Poland's national 4-day-week pilot covers 90 employers and 5,000+ workers
Poland’s national “Reduced Working Hours” pilot – launched in January 2026 and continuing through 2027 – covers approximately 90 participating employers and more than 5,000 employees. Participating organisations can choose among three reduced-hours models: a four-day week with no salary reduction, shorter working days, or extended annual leave. Results from the trial are due in May 2027, after which the Polish government will consider whether to embed any of the models into national employment law.
The pilot is currently the largest live 4-day-week trial in Europe and the first to test multiple reduced-hours configurations in parallel rather than picking a single model upfront.
Why this matters
For European remote workers, the Polish pilot is a significant data point in the wider European 4-day-week debate. Belgium has enshrined a right to request a compressed four-day week (with the same total hours); Iceland’s reduced-hours trials produced 86% workforce coverage and broadly positive results. Poland’s contribution will be the first large-scale European test of reduced-total-hours rather than just compressed schedules, which is the harder economic case to make and the version that most genuinely changes work patterns rather than redistributing them.
For workers currently employed by Polish companies, including remote workers in cross-border setups where the employer is Polish, the practical implication is that reduced-hours arrangements may become more common in 2026-2027 even before the formal pilot results are published. Employers participating in the pilot have reporting obligations that disclose the experiment to their workforce, so workers should expect transparency about whether their employer is involved.
Context
Poland’s pilot is structurally different from the broadly publicised UK trial conducted by 4 Day Week Global in 2022-2023. The UK trial was employer-led with academic partners; the Polish pilot is government-coordinated with ministry-led monitoring. The data quality and policy-relevance of the eventual Polish results may therefore be higher, particularly for European policymakers considering legislative changes rather than voluntary employer adoption.
Across Europe, the 4-day-week picture in 2026 is fragmented: Iceland’s broad adoption, Belgium’s right-to-request framework, Spain’s now-paused national pilot, France and Germany running scattered employer-led trials, and now Poland’s coordinated multi-model experiment. There is no single European model emerging, but Poland’s results will likely shape the next wave of policy proposals.
What to watch
The May 2027 results publication is the milestone that matters. Any interim findings released before then – particularly around productivity, sickness absence, and voluntary attrition – will feed into the broader European conversation.