The man — a Polish citizen — drove a car onto Krakow’s Main Market Square and began shooting at random people, said police.
Officers shot a suspect who is now in custody, they added.
“The death toll now stands at six: four women and two men,” the police said on X.
A dozen others — including police officers — were wounded.
An AFP reporter at the scene saw ambulances and multiple police cars as police cordoned off the area — one of Poland’s landmark tourist hotspots popular with locals and foreign visitors.
“The perpetrator was shot by police and was transported to a hospital,” regional police said on X.
Officers added the man was wearing military fatigues at the time of the attack and was armed with a long gun.
In his car, “police officers discovered other firearms and a large quantity of ammunition”, Krakow police spokeswoman Katarzyna Cislo told private broadcaster TVN24.
The police did not say what the motive was or disclose the nationalities of the victims of the attack, which is Poland’s deadliest shooting since the fall of communism in 1989.
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who headed to Krakow following the attack, called it “a tragic shooting” and said the police were investigating all the circumstances.
“Our highest praise goes to the heroic police officers who risked their lives in the line of duty,” Tusk said.
Witnesses told AFP they saw people take refuge in shops and restaurants in the usually bustling streets around the Main Market Square.
“I saw a man shooting at people and walking around the square,” Annette, a woman in her sixties, told AFP.
“It’s a tragedy for Krakow, we’ve never seen anything like this before,” she added.
“We were at Auschwitz today. And it was only when we got here that we realised what had happened,” Stella, a 22-year-old tourist from Rennes, northwest France, told AFP, referring to the Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp near Krakow.
“It’s very frightening to think that there are still risks in Europe — risks of a terrorist nature,” she told AFP.
Deadly shootings are extremely rare in Poland, a European Union and Nato member of 38 million people.
But the country has been on high alert following a series of stabbings in October, which Tusk denounced as a “cult of violence”.
Poland is also seeing a sharp rise in the number of firearms licences.
In 2025, more than 50,000 new licences were issued, bringing the total to 411,000, according to police figures. (AFP)
