Eventually in 1765 the first permanent ballet company was formed, on the initiative of the king Stanisław II August.

In 1785 Stanisław II August established a company of young dancers, taught by a ballet school at an estate in Lithuania.

Also, several outstanding foreign masters, e.g., Filippo Taglioni, Carlo Blasis, Virgilio Calori, Pasquale Borri, José Mendez, Raffaele Grassi, and Enrico Cecchetti, worked developing Polish dancers.

[2] Mathilde Kschessinska (Matylda Krzesińska), a dancer of Polish extraction, from the 1890s was one of the leading lights of the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg.

From its early years many Polish dancers had joined the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, which climbed to world renown.

[15] Siblings Bronislava Nijinska and Vaslav Nijinsky were of Polish heritage,[16] though Vatsa and Broni trained under the patronage of the Tsar at the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg.

[19][20][21][22] This company was the brainchild of poet Jan Lechoń, and created with the assistance of M. Waclaw Jedrzejewicz, Minister of Public Education and President of the Organization Committee of the Polish Section to the Art and Technical Exhibition in Paris.

For the first season, 1937-1938, Nijinska created five new ballets including Baśń krakowska (La Légende de Cracovie), to music by Michal Kondracki; Pieśń o ziemi naszej (Le Chant de la Terre), to music by Roman Palester; Koncert E-moll Chopina (Concerto de Chopin), to Frédéric Chopin's B-minor piano concerto; Apollo i dziewczyna (Apollon et la Belle), to music by Ludomir Rozycki; and Wezwanie (Le Rappel), set to a score by Boleslaw Woytowicz.

This repertoire featured scenery and costumes designed by Teresa Roszkowska, Waclaw Borowski, Wladyslaw Daszewski, and Irena Lorentowicz-Karwowska.

The souvenir program for this company's Covent Garden appearances states: "Every gesture and every colour, the ebb and flow of the groups, each step of the soloists, the spirit and harmony of the Polish Ballets are imbued with the artistic ideals of Bronislava Nijinska and her ardent desire that the world should see the dances of her country in their noblest and most beautiful form.

Thanks to the efforts of Teatr Wielki’s general director Waldemar Dąbrowski on 29 April 2009 the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski took the decision to separately constitute the ballet in the theater’s by-laws, under the name Polish National Ballet.