Lithuania's 400-Year-Old Oak Ends Poland's Four-Year Winning Streak

There’s something deeply satisfying about a centuries-old tree becoming the unexpected champion of a continent-wide popularity contest. In late March, the European Tree of the Year competition crowned Lithuania’s 400-year-old Laukiai Oak as the winner, and in doing so, snapped Poland’s impressive four-year grip on the title.

The Oak of Laukiai—botanically speaking, a *Quercus robur*—stands in the small village of Rukai, where it’s become something far more than just old wood. The tree’s golden autumn canopy and the way it anchors the farming community together clearly resonated with voters. But here’s the thing that makes this win feel less like a fluke: the village didn’t rest on the oak’s 400-year résumé. A year ago, locals restored the area around it and threw an actual celebration—music, costumes, the works—reminding everyone why this tree mattered. Now the sixth generation of Laukiai residents is growing up beneath its branches.

The competition itself is remarkably robust. Over 200,000 votes poured in across 12 different countries, and the race was close enough that“the ranking remained uncertain until the very last moment,”according to Petr Skrivanek, Coordinator of the European Tree of the Year. The website alone logged 1.5 million visits during voting. That kind of engagement isn’t typical for tree awards—but then again, there’s something universal about honoring the green things that’ve been quietly holding communities together for generations.

Poland’s defending champion was no slouch: a white elm that grows nearly horizontal over a waterway, its branches so robust they’ve become trees themselves. Slovakia’s 150-year-old wild apple tree took second place. Even the UK’s 2025 national champion—the Argyle Street Ash—only managed twelfth place, which tells you something about how competitive this actually is.

The voting system itself got a makeover this year. Previous contests ran on raw vote totals, which tended to favor whichever country could mobilize the biggest grassroots campaign. This time, organizers switched to a“tree point”system designed to level the playing field. It worked. Poland’s four-year reign ended not because the oak is objectively superior, but because the format finally gave smaller nations’beloved trees a fair shot.

What this really signals is something worth thinking about: there’s hunger out there for stories that celebrate rootedness, community, and slow things that outlast us. In a world obsessed with the new and the next, a 400-year-old oak wrapped in its own stone wall won 200,000 votes. That’s not just a nice outcome. That’s a message.