Poland Signs SEK 47 Billion Contract for Three Saab A26 Submarines, Ending the Decade-Long Orka Tender

The State Treasury Armaments Agency signed the order in Gdynia in the presence of the Polish and Swedish prime ministers and defence ministers. It covers three A26-type submarines for about SEK 47 billion, with Saab delivering continuously and the final boat scheduled for 2038. Saab's chief executive, Micael Johansson, said the three submarines “will play a pivotal role in enhancing security in the Baltic Sea region”; the Swedish defence minister, Pål Jonson, said Poland had chosen the A26 for characteristics “specifically developed for the challenging conditions of the Baltic Sea.” The signature ends an Orka tender Warsaw had run, suspended and restarted for more than a decade, and pre-empts the fallback talks with Fincantieri and Hanwha Ocean that had been pencilled in for July.

The boats use Saab's Stirling air-independent propulsion and a Multi-Mission Portal for special-forces lock-out and the launch and recovery of underwater drones — the Polish deputy prime minister and defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, said they “will be able to deploy swarms of drones controlled from aboard the submarine.” A separate contract worth about SEK 1.9 billion with Sweden's procurement agency FMV leases the A17-class HMS Södermanland as a gap-filler, with Polish crew training in Sweden starting in August 2026 ahead of the hull's transfer around 2027. Saab and Poland's PGZ will stand up a joint venture for maintenance and lifecycle work in Poland, and the two governments launched a “Baltic Sea Pact” spanning security-policy, military and defence-industry cooperation.

The proprietary read. Warsaw bought the Baltic, not the bargain. The A26 is optimised for shallow, contested home waters and comes wrapped in an industrial pact and a sovereign maintenance base — the things a decade of Orka deadlock was actually about, more than the hull price. The detail that matters most is the one Kosiniak-Kamysz volunteered: this is a submarine sold as a drone mothership, a crewed boat whose payload is increasingly uncrewed. As Signal No. 92 noted, the August training start is the tell — Poland wanted crews at sea before the new boats arrive, and the gap, not the contract, set the urgency.