Makarska has one scheduled sea link in Croatia’s 2026 state ferry register: car ferry line 638 to Sumartin, at the eastern tip of Brač. It is a state line, so it runs all year. Everything else out of Makarska is a road journey.
That single entry decides most of what a Makarska trip can and cannot be, so it is worth setting out alongside the other things the data does and does not hold for the town. Three of the seven rows below are absences, and they are absences other Makarska pages fill in with figures from Split.
| Scheduled sea links | One: state car ferry line 638 to Sumartin, Brač |
| Vehicles carried | Yes — line 638 is a car ferry |
| Runs in winter | Yes — a state line with a public service obligation |
| Commercial summer catamarans | None in the 2026 register |
| DHMZ climate station | None — no normals are published for Makarska |
| Sea reading, 6 August 2026 | None — Makarska is not one of the sixteen stations |
| Nearest airport with a published figure | Split: 62,250 passengers, November 2025 |
The absences are the honest part. There is no DHMZ station at Makarska in the 1971–2000 normals, and the town was not one of the sixteen points in the 6 August 2026 sea survey. Any monthly temperature or sea figure you see attributed to Makarska has come from somewhere else, most often Split (Marjan), roughly an hour up the coast and on the far side of a channel.
Brač has two mainland gateways and they are not interchangeable
Line 638 is one of two state car ferries linking Brač to the mainland, and the two land at opposite ends of the island. Supetar, on line 631 from Split, sits on the north-west shore. Sumartin, on line 638 from Makarska, sits at the eastern tip. Booking the wrong one because it left from the more convenient mainland town is the standard Makarska planning error, and it costs the length of the island at the far end.
| Brač port | Line | Other calls | Vessel | Cars | Register status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supetar | — | Split | Catamaran | No | Commercial |
| Supetar | 631 | Split | Car ferry | Yes | State |
| Sumartin | 638 | Makarska | Car ferry | Yes | State |
| Bol | 9603 | Jelsa · Stari Grad · Split | Catamaran | No | State |
| Bol | — | Split · Hvar · Vis | Catamaran | No | Commercial |
| Bol | — | Split · Jelsa | Catamaran | No | Commercial |
| Milna | 9601 | Rogač · Sutivan · Split | Catamaran | No | State |
| Milna | 9602 | Vis · Hvar · Split | Catamaran | No | State |
| Milna | — | Split · Hvar · Korčula · Pomena · Dubrovnik | Catamaran | No | Commercial |
| Milna | — | Dubrovnik · Korčula · Hvar · Split | Catamaran | No | Commercial |
| Milna | — | Split · Hvar · Korčula · Dubrovnik | Catamaran | No | Commercial |
| Sutivan | 9601 | Milna · Rogač · Split | Catamaran | No | State |
Read the Cars and Register status columns together. Every vehicle service to Brač is a state line: 631 to Supetar, 638 to Sumartin. Every catamaran on the island — the fast state services 9601 and 9603, and the commercial runs to Bol and Milna — is foot passengers only. If the car is coming, those two ferries are the whole of your choice, and only one of them leaves from Makarska.
Brač is also the third-largest island in the country by area, at 395.4 square kilometres behind Cres at 405.7 and Krk at 405.2, and it carries the highest point in the island register: Vidova gora at 780 m. That size is the reason the two-gateway problem has teeth. An island you can cross in ten minutes does not care which end you land at; this one does, and the register offers no scheduled service between Sumartin and the island’s western ports.
The register also explains why Bol appears so often and Sumartin so rarely. Bol has three services, two of them commercial summer catamarans from Split. Sumartin has one, all year, from here. Makarska’s link is the more reliable and the less convenient, which is an unusual combination and the reason it is worth checking before you book a car.
Getting to Makarska at all
There is no airport in the DZS series at Makarska, and no ferry from anywhere but Sumartin, so arrival is by road from Split or from the south. Split airport is the practical gateway, and its traffic pattern is the sharpest of any Croatian airport in the published monthly series.
578,000
passengers through Split airport in June 2025, against 62,250 in November
Brač has its own airport and it is one of the nine in the DZS series, alongside Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik, Pula, Rijeka, Zadar, Osijek and Mali Lošinj — but no monthly figure is published for it here, so