List of Polish gminas
Poland has a three-tier administrative division since 1999. On the first level, Poland is divided into 16 voivodeships (Polish: "województwa", singular – "województwo"). These are sub-divided in 380 counties (Polish: "powiaty", singular – "powiat"), and these counties contain 2,477 municipalities, known as gminas (plural - "gminy"). The municipalities are grouped into four categories: The status and the changes in borders of "gminas" are decided by the Council of Ministers. While their creation and dissolution is also usually decided by it, in exceptional cases, the parliament might direct the organ to issue ordinances ordering dissolution (as it was  the case with gmina Ostrowice). These ordinances take effect on 1 January of the year following the year of publication of the ordinance. Major changes to the framework (such as a restructuring of local administration or regulation of the duties and powers of the self-government) is only possible by law. The current framework and regulation of powers and duties of the local self-government was adopted in 1998 and became effective on 1 January 1999, with special regulations concerning Warsaw came into existence in 2002. For more details, visit the article on gminas. History of municipalities. Poland has had  a long history of having "gminas" as an administrative division. In Interwar Poland, for instance, "gminas" also were local self-government entities. This stayed after World War II until the administrative reform in 1950. That year, a large overhaul of local administration has been made. While the administrative divisions remained three-tier, gminas were substituted with almost 8,800 "gromady, osiedla," and towns. The largest change, however, was that the local administrative units were stripped of their self-governing functions, were not legal entities on their own and instead became the executors of the will of higher administrative organs and, in  practice, also of local party organs. Over time, over half of these "gromadas" were merged into larger entities, until the larger gminas were reinstated in 1973, getting the number of municipalities at just 3,201. Further reductions brought the number down to below 2,900 by 1977. In the meanwhile, Poland abolished counties completely and introduced a new, two-tier administrative division, with 49 smaller voivodeships and "gminas". Ostensibly the reforms of 1973 and 1975 were made in order to guide Poland through an accelerated period of growth, however, the real intent seemed to be the fear of what the government in  Warsaw and party organs saw as excessive decentralisation. As a result, Poland became a country with local units possessing no degrees of self-government whatsoever. This was an immediate concern with the fall of Communism, and in 1990, "gminas" were handed over powers of self-government and gained some autonomy. Quickly though, over 500 towns that previously had been separate municipalities were merged into urban-rural "gminas"; that made the number close to what is in 2021. The last major change happened with the return to three-tier administrative division in 1999, when counties were returned and some of the  largest cities became city with powiat rights. Since then, the vast majority of changes was made with the Council of Ministry granting city rights to smaller settlements that previously lost their city rights, even as small as 330 inhabitants. As of 1 January 2021, the number of "gminas" according to its type is the following: List. The list contains 2,477 municipalities sorted by increasing TERYT (Polish for National Register of Territorial Land Apportionment Journal) code of such units, which is not given in the table. It is roughly sorted alphabetically by voivodeships, powiats and then gminas (with urban gminas first ) as they appear in Polish.