Demographic challenges of regional development of Poland. The goals of the article are dichotomous. First of all, it is the recognition of the main problems of regional development in Poland, resulting from the current and forecast demographic and settlement situation, including depopulation and population aging. An increasing mismatch between jobs, housing, education and services, increasingly scattered and inefficient settlement and inefficiency of the administrative and territorial system in terms of income and expenditure balancing and ensuring an adequate standard of services resulting from the administrative hierarchization of the settlement network, territorial delimitation and spatial accessibility have been identified. Then, in the second place, an attempt was made to formulate remedial measures related mainly to the optimization of spatial development and stimulation of innovative economic growth based in particular on endogenous poles of growth. In the article, among others the results of the author’s research and analyzes were used, which were carried out for practical purposes for government diagnostic and strategic documents in the years 2000–2017 [incl. “Report of the spatial development of Poland”, “Concept of Spatial Development of Poland 2030”, “National Strategy for Regional Development 2010–2020”, delimitation of “State Intervention Strategic Areas: Growth Areas and Problem Areas” and “Responsible Development Strategy”].