The Polish National Training Fund — KFS — reimburses employers for staff training, and the headline looks generous: up to 90% or 70% of the cost. Two ceilings and one broad exclusion decide what actually lands, and the exclusion catches the training most foreign-owned sites ask about first. Our KFS calculator works out the amount; this article explains the rules behind it.
What the fund is
KFS is a ring-fenced part of Poland's Labour Fund, used to co-finance continuing education for people in work: employees, employers themselves, sole traders and people working under civil-law contracts. The stated purpose is to prevent job loss caused by skills that no longer match what the economy needs. The money is awarded locally, in practice by the county labour office.
For a foreign-owned company with a Polish site, that last point matters more than the headline rate. Each office runs its own call for applications with its own budget, so timing and detailed rules are a local question, not a national one.
The rate and the two ceilings
The rules come from the act of 20 March 2025 on the labour market and employment services, where KFS sits in articles 125–133 (Dz.U. 2025 poz. 620).
- The rate. Up to 90% of training costs if the applicant employs nobody or no more than 9 people in full-time equivalents; up to 70% in all other cases.
- Per participant. No more than 200% of the average wage for the calendar year.
- Per employer per year. Four times the average wage up to 9 employees, eight times up to 49, twelve times up to 249, and fourteen times from 250 employees.
Both ceilings are multiples of one figure. The calculator uses the Central Statistical Office announcement of 11 May 2026, which put the average wage in the first quarter of 2026 at 9,562.88 PLN (GUS); under the act, the previous quarter's figure applies from the first day of the month after publication, so this one runs from 1 June 2026. On an expensive course it is the per-participant ceiling that usually bites first — before anyone looks at the office's budget.
What KFS will not pay for
This is where most applications sour, so it is worth knowing up front. The act excludes education the employer is already obliged to provide under separate legislation. Periodic occupational safety training in Poland is precisely such an obligation, under the Labour Code, so it cannot be moved onto KFS. That exclusion is in the act itself, not a habit of an individual office.
The other exclusions are costs already covered from other public funds, and training that started before the contract with the office was signed. The last one is expensive in practice: a first training day before signature can sink the whole application.
On the eligible side, the act lists the training itself, examinations and certification, postgraduate studies, medical and psychological examinations, and accident insurance for the duration of the course. When the calculator asks for the cost per participant, that is the sum it means — not just the course invoice.
Where VR training fits
Since mandatory safety training is out, the applications that work are about learning beyond the duty: vocational qualifications, licences, technical competence, specialist emergency-response skills, preparing a team for a new technology — the kind of scenarios in our VR training catalog. VR training belongs wherever it genuinely raises qualifications, not where it substitutes for the statutory induction.
A practical order of operations: first check what you are legally obliged to run, using our required safety training tool — that part cannot be funded. Whatever sits above that list is what belongs in an application, and what a VR training pilot costs is usually the number the application has to justify. To see what KFS funding does to that budget, the VR training ROI calculator takes it from there.
Before you apply
Since 2026 the application is filed electronically only, through an individual account on praca.gov.pl, at the county labour office for your registered seat or place of business (Public Employment Services). Check your own county's call, not a national announcement.
It also pays to line the plan up against the ministry's spending priorities for the year (Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, KFS 2026). An application that fits a priority simply competes better in a call where the money runs out before the applicants do. And for businesses the support counts as de minimis aid, so it goes into that shared allowance — better checked before, not after.
One thing that gets forgotten in the relief of an approved application: the contract with the office also governs the settlement. Completion dates, documents and invoices all carry deadlines, and missing them can mean repaying the grant.
