The paper presents recent advances in Poland in the field of high temperature fuel cells. The achievements in the materials development, manufacturing of advanced cells, new fabrication techniques, modified electrodes and electrolytes and applications are presented. The work of the Polish teams active in the field of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) is presented and discussed. The review is oriented towards presenting key achievements in the technology at the scale from microstructure up to a complete power system based on electrochemical fuel oxidation. National efforts are covering wide range of aspects both in the fundamental research and the applied research. The review present the areas of (i) novel materials for SOFC including ZrO2-based electrolytes, CeO2-based electrolytes, Bi2O3 based electrolytes and proton conducting electrolytes, (ii) cathode materials including thermal shock resistant composite cathode material and silver-containing composites, (iii) anode materials, (iv) metallic interconnects for SOFC, (v) novel fabrication techniques, (vi) pilot scale SOFC, including electrolyte supported SOFC (ES-SOFC) and anode supported SOFC (AS-SOFC), (vii) metallic supported SOFC (MSSOFC), (viii) direct carbon SOFC (DC-SOFC), (ix) selected application of SOFC, (x) advances in MCFC and their applications, (xi) advances in numerical methods for simulation and optimization of electrochemical systems. (C) 2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.