Official notices — State and statistics

The Office for Government Representation in Property Affairs has obtained a building permit to renovate the former Klar Institute for the Blind in Prague's historic centre, built between 1906 and 1909. The building once housed a physical culture centre with a swimming pool and Prague's first public sauna, and from 1993 a district prosecutor's office; it is being renovated for the Office of the Government. Detailed construction documents and an open tender for a contractor still come first, and the announcement gives neither a start date nor a cost. The Office of the Government wants to open the building to the public as widely as possible for exhibitions and educational programmes.

On 14 September the government approved an amendment to the Addictive Substances Act and eight related laws: kratom products will only be sold to people aged 21 instead of 18, online sales will end and the products will carry a tax stamp. Excise duty is to range, by concentration, from 2 crowns per gram or millilitre up to 20 crowns for unstamped products, and VAT rises from 12 to 21 per cent. The government also backed an MPs' bill that would let the police close a shop selling products that pose a serious health risk for up to 14 days; the supervisory authority would then have 48 hours to confirm the suspicion.

Prague's population grew by 2,444 to 1,409,528 in the first half of 2026, according to preliminary results. The growth came entirely from migration, which added 3,516 people, while natural change took away 1,072. 5,130 children were born, 6.2 per cent fewer than a year earlier and 31.7 per cent fewer than in the first half of 2021. Prague and the Central Bohemian Region were the only regions whose population grew; Czechia as a whole lost 12,200 people.

The new version of the app adds lab results, a record of preventive check-ups and screenings, a blood donor card, medical assessments and selected entries from the shared health record. Users can also manage the profiles of minor children and other people whose data they are authorised to see.

The bill introduces certification of startups and lets investors deduct a cash investment from their tax base, up to five million koruna a year. Certification is to be run by the emerging CzechBusiness agency, with the industry ministry as the appeal and oversight body. Conditions: the company at most eight years old, ten for deep tech, annual net turnover up to 250 million, not a shell subsidiary of an established firm and not traded on a regulated market.

The share of six-year-olds with a deferred start dropped from 24.1 % in September 2021 to 17.7 % in September 2025; last year deferral applied to just under 21 thousand children. Nurseries meanwhile hold fewer than 350 thousand children for the first time since 2012/13, while their teacher numbers grew by 21 % over ten years. Secondary schools, by contrast, had almost 515 thousand pupils last year, the most since 2011/12.