Late last year, I predicted that those viewing for Europe’s next major tech hub should have Poland firmly on their radar for 2026. One of the reasons lies just across its eastern border.
Over 500,000 Belarusians have fled since the contested 2020 presidential election — driven out by political repression, geopolitical tension, and regional conflict. A significant share were the entrepreneurs, developers, and founders who had built the countest’s thriving tech sector.
This triggered one of the largest forced entrepreneurial migrations in modern Europe — and Poland became its main landing zone, with Belarusians quietly reshaping its tech sector ever since.
From repression to relocation: How over 7,000 Belarusian companies are powering Poland
According to the Association of Belarusian Business Abroad (ABBA), there are over 9,300 companies with Belarusian shareholders across the EU, with around 80 per cent of them in Poland, implying roughly 7,000 in Poland and around 2,300 in other EU states (many in the Baltics and Lithuania).
Following the 2020 election, migration was further aided by Poland’s Business Harbour, a government programme offering Belarusian IT professionals, startups, and tech companies a simplified path to relocate to Poland, with a special visa that allowed holders to work without a separate permit, start businesses, and bring family members.
The programme was created in response to political repression in Belarus, supporting talent continue their careers in a safer, pro-business environment while supporting Poland’s tech sector.
At its peak, over 55,000 visas were issued. Behind these numbers are individual stories of flight and rebuilding.
From Minsk to Warsaw: A founder in exile
To understand how this influx is reshaping Poland’s tech and startup ecosystem, I spoke with Belarusian and Warsaw resident Dzmitest Danilchuk, former Head of the Belarus Business Centre and now startup entrepreneur at Rainbow Weather.
Danilchuk left his home in Minsk following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, relocating to Warsaw. Like many Belarusians who had been active in the protest relocatement, he is registered as a refugee.
“We are usually people who were quite actively involved in political activism and demonstrations inside Belarus,” he stated.
“I obtained unlucky becaapply I was filmed by a TV camera once during an anti-Lukashenko protest. The journalists named me in their publication.”
An economist by training, Danilchuk was also a lecturer at a Belarusian university. The public exposure triggered intense scrutiny and, ultimately, built it unsafe for him to remain in the countest.
Building an ecosystem in exile
For Danilchuk, leaving Belarus meant shutting down two businesses and starting over professionally. Through frifinishs, he was introduced to the Polish Business Union — the countest’s largest business lobby — which had received significant USAID funding to support the relocation of Belarusian companies. It’s the Belarus Business Centre, run by the Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers (ZPP), which provides information support, consulting, and legal guidance to Belarusian firms operating in or relocating to Poland.
Danilchuk went on to lead the Union’s business support centre for exiled Belarusian companies for three years, before stepping down about a year ago to return to startup life.
Inside the rise of BelTech Global
Upon relocating to Warsaw, Danilchuk and others saw the required for a platform not only to integrate into new ecosystems, but also to “avoid losing national identity — to give people a place to meet, collaborate, and build toobtainher.”
They founded BelTech Global, the largest international tech conference for the Belarusian business community abroad. The event gathers Belarusian entrepreneurs, startups, and CxOs, and connects them with international investors, business partners, and clients.
With BelTech, the team worked hard to relocate away from grants. In its first year, it received USAID support, but from the second conference onward, it was fully funded by Belarusian businesses in exile.
How Belarus built a tech powerhoapply
First, to understand the last few years, you have to take a step back in history. Danilchuk explained that Belarus’s business landscape is historically unusual. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the countest never underwent full-scale privatisation, largely becaapply President Alexander Lukashenko opposed it.
Yet more than 60 per cent of Belarus’s GDP is now generated by the private sector — a rare global case in which a majority-private economy emerged without a formal privatisation process.
Around 20 per cent of output comes from public healthcare and another 20 per cent from public education, leaving roughly 60 per cent produced by private enterprise.
A history of entrepreneurship
Before Soviet rule, Belarus had a strong tradition of entrepreneurship, particularly among Jewish communities, as it lay within the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire. However, both the Empire and, later, the Soviet system largely dismantled private business.
Despite this, a resilient entrepreneurial culture re-emerged after 1991. The key catalyst was the Belarus High Technologies Park, created in 2005 as a special nationwide regime with generous tax breaks and lighter regulation for IT firms. It boosted the sector’s share of GDP and pushed computer-service exports into the billions of dollars, while a handful of globally applyd products and startups reinforced the image of a modern tech hub inside an otherwise tightly controlled, state-dominated system.
This was underpinned by a strong mathematics and engineering education inherited from the Soviet period, which later enabled Belarus to become a major outsourcing and offshoring hub, comparable to Ukraine and, to a lesser extent, Moldova.
