We join Warsaw Pride 2026, where, for the first time in years, the mood feels less like protest and more like celebration following this historic legal breakthrough. We profile some of Poland's most influential queer cultural icons, figures whose impact reaches far beyond their own communities. And we trace a century of progress and resistance in Poland's LGBTQ+ history, from repression to the first same-sex marriage certificate entered into the Polish civil registry. In culture, Hania Rani, one of Poland's most internationally celebrated composers and a 2026 European Film Award winner, returns to Warsaw to open the Ephemera Festival. And in Tuscany, the town of Pietrasanta opens a new museum dedicated to Igor Mitoraj, one of Poland's most distinctive and internationally recognized sculptors, who made his home there in 1983 and lived and worked there until his death in 2014., who made his home there in 1983 and lived and worked until his death in 2014.
Pulse of Culture is a weekly English-language magazine for anyone with a connection to Poland, including tourists, the diaspora, and the simply curious. New episodes are released every Sunday.
