Objective of the study: One of the main European Union’s assumptions regarding financing regional development is to support the so-called smart specializations. The smart specialization strategies are to be the basis for the implementation of the “Europe 2020” strategy (EU 2020) on the regional and national level in the new financial perspective 2014-2020. The necessity for its development results from the regulations package of European Parliament and the Council laying down the rules regarding European Structural Funds, adopted on 17th December 2013. The objective of the study is to revise to what extent the European Union’s requirements relating to the regions preparation for the new financial perspective have been realized by the Polish regional self-governments and to what extent the adopted smart specializations result from the stakeholders’ conviction on the possibilities of individual regions and the benefits that the made choice will bring and to what extent from current trends (fashion). Material and study methods: The medium-term strategy documents (development strategies for the years 2014-2020 or equivalent documents) prepared by provincial self-governments in relation to the new union’s programming period for the years 2014-2020 and legal acts and the European Union’s strategic documents regarding the same period constituted the primary study material. Due to this type of material the documents’ direct and comparative analysis was the basic study method. Results and conclusions: The research revealed formal realization of European Union’s requirements for Polish provinces development strategies preparation for the 2014-2020 period based on smart specializations. Although all the provinces have already begun the work on specialization’s areas identification, including smart specializations, in a part of the regions the available works’ results are not fully justified in the prepared strategies and analyzes. It is significant that the majority of drawn up documents does not determine its specializations by the possibilities of cooperation with neighboring regions - notable exceptions are: Regional Innovation Strategy of Lubelskie Province to 2020, which was presented at a joint meeting of the Lubelskie and Świetokrzyskie provinces’ boards and the Strategy for the Southern Poland’s development. Since there is still time greater smart specializations correlation of the regions with its neighbors would be recommended, particularly in the statistical analysis context carried out by the Eurostat, which divides Poland into six regions, not sixteen.