quality:corruption, structural:summarization
Contemporary history (1990-present)

Solidarity's leader, Lech Wałęsa, became President of Poland in 1990. In 2014 the European Solidarity Centre, a museum and library devoted to the history of the movement, opened in Gdańsk.

On 9 July 2001, the city was flooded, with 200 million zł being estimated in damage, 4 people killed, and 304 evacuated. As a result, the city has built 50 reservoirs, the number of which is rising.

Gdańsk native Donald Tusk is Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014 and again from 2023 to present and was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019. In 2014, the remains of Danuta Siedzikówna and Feliks Selmanowicz were found at the local Garrison Cemetery, and then their state burial was held in Gdańsk in 2016, with the participation of thousands of people from all over Poland and the highest Polish authorities.

In January 2019, the Mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, was assassinated by a man who had just been released from prison for violent crimes. After stabbing the mayor in the abdomen near the heart, the man claimed that the mayor's political party had been responsible for imprisoning him. Though Adamowicz underwent a multi-hour surgery, he died the next day.

In October 2019, the City of Gdańsk was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award in the Concord category as a recognition of the fact that "the past and present in Gdańsk are sensitive to solidarity, the defense of freedom and human rights, as well as to the preservation of peace".

In a 2023 Report on the Quality of Life in European Cities compiled by the European Commission, Gdańsk was named as the fourth best city to live in Europe alongside Leipzig, Stockholm and Geneva.