WARSAW AIRPORT HUB
Warsaw Chopin handled 24.1 million passengers in 2025 — a record, up 13.2% — and is expanding past 30 million while the CPK central airport is designed for a 2032 opening; Modlin resets for the Ryanair rebuild.
Eight and a half kilometres from the centre, Chopin is Poland’s busiest airport and LOT’s hub: 24.1 million passengers in 2025, 144 scheduled destinations on 32 carriers, with London (over a million seats), Paris, Amsterdam and Dubai leading the board and Antalya topping the charter list. It is already at design capacity, so construction started in late 2025 on an expansion adding 21 wide-body and 9 narrow-body gates — over 30 million annual capacity by 2029. City access is by SKM rail (S2/S3) in about 20 minutes to Śródmieście, plus buses 175 and 188.
Modlin, 40 km north, had a hard reset year — 1.74 million passengers in 2025, down 35% on runway and schedule constraints — but the strategy is growth: Ryanair plans to double its based fleet to eight aircraft and reach five million passengers by 2030, and Wizz Air opened a two-aircraft A321neo base with a wave of new Polish routes through summer 2026. Radom, 100 km south, remains the third, thin option. Beyond both sits CPK: the central airport between Warsaw and Łódź, terminal designed for 34–44 million, opening 2032 with an IATA forecast above 32 million in year one — the project every Warsaw hotel and rail decision now prices in.
THE TIO READ
Until CPK exists, fly Chopin and take the SKM — 20 minutes, a city ticket, no taxi argument. Use Modlin only when the Ryanair fare gap is big enough to pay for the 40-kilometre transfer twice.
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