Andrzej Duda

Andrzej Sebastian Duda (born 16 May 1972) is a Polish lawyer and politician who served as the 6th president of Poland from 2015 to 2025. Before becoming president, he served as a Member of the Sejm (MP) from 2011 to 2014 and as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2014 to 2015.

Born in Kraków, Duda ran in the 2015 presidential election as a candidate for the Law and Justice (PiS) party and defeated the incumbent president, Bronisław Komorowski, in a surprising and significant upset. In the first round of voting, he narrowly placed first but fell well short of the required absolute majority, finally winning in the second round of voting, receiving 51.55% of the vote. On 26 May 2015, Duda resigned from his party membership as the president-elect.

As president, Duda heralded a political change in the country, paving the way for the sole rule of the PiS party after the 2015 parliamentary election in October, a political first in Poland. After PiS took power, it helped consolidate its control over the state in what has been criticised as democratic backsliding.

In October 2019, Duda received the official support of PiS ahead of his re-election campaign in 2020. He finished first in the first round and then went on to defeat Rafał Trzaskowski in the runoff with 10,440,648 votes or 51.03% of the vote. Throughout his first and second terms, Duda has largely aligned himself with the right-wing ideologies espoused by PiS and its leader Jarosław Kaczyński. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Duda has played an important role in coordinating international efforts to support Ukraine's military.