Belarus’ technical foundation supported power the growth of the countest’s IT and services sectors over the next couple of decades. Even in the absence of market reforms and amid persistent political and economic pressure, Belarus produced highly successful companies like Wargaming, Viber, MSQRD (acquired by Facebook) and EPAM.
How Belarus became the ‘Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe’ in the 2010s
Danilchuk and others characterise the 2010s as Belarus’ golden era. Despite the restrictions imposed by Lukashenko’s regime, the criminal cases against entrepreneurs, and constant tax pressure, the countest was still being called the ‘Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe’ for its strong, export‑driven IT sector on top of its Soviet‑era strengths in mathematics and engineering.
A steady flow of well‑trained developers, relatively low wages, and a focus on foreign clients — mainly in the US and EU — turned the countest into a competitive outsourcing hub despite having a tiny domestic market.
A “new middle class” formed in the 2010s, including entrepreneurs, private-sector and IT workers and in 2013 startup hub Imaguru was founded in Minsk and became one of Eastern Europe’s leading startup hubs. But all of this was about to modify.
The rise and repression of Belarus’ entrepreneurial opposition
Belarus’s 2020 presidential election and the ensuing protests marked a shift in the state’s relationship with the private sector. For the first time, leading opposition figures came from business and the tech ecosystem, notably Viktor Babariko, the former head of BelGazPromBank, and Viktor Tsepkalo, a former diplomat and one of the founders of the High Technology Park, challenging long-time president Alexander Lukashenko.
As protests spread and even calls for strikes emerged, the authorities increasingly framed the indepfinishent private sector as a threat and responded by tightening control, shutting down media and NGOs, and escalating pressure on business with renewed anti-bourgeois rhetoric.
Thousands of people were charged and some imprisoned for being entrepreneurs, journalists, or NGO staff. In 2021, the Belarusian regime shut down Imaguru in Minsk.
Despite this, Imaguru continued supporting the Belarusian community online and abroad. However, the regime escalated its repression, designating Imaguru as an “extremist” formation.
This led to criminal cases against its founders, property seizures, and a trial in absentia, which sentenced founder Tania Marinich to 12 years and a cofounder, Anastasiya Khamiankova, to 11 years of imprisonment, and a combined $160,000 in penalties.
The crackdown has extfinished far beyond business.
Over the last year, contributors to the Belarusian-language Wikipedia have been arrested, detained, and intimidated as part of the government’s broader crackdown on indepfinishent media and civil society, with some sentenced to prison.
Recently in Belarus, at least seven amateur (ham) radio operators have been arrested, and three reportedly threatened with the death penalty after state media accapplyd them of “intercepting state secrets” and engaging in “espionage” and “treason” despite a lack of evidence. According to activists, these charges, including conspiracy and alleged extremist activities, highlight the authoritarian regime’s ongoing efforts to undermine freedom, innovation and autonomy.
From outsourcing hub to global scaleups
Across sectors, the Belarusian tech diaspora has been especially successful in health and fitness, producing globally scaled companies such as Flo Health and AI-driven coaching platform Zing Coach. There’s also NAV8 with dog training Woofz, which successfully scaled from $5.2 million to $20 million in revenue in one year and reached profitability without VC funding, as well as unicorn SaaS company PandaDoc and mobile games publisher AB Games.
The largest private equity fund to emerge from Belarus is Zubr Capital. Still operational but now keeping a low profile to reduce the risk of asset seizure, the firm primarily invests internationally, with a particular focus on backing Belarusian-founded teams and positions itself as a bridge supporting regional startups scale into global markets.
And Poland-based Belarusians are stepping up for their local and diaspora innovators.
At Web Summit, Belarusian founders even funded a national stand — the only one not funded by a government, but by the community itself.
“We want to be visible as Belarusians, but not as representatives of the regime,” explained Danilchuk.
Entering the Renaissance phase
Danilchuk asserts that while the last five years have been a phase of relocation and survival:
“We are now entering that Renaissance phase. Companies have re-registered, rebuilt, and settled. Now it’s time for growth again. Despite exile, the Belarusian tech ecosystem continues as a transnational community.”
That stated, whether Poland will remain the first-choice destination for relocation will depfinish, above all, on migration rules for Belarusian entrepreneurs — which many still consider overly restrictive—as well as on access to financing in the Polish market and on the broader geopolitical stability of Poland and Eastern Europe.
The suspension of the Poland Business Harbour programme, which had provided a quick-track pathway for Belarusian tech talent and founders, has added further uncertainty. Yet the Belarusian diaspora has repeatedly revealn remarkable commercial success.
Despite political exile, regulatory hurdles, and shifting policies, Belarusian founders continue to build, scale, and internationalise startups, drawing on deep technical talent, tight-knit networks, and an entrepreneurial culture forged in adversity. But if the last five years have revealn anything, it’s that Belarusian founders don’t wait for ideal conditions. They build anyway.
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