Months and Seasons in Polish

The Polish months, from styczeń (January) to grudzień (December), are old Slavic words and are written with a small letter. To say "in January", use w and the locative: w styczniu, w lutym, w marcu.

The twelve months

Most Polish month names are not related to the Latin names used in English. They are old Slavic words about nature and farm work, so they need to be learned from scratch. Like days of the week, months are written with a small letter. The word for "month" is miesiąc, and "year" is rok.

"In January": w styczniu and the locative

To say "in" a month, use w with the locative case. Every month changes its ending, and several also lose a vowel (styczeń becomes styczniu). September takes we, because "w wrześniu" would be too hard to say. Learn these as fixed phrases.

Luty looks and behaves like an adjective, which is why its form is w lutym. The others are nouns. Related phrases use the same case: w tym miesiącu (this month), w przyszłym miesiącu (next month), w zeszłym miesiącu (last month), w tym roku (this year).

• Urodziłam się w lipcu.
  I was born in July. (said by a woman)
• W grudniu jest bardzo zimno.
  It's very cold in December.
• We wrześniu dzieci wracają do szkoły.
  In September children go back to school.
• Przyjeżdżam w przyszłym miesiącu.
  I'm coming next month.

Dates: pierwszego maja

For dates, the month goes into the genitive case ("the first of May"), and the day is an ordinal number. To say what the date is, the ordinal is in its basic masculine form: Dzisiaj jest pierwszy maja (Today is the first of May). To say "on" a date, the ordinal also goes into the genitive, ending in -ego: pierwszego maja (on the first of May). No preposition is needed.

The "on the …" forms of the days you will use most: pierwszego, drugiego, trzeciego, czwartego, piątego, szóstego, siódmego, ósmego, dziewiątego, dziesiątego, then jedenastego to dziewiętnastego, dwudziestego, dwudziestego pierwszego, trzydziestego and trzydziestego pierwszego.

• Który dzisiaj jest?
  What's the date today?
• Dzisiaj jest piętnasty października.
  Today is the fifteenth of October.
• Kiedy masz urodziny? Czternastego lutego.
  When is your birthday? On the fourteenth of February.
• Sklep jest zamknięty od pierwszego do piątego sierpnia.
  The shop is closed from the first to the fifth of August.
• Urodziłem się dwunastego marca tysiąc dziewięćset dziewięćdziesiątego roku.
  I was born on 12 March 1990. (said by a man)

In writing, Poles put the day first: 3 maja 2026, or with numbers 3.05.2026 or 03.05.2026. Older documents sometimes use Roman numerals for the month: 3 V 2026. Never write the ending after the number, as in "3-go maja". Just write 3 maja and read it as trzeciego maja.

Seasons and "in summer"

The word for "season" is pora roku (literally "time of the year"), plural pory roku. To say "in" a season, the most common way is the instrumental case with no preposition: latem, zimą. Each season also has a common form with a preposition.

Both forms in each row are correct and everyday. For "this summer", "last winter" and so on, use the genitive: tego lata (this summer), tej zimy (this winter), zeszłej wiosny (last spring), przyszłej jesieni (next autumn).

• Latem jeździmy nad morze.
  In summer we go to the seaside.
• Zimą szybko robi się ciemno.
  In winter it gets dark early.
• Na wiosnę wszystko kwitnie.
  In spring everything blooms.
• Tego lata byliśmy w górach.
  This summer we were in the mountains.

In Poland spring is usually counted from March, summer from June, autumn from September and winter from December. Two words you will hear a lot: wakacje, the long summer school holidays from late June to the end of August, and ferie, the two-week winter school break. A sunny, colourful September or October is called złota polska jesień, golden Polish autumn.

Where the month names come from

Knowing the story behind each name is the fastest way to remember it. Only marzec and maj come from Latin; the rest describe what happens in nature or on the farm.

Other Slavic languages use similar names, but not always for the same month. In Czech listopad is also November, but in Croatian it is October. So if you learn another Slavic language later, double-check.

Learning months and dates

Learn each month in three forms at once: the name, "in" + month, and the genitive for dates, for example styczeń, w styczniu, stycznia. Then practise saying today's date out loud every morning, along with your birthday and the birthdays of your family. Every word on this site has its own page with all its forms, so you can look up any case of any month.