The tradition of basketry in Poland has been inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The official announcement took place on 10 December 2025, during a UNESCO conference in New Delhi. “This is a huge honour for the entire community that has been cultivating this tradition for years. It’s not just prestige but, above all, confirmation that the work done in workshops throughout Poland has a global significance. It’s proof that the tradition crafted by our hands is part of the world’s heritage,” said Wojciech Świątkowski, president of the Association of Polish Basketry.
We warmly congratulate all basket weavers, especially the Serfenta Association—one of the three Polish organisations accredited by UNESCO—which won the Europa Nostra Award / European Heritage Award in 2024! The organisation’s experts, Paulina Adamska, Łucja Cieślar, and Urszula Szwed, created the winning innovative “Craft Revitalisation Model”, characterised by a modern and business approach to working with crafts. Based on this model, they have implemented changes in basketry, allowing them to combine the care for intangible heritage with generating financial resources.
Basketry in Poland is one of the oldest forms of handicraft, strongly linked to ecology and the heritage of riverine landscapes. It is an art where plant raw materials have always been the primary source, including grass stems, straw, pine roots, or juniper. However, the absolute queen is willow—flexible, durable, and gracious to work with—constituting as much as 90 percent of the used material today. It is worth noting that basketry is the seventh Polish tradition to be inscribed on the UNESCO list. In previous years, the entries included Kraków nativity scene (2018), beekeeping culture (2020), falconry (2021), the tradition of flower carpets for Corpus Christi processions (2021), rafting (2022), and polonaise—traditional Polish dance (2023).