Poland’s Economy Is Roughly Equal To The 8 Countries In Blue Combined

Map created by geo.universe

The map above really highlights one of the under the radar economic stories of the past decade, the growth of Poland’s economy.

As of early 2025, Poland’s GDP (in nominal terms) according to the IMF is $980 billion, making it the world’s 20th largest (just above Switzerland and below Saudi Arabia).

When using $PPP its economy is over $2T moving it up one spot to the 19th largest economy.

In recent years economic growth has averaged well over 5% per year.

This is a huge change from 1990, when total Polish GDP was just $66 billion and growth was negative 7.2% per year.

In that year, Ukraine’s economy alone was 23% bigger than Poland’s.

Fast forward to today and Poland’s economy is nearly 5x larger than Ukraine’s.

Here’s a comparison between countries in 1990 and today:

Country	Nominal GDP 1990	Nominal GDP 2025	Total Growth	2025 Population	GDP Per Capita In 2025
Poland	$66B	$980B	1,385%	38,140,910	$25,693
Romania	$39B	$403B	933%	18,908,650	$21,334
Ukraine	$81B	$206B	154%	38,980,376	$5,278
Bulgaria	$30B	$117B	290%	6,714,560	$17,426
Lithuania	$11B	$89B	709%	2,830,144	$31,515
Belarus	$17B	$72B	324%	8,997,603	$7,953
Latvia	$7B	$46B	557%	1,853,559	$24,566
Estonia	$6B	$45B	650%	1,344,232	$33,479
Moldova	$4B	$19B	375%	2,996,106	$6,496

And to top it all off Poland spends a higher share of its GDP on defence than any other NATO member at 4.12% in 2024.

The US spends 3.38% and the UK spends 2.33%.

Ukraine, which is fighting for its life, spent 34% of its GDP on defence last year.