Croatia’s cities rank differently in August and in November. Zagreb carried 337,851 air passengers in November 2025 against Split’s 62,250, and Zadar keeps 14 of its 16 ferry routes all year while Split keeps 10 of 23. The month reorders the list.
Five cities, two datasets, one ranking that moves
A city is worth visiting for reasons no dataset holds. What the datasets do hold is whether the city functions in the month you are going — whether flights arrive, whether boats leave, and whether the outdoor half of the visit is plausible. Two published series answer all three: the 2026 coastal line register and the DZS monthly airport traffic release.
| City | Ferry routes | Of those, state lines | Air passengers, Nov 2025 | DHMZ station |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zagreb | 0 | 0 | 337,851 | No station in the 1971–2000 normals |
| Split | 23 | 10 | 62,250 | Split (Marjan) |
| Zadar | 16 | 14 | Not published | Zadar, no sea row |
| Dubrovnik | 8 | 4 | 49,275 | Dubrovnik |
| Šibenik | 3 | 3 | Not in the series | No station |
| Rijeka | 2 | 2 | Not published | Rijeka |
| Pula | 1 | 1 | Not published | No station |
Three cells in that table say “not published” and they are doing real work. Nine airports appear in the DZS series — Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik, Pula, Rijeka, Zadar, Osijek, Brač and Mali Lošinj — but only three carry a monthly figure in the release used here. Nothing can be said about Zadar’s or Pula’s traffic without inventing it, so nothing is said.
The ranking in August is not the ranking in November
The register’s own vocabulary makes the reversal precise. A state line carries a public service obligation: it is contracted to sail. A commercial line carries none and exists because summer demand exists. Seventeen of the sixty-eight routes are commercial, and they are concentrated in exactly one place.
Routes with a public service obligation, by city. Zagreb is touched by none. Source: Agencija ZOLPP, 2026 state coastal line register, verified 6 August 2026.
Split loses thirteen routes when the commercial fleet stands down; Zadar loses two. That is the single fact that separates a summer city ranking from a winter one, and it puts Zadar — a city almost never placed first in these lists — at the head of the off-season table. What Zadar reaches barely changes between February and July.
registered routes running
Every service in the register is sailing
The full network, including the 17 commercial catamarans that carry no public service obligation. Split’s 23 routes are all live, the through-boats join the coast end to end, and the season tariff has been in force since 29 May.
Zagreb is the only Croatian city whose case does not rest on the sea at all, and the passenger figures make it emphatic.
337,851
passengers through Zagreb airport in November 2025, against 62,250 at Split
Add Split and Dubrovnik together and Zagreb still carries more than three times their combined November traffic. It is also the one city on this page that no ferry route touches, which cuts both ways: nothing here can be cancelled by a timetable, and nothing here is a boat ride from an island. The Zagreb page works through what that leaves.
What the weather series says about each of them
Four of these cities have a DHMZ station in the 1971–2000 normals and one does not. Sea temperature is published for Split, Hvar and Dubrovnik only; Zadar's sea row is empty in the source and is left empty here. Move the month control and watch the four diverge.
September · Split
September: the season tariff holds to 27 September; commercial lines start dropping.
Dubrovnik reads warmest on paper and wettest in practice: 120.1 mm of rain in October and 142.3 mm in November, against Split's 82.1 and 101.7. A late-autumn city break in the far south is a wetter proposition than the temperature column suggests, which is worth knowing before it is booked.
The three smaller ports on the table are worth a sentence each, because they are routinely listed alongside the big four as though they were interchangeable with them. Šibenik has three registered routes, all of them state lines, which makes it the most seasonally stable port in the country and also the smallest network on this coast. Rijeka has two. Pula has one, a single fast catamaran running north to south through the Kvarner islands and on to Zadar. None of the three is a base for island travel in the sense that Split or Zadar is, and no monthly airport figure is published for any of them in the DZS release used here.
What the table is for, in the end, is deciding the order of a trip rather than picking a winner. Cities with large commercial exposure belong in the middle of summer; cities with none belong at the edges of the year. Put Split and Dubrovnik in July and August, put Zagreb and Zadar in the months either side, and the itinerary stops depending on services that have no obligation to exist. The itinerary page works through the sequencing.
Ranking the cities in August and travelling in November
Every published ranking of Croatian cities is built on a summer visit, and the summer network is 33 per cent larger than the winter one. Split is the sharpest example: 23 routes on the register, 13 of them commercial, so the base that looks best-connected in the country loses more than half its sea links and about nine tenths of its air traffic between June and November.
The two cities that do not do this are Zagreb, which no route touches and whose November traffic is 337,851 passengers, and Zadar, which loses two routes out of sixteen. If the trip is outside the season, rank by the November column and ignore the August one entirely.
What do you need to work out next?
The cities sort by month. What follows from that.
Where to stay
Which city should hold the hotel nights?
Zadar keeps 14 of 16 routes all year; Split keeps 10 of 23.
Getting around
How do you move between them?
No ferry route touches Zagreb, so the inland leg is always overland.
When to go
Which month suits a city trip?
Dubrovnik takes 142.3 mm of rain in November against Split's 101.7.
Planning
Can I fit three cities into five days?
The cultural register holds 8,999 entries, 31 of them UNESCO listed.
Ferry data: Agencija za obalni linijski pomorski promet (ZOLPP), 2026 state coastal line register and per-line timetables. Passenger figures: Državni zavod za statistiku (DZS), monthly airport traffic releases. Climate data: DHMZ (meteo.hr), climate normals 1971–2000.