20 Zlotys January Uprising

The January Uprising of 1863–64 was the last major Polish insurrection against Tsarist rule before the twentieth century, launched in desperate response to an enforced conscription drive designed specifically to drain the underground independence movement of its young men. The insurgents held no cities and fought almost entirely from forests, fielding scythes against Russian artillery. Russia's response was brutal enough to effectively extinguish organized Polish resistance for a generation, and the uprising triggered the final abolition of the Kingdom of Poland as a nominally separate entity within the empire.

The digital printing technique applied to this issue allows chromatic detail impossible through conventional striking alone — a process NBP has used selectively for commemoratives since the early 2010s.