The dynamics of changes in the business environment, globalization of economies with the rapid progress in technology make entrepreneurs accept the growing level of risk of crisis situations. The economic transformations that have been taking place over the years have initiated the emergence of mechanisms for crowding out unprofitable enterprises from the market that do not match the requirements of the market economy. On the one hand, bankruptcies may be regarded as a manifestation of failure to adapt to market requirements and changes, but more and more often they become a derivative of phenomena beyond the control of entrepreneurs. In particular, we are talking about ever new types of risk that accompanies business activity. The fact that the catalog of occurring risks is still an open catalog is evidenced by, for example, the recent events related to the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper attempts to present the scale of the businesses bankruptcy in Poland in 2009-2018 and a cross-sectional analysis taking into account the geographical origin of the bankrupt entities, the legal forms where they operated and the industries they represented. The analysis of the phenomenon was based on the data of the Central Statistical Office and own research of the documentation of the National Court Register. The purpose of the paper was to analyze the scale of the bankruptcy phenomenon in Poland over the years 2009-2018 and an attempt to identify the existing relationships.