Do the identity stack first, then the documents, then the form — in that order, because the portal will not let you in without the first and the office will not treat your file as complete without the second. Filing itself is an afternoon. Getting into a position to file is what takes people weeks, and it is the part nobody schedules.
Since 27 April 2026, applications for temporary residence, permanent residence and EU long-term resident status are filed only through MOS (Moduł Obsługi Spraw), the Office for Foreigners’ portal at mos.cudzoziemcy.gov.pl. There is no paper route for an ordinary case. UDSC’s own question-and-answer page states that a paper application arriving after 26 April 2026 is not examined — the date it lands, not the date you posted it.
Checked on 3 September 2026. Sources named as they come up. This describes the procedure and what applicants are asked for; it is not advice about your case.
What you need before you open the portal
You log into MOS through login.gov.pl, using a trusted profile (profil zaufany) or a qualified electronic signature. That is the gate, and it is upstream of everything else.
The trusted profile is the ordinary route and it is free. A qualified electronic signature is the documented alternative and it is a paid commercial product — worth knowing about if the trusted profile is not available to you, because it is the only other way in that UDSC names. Either way, sort this out before your legal stay gets short. It is the reason PESEL and profil zaufany sit at the front of a Warsaw first-week sequence rather than somewhere in the middle.
An adult creates an account for themselves, or as a legal representative — a parent, guardian or curator — for a minor.
What the portal asks for
The government’s own business portal, biznes.gov.pl, publishes the document list for the single permit, and the shape of it holds across the residence permits. Checked 3 September 2026:
- a digital photograph in JPG, within the portal’s size limits — the page gives a maximum of 684 × 883 pixels, which is smaller than the file your phone produces and is a common first rejection;
- copies of all used pages of your travel document;
- proof of payment of the stamp duty;
- Załącznik nr 1 — the attachment completed and signed by your employer, describing the position, the working time and the remuneration;
- proof of health insurance;
- confirmation from the tax office of the employer’s or your own standing, where the procedure calls for it.
Two working notes on that list. The employer attachment is the item that most often stalls a filing, because it needs a signature from someone who is not you and who has other priorities — UDSC itself flags employer signatures as a source of delay. And proof of payment means the stamp duty and the card fee, which go to separate accounts: 440 zł and 100 zł for the single permit, per biznes.gov.pl. If you have not paid, the voivode summons you to, with a short deadline attached.
The two steps that are not in the portal
This is the part that catches people who read a guide written before spring 2026, and the part that decides when your case actually starts moving.
You will be summoned in person. UDSC states that the voivodeship office calls you in to give fingerprints and a signature specimen, to present your original travel document, and where necessary to supplement the file. Digital filing changed the channel, not the contact. In Warsaw that appointment is at the Wydział Spraw Cudzoziemców, ul. Marszałkowska 3/5.
The passport stamp does not exist any more. The voivode stopped placing the odcisk stempla in travel documents on 27 April 2026. What replaces it is a zaświadczenie — a certificate of filing you download and print from your MOS account — and it is issued only after an official has verified that the application was filed in time and is free of formal defects. In practice that verification often lands after the in-person appointment rather than on the day you submit, which means there is a gap during which you have filed and have nothing to show for it. What that certificate does and does not do is worth reading before you need it, because the answer surprises people.
The order to do this in
The order is the point. Each step is blocked by the one above it.
- Get the identity means sorted — the trusted profile, or a qualified electronic signature. Nothing else can start until this exists.
- Ask your employer for Załącznik nr 1 now, in writing, with the date your legal stay ends in the message. It is the item you do not control.
- Pay both fees and keep the confirmations as files, not as bank-app screenshots.
- Assemble and scan the documents, photograph included, at the sizes the portal accepts.
- File in MOS, before your legal stay ends — the timing is the whole ballgame, and Article 108 of the Act on Foreigners hangs on the application having been filed in time and free of formal defects.
- Wait for the summons, attend it, and give the fingerprints and the signature.
- Download the zaświadczenie when it appears, save a copy outside the portal, and carry one. Your employer’s HR department will ask for it.
What “left without consideration” means
It is the phrase the offices use, and it is the worst outcome in the procedure, because it is not a refusal you can appeal — it is a file that was never taken up.
The clearest case is the one above: paper that arrived after 26 April 2026. But an application with formal defects that you do not correct within the deadline the office sets lands in the same place, and here the timing is brutal. If your legal stay depended on filing before it expired, and the filing is treated as never properly made, the protection you thought you had was not there. This is the single strongest argument for filing early rather than on the last available day: it leaves room to be told something is missing and to fix it while your stay is still legal.
What MOS did not change
Worth stating plainly, because the portal was widely described as a fix for the backlog and it is not one.
It did not change Article 112a. The voivode’s statutory term is still 60 days from a complete application, and Mazowieckie was still being reported in 2026 at nine to fourteen months.
It did not change the suspension of that deadline. A separate 2022 statute has suspended the running of the term in voivode-handled residence cases since 15 April 2022, which is why a ponaglenie so often achieves nothing — the post on the Warsaw wait sets out the whole of it.
And be careful with processing-time promises attached to the portal’s name. The site mos20.pl reads like an official portal and ranks like one; it states on its own pages that it is operated by a private company and is not affiliated with the Polish government or UDSC. A processing-time figure from a commercial service is a marketing claim, not a statutory term.
Do you need to pay someone to file this?
No, for an ordinary case, and UDSC says as much: the portal is free and a foreigner can file without an intermediary. What an agency sells you is the assembly work and someone to blame, and it produces the same entry in the same queue on the same day. The office does not sort by who submitted.
Where paying makes sense is where the file is hard rather than the form — a mixed-nationality family case, a gap in your legal stay, a refusal already on record, or a situation where the permit type your employer wants to file is not the one that fits you. That is drafting, and drafting is worth money.
Which cases still go on paper
A narrow set of cases survived the cutover, and if you are in one of them the portal is not your route: employer-filed intra-corporate transfer and mobility applications, family cases where the applicant is outside Poland, and family members of Polish, EU, EEA, Swiss and UK citizens. Check which category you are in before you build a submission you cannot make.
Where this post is uncertain
The document list above is the published one for the single permit and the shape holds across the residence permits, but the exact annexes differ by permit type and the office can ask for more in the evidentiary stage — that discretion is real and it is why two people filing the same week get different requests. Fees and thresholds are dated in the text because they move. And UDSC’s question-and-answer page is the source for the portal mechanics; where a law firm’s summary and UDSC disagree, believe UDSC and check the statute.