a signature pad, and your fingerprints are taken. Under the Passport Documents Act of 27 January 2022, fingerprints are not taken from children under 12.

Fees, waiting time and collection

Service at a UK consular post	Fee (September 2026)
Transcription of a British birth or marriage certificate	£53 each
Adult passport (valid 10 years)	£123
Passport for a child under 12 (valid 5 years)	£40
Passport for a child aged 12 to 17	£62 (check the current fee table)
Temporary passport while waiting for the biometric one	£18

Fees are paid at the appointment by cash, credit or debit card. Reduced fees apply to students aged 18 to 26, pensioners and Large Family Card holders, and applicants aged 70 or over pay nothing. There is no published processing time: you are given an estimated collection date and an application number to track the passport online. If you need to travel before then, you can ask for a temporary passport at the same appointment.

Collection is in person, without an appointment, during the published collection hours. In justified cases, for example when travel to the consulate is particularly difficult, the consul may agree to post the passport within the consular district; you then activate it online with the passport number and application number.

Children need their own transcription and passport

Each child born in Britain needs a transcribed birth certificate and a passport of their own, and the consulate states plainly that a child cannot receive a passport without a PESEL number. For a child born abroad, the PESEL number is applied for by the consul at the first passport appointment.

Both parents normally apply together and give consent on the signature pad. If one parent cannot attend, their consent can be given in a written statement with a notarised signature, electronically with a trusted or qualified signature, through the gov.pl consent e-service, or in person before any Polish consul or passport office.
A child under 5 does not need to attend the appointment.
The online passport application for children under 12 works only if the child already has a PESEL number, so it cannot be used for a first passport after transcription.

If you or a parent already have Polish documents

Many British families have a Polish-born parent with an old Polish passport or a PESEL number. A person with a Polish birth certificate and PESEL does not go through transcription of their birth: they apply for a new passport with their existing identity documents, and the consul checks the Polish registers. The consulate states that registering foreign civil events in Poland is mandatory when you apply for a Polish identity document, so a parent who married in the UK should transcribe the British marriage certificate before applying, especially if the surname changed.

An old Polish passport or identity card is also good evidence for a descendant’s confirmation case; for older papers see pre-war Polish passport and ID applications.

As for the identity card itself: gov.pl states that an application for a Polish dowód osobisty cannot be submitted at a consulate and the card cannot be collected there. From the UK, the passport is the Polish document to aim for.

A worked example (illustrative)

Helen, a fictional applicant born in Leeds in 1984, receives her confirmation decision from Warsaw. She married in 2012, uses her husband’s surname and lives in West Yorkshire, in the Manchester consular district.

She orders full birth and marriage certificates from the GRO, has them translated by a sworn translator and posts them with two transcription forms and two £53 fees to Manchester, declaring her married surname.
When the Polish birth and marriage certificates arrive, she registers in the Manchester passport queue on e-Konsulat.
At the appointment she brings the Polish certificates, the decision, her British passport and a Polish-standard photo, pays £123 and gives her fingerprints. PESEL is assigned in the course of the application.
She collects it in Manchester on the estimated date.

Her son, born in 2015, needs his own transcription and his own passport appointment, with both parents’ consent.

When to take advice

This guide is general information, not legal advice. Consult a Polish citizenship lawyer if the voivode has not yet issued a decision and you are unsure of the outcome, if a register office refuses a transcription (a refusal is an administrative decision you can appeal to the voivode), if the consul refuses a passport (you have 14 days to appeal to the Minister of the Interior through the consul), or if names in the British and Polish records cannot be reconciled.