Kaczyński re-elected as PiS leader but party struggles to adapt to new political terrain
Kaczyński, long the master of binary politics, avoided the deeper question now facing his party: how to speak to voters who no longer believe in the system he helped build.
Jarosław Kaczyński was re-elected as leader of Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice party on Saturday, pledging to fight the parliamentary election in 2027 using the same formula that has delivered every major PiS victory since 2015, but as the ground beneath Polish politics keeps shifting it is no longer clear whether the old tools can still deliver the same results.
The party congress took place in a sports hall in the small town of Przysucha in southern Mazovia, a symbolic venue for party meetings for PiS since 2014, when it hosted a key convention ahead of the party’s breakthrough 2015 campaign.
In his keynote speech, Kaczyński doubled down on his traditional playbook of building a mass activist base, controlling the narrative through polarisation, and rewriting the constitution to lock in power.
But the political terrain PiS once dominated has changed. The far-right Confederation, a loose alliance of nationalist, libertarian and ultra-conservative factions, now commands the under-30 vote. Donald Tusk has absorbed key elements of PiS’s old economic and security agenda. And the party’s traditional campaign methods of press briefings, provincial tours and terrestrial television, are losing ground to the decentralised, fast-moving influence of social media.
What’s more, the polarisation that once defined Polish politics, between PiS and the liberal Civic Platform, has begun to erode. A growing share of voters, especially younger ones, no longer see either bloc as representing them.
Kaczyński, long the master of binary politics, offered no strong answer to this fragmentation. He attacked familiar targets of gender ideology and left-wing infiltration of universities, but avoided the deeper question now facing his party: how to speak to voters who no longer believe in the system he helped build.
A party in holding pattern
Jarosław Kaczyński has led PiS without interruption since 2003. The party congress, held every four years, is formally tasked with selecting a leader and approving strategic direction.
On Saturday, Kaczyński was re-elected with 1,214 of 1,269 delegate votes. No candidate stood against him. The result was widely expected despite his earlier hints that he might step down if Karol Nawrocki won the presidency.
This year’s congress came at a moment of drift. PiS technically won the 2023 parliamentary election with the largest share of the vote, but lost power to a coalition of centrist and liberal parties led by the current prime minister, Donald Tusk.
After that defeat, Kaczyński made it clear that the interim goal was the presidency, and that box has now been ticked. PiS-backed historian Karol Nawrocki won the June 2025 runoff vote, maintaining the party’s crucial veto over legislation.
This made Saturday’s congress unusually charged. Expectations were high for a new organising idea, a strategy to attract younger conservatives into the fold.
A familiar message
In his 45-minute address, Kaczyński presented no new vision for the party. Instead, he returned to the three pillars that have defined his leadership since 2015: cultural confrontation, constitutional change and maximum mobilisation.
In terms of ideology, he painted the current political situation as a moment of internal threat. He warned of a “black period” and claimed that Poland’s sovereignty, rule of law, and democracy were being undermined from within. “Poland must be, it must endure,” he said.
He repeated his longstanding view that Polish statehood must be defended by altering its constitution. He called for a “new state order” in which legal guarantees would be embedded to prevent what he described as institutional sabotage by political opponents.
He cited the need to dismantle entrenched “fiefdoms”, especially in higher education, that he considers left-leaning and unaccountable. He criticised left-wing influence in universities and schools and pledged to insulate public life from what he called “ideological extremism.”
He also attacked Western social norms, quoting Donald Trump’s line that “there are two sexes, women and men,” which was met with loud applause in the hall.
Boosting the ground game
Tactically, he announced plans to expand PiS into a 100,000-member party, nearly doubling its current size. Recruitment is to be centralised using digital systems rather analogue ones in local branches.
The intention is to create a tightly managed network of local campaigners capable of supporting a national campaign over the next two years.
Kaczyński also pledged that PiS would tour the country, meet with voters, and use those meetings to develop the party’s 2027 programme, a method last used ahead of its 2015 breakthrough win.
However, the average PiS member, however, is over 60 years old, far removed from the electorate it now needs to attract.
Managing factions
In a minor gesture towards youthful rejuvenation, the congress approved four new deputy chairs: Przemysław Czarnek (48), Anna Krupka (43), Tobiasz Bocheński (37), and Zbigniew Ziobro (54).
Bocheński, 37, is a former province boss and current MEP. Krupka is a regional party organiser close to Kaczyński. Czarnek, the former education minister, is expected to head President Nawrocki’s Chancellery. Former justice minister Ziobro’s return formalises the reintegration of his hardline Catholic-nationalist Solidarna Polska faction after it was absorbed into PiS.
The changes balance younger figures with factional management. No successor was named. The party’s structure remains intact, with Kaczyński holding full control.
Losing ground on the right
Law and Justice remains the dominant force on the Polish right, but it has never faced such concentrated competition within its own ideological space.
The far-right Confederation has consolidated support among younger voters. An IBRiS survey conducted days before the congress put Confederation at 16.8%, with PiS at 30.5.
That challenge is now amplified by a new rival. Grzegorz Braun, a radical Catholic-nationalist MP expelled from Confederation earlier this year, and his formation called the Confederation of the Polish Crown in the same IBRiS poll registered 5.1% support, enough to cross the parliamentary threshold and further fragment the nationalist vote.
Kaczyński addressed the numbers directly, rejecting the assumption that PiS could rely on Confederation to form a government in 2027. The goal, he insisted, was a decisive solo victory.
“No, ladies and gentlemen, not 30%,” he told delegates. “We must aim for 40% or more.”
Within PiS, several younger figures, such as Patryk Jaki, Sebastian Kaleta, and Piotr Müller, are seen as ideologically closer to the libertarian wing of the far right than to Kaczyński’s state-centric conservatism.
Some commentators have even speculated about a new formation emerging at the contact point between PiS and Confederation under the patronage of President-elect Nawrocki.
This tension was not addressed in Przysucha. Kaczyński’s vision for the party remains focused on cultural conservatism, welfare transfers and top-down political control.
The younger right, by contrast, demands free-market economics, low taxes, deregulation, minimal welfare and a form of nationalism stripped of social spending. Yes for hard borders, strong identity politics, but no appetite for income redistribution.
A party out of sync
Kaczyński left Przysucha with his authority intact and his strategy unchanged. He reaffirmed the formula that brought PiS to power and held it there for nearly a decade. But the party is no longer speaking to a political reality it helped create. Buoyed by its win in the presidential election, PiS is marching forward, without quite knowing what it is marching into.
A version of this article first appeared at TVP World
Poland is at the heart of Europe. As the continent’s centre of gravity shifts, understanding Poland is key to understanding Europe itself.
PolandWatch is your guide. With in-depth analysis, insights, and clear explanations, I’ll help you make sense of the strategies, struggles, and trends shaping Poland today.
Subscribe today for regular coverage.