The 60 days do not start when you file. Under Article 112a of the Act on Foreigners the term runs from the last of three things to happen, and for most people filing in Warsaw that last thing is the in-person appointment where fingerprints are taken — which the office schedules, not you, and which can land months after you pressed submit in MOS.
Then there is the second half of the answer, and it is the one that changes what you do about it: since 15 April 2022 a separate statute has suspended the running of that term in voivode-handled residence cases altogether. So the honest position is that the clock starts later than you think, and that while the suspension runs it is not counting anyway.
Both facts are useful, and for different reasons. Checked on 3 September 2026.
The three events the clock waits for
Article 112a sets the voivode’s term for a temporary residence decision at 60 days, running from the last of these:
- You filed the application in person, or appeared in person at the voivodeship office after filing — unless personal appearance is not required in your case.
- You filed an application free of formal defects, or corrected the defects you were asked to correct.
- You supplied the documents the office required.
These terms were put into the Act by an amendment in force from 29 January 2022, as the public employment service’s information portal Zielona Linia sets out. Read the list once more and notice what it does: it makes the start date a function of the office’s satisfaction with your file, not of your submission. Nothing you do alone starts it.
The appeal stage — the Head of the Office for Foreigners reviewing a refusal — carries its own term of 90 days under the same amendment.
Why the appointment is usually the last of the three
Digital filing did not remove the in-person step. UDSC states that the voivodeship office summons you to give fingerprints and a signature specimen, to present your original travel document, and where necessary to supplement the file.
Since 27 April 2026 the application itself goes in through MOS, so the sequence for an ordinary Warsaw case runs: submit online, wait, get summoned, attend, give biometrics. The appointment sits after the submission and after the formal-defects check by construction. Which means point 1 of Article 112a is generally the last box to be ticked, and the date of your appointment is, conceptually, day one.
There is a second reason this matters. The zaświadczenie — the certificate of filing that replaced the passport stamp on 27 April 2026 — is issued only after an official has verified that the application was filed in time and free of formal defects, which in practice often means after the appointment rather than on the day you submit. So the appointment tends to be the event that produces both the certificate and the start of the term.
What actually happens at the appointment
Short, procedural, and over quickly. What is taken:
- Fingerprints, which go onto the card that is eventually produced.
- A signature specimen.
- Your original travel document, presented and checked against what you uploaded.
- Anything the summons asks you to bring to supplement the file.
In Warsaw this is at the Wydział Spraw Cudzoziemców, ul. Marszałkowska 3/5. Take the original of everything you filed a copy of, not just the items listed. Take the summons itself. Take the passport you filed with — if it has been replaced since, that is a change to the facts of your case and you should say so rather than hope it passes.
If you miss it
Treat the summons as the highest-priority piece of post you get, because a deadline you do not answer is a formal defect, and a formal defect that is not corrected within the period given is what “left without consideration” is built out of. That is not a refusal you appeal. It is a file that was never taken up — and if your legal stay under Article 108 depended on a timely, defect- free application, the protection you thought you had was not there.
If you cannot attend on the date given, respond before the date rather than after it, in writing, in the case. A rescheduling request that arrives in time is an ordinary administrative event. One that arrives afterwards is an explanation.
Why none of this makes the 60 days real
Here is the part that reframes everything above.
Article 100da of the Act of 12 March 2022 on assistance to Ukrainian citizens — a statute scoped by case type rather than by nationality, despite its name — suspends the running of the deadlines for voivode-handled cases on granting and withdrawing temporary residence, permanent residence and EU long-term resident permits, and on changing a temporary residence and work permit. It has been in force since 15 April 2022 and has been extended repeatedly; UDSC published on 6 October 2025 that the Act of 12 September 2025 (Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1301) had carried it to 4 March 2026, and the Act of 23 January 2026 (Dz.U. 2026 poz. 203), in force 5 March 2026, extended it again.
While it runs, the voivode need not notify you that the term has passed, and does not forward a ponaglenie onward. Proceedings are not halted — UDSC is explicit that cases continue to be worked — only the clock. The full account, including a 2026 administrative-court judgment that cuts the other way, is in the post on the Warsaw wait, and what a ponaglenie can still do is in the post on when it works and when it does nothing.
So: the clock starts at your appointment, and it is not running. Both things are true, and holding both is the difference between understanding your case and being angry at it.
What this changes about what you do
Chase the appointment, not the decision. “When will my case be decided” has no answer anyone at the office can give you. “My application was filed on this date and I have had no summons and no zaświadczenie” is a specific, answerable question about a specific stage.
Date everything from the appointment, not the submission. When you are working out how long you have been waiting — for your own sanity, for an employer’s HR department, or for a lawyer deciding whether there is anything to be done — the two dates can be months apart and only one of them is the one Article 112a talks about.
Do not build a remedy on the 60 days alone. A complaint whose whole argument is “the statutory term has passed” runs into the suspension. Anything you file about delay has to reckon with Article 100da, and the practitioners’ route through it is a different argument entirely — the court complaint and what it can achieve.
Keep the appointment evidence. The summons, the date you attended, anything you handed over. Nine to fourteen months later, on the legal publisher LegalSol’s 2026 reporting of Mazowieckie processing times, you will not remember.
Where this post is uncertain
Article 112a’s three conditions and the 60- and 90-day terms are in the statute and are quoted above as such. That the appointment is usually the last of the three is an inference from how the procedure runs after 27 April 2026, not a rule — in a case where personal appearance is not required, condition 1 falls away and the last box will be a different one. The end date of the current suspension is reported inconsistently between sources; the consolidated text in the Dziennik Ustaw is the only authority for the exact day, and if that day matters to you because you are timing a filing, read it rather than any summary, this one included.