Kraków won't cancel its Christmas Market after the Main Square attack

Kraków is in mourning, but its city hall says life on the Main Square will go on. No tourist events planned for the coming weeks will be cancelled, including the traditional Christmas Market.

What happened?

On Saturday, a gunman killed six people around the Main Square, where it meets Sławkowska and Szczepańska streets. Two of them died next to St Mary's Church. The victims included people from abroad: a woman from Austria and a man from the United Kingdom. A German man was treated in hospital for his wounds. The attacker has since died in hospital.

On Monday morning, candles and flowers kept appearing by the tenement wall that the bullets hit. People stood in silence. A nun in a white habit knelt in the street and prayed the rosary.

Will tourists stay away?

That is the question everyone on the Old Town and in Kazimierz (the former Jewish quarter) is asking. A restaurant owner there pointed to Tunisia, which saw visitor numbers fall sharply after the attacks of 2015. A local woman said the images from Kraków were the world's top news on Sunday and called it terrible publicity.

The numbers show what is at stake. According to the Małopolska Tourist Organisation, 16.25 million people visited Kraków in 2025.

Several tourists, from the US, Italy, Korea, India and France, said they were shaken but see the attack as an "incident", not "the Polish standard". A visitor from Israel said it did not change her sense of safety.

What's next?

Deputy mayor Elżbieta Kois-Żurek says the city will defend its image as a friendly and safe place. "I assure you it will also be safe," she said of the Christmas Market.

Rules for vehicles entering some streets around the Main Square may change. But she does not expect Kraków to copy some German cities, where police with long guns and heavy concrete barriers guard markets. In her view that makes visitors anxious, as if they were entering a fortress.

The new security measures will not be described in detail. The less a potential attacker knows, she said, the harder they are to get past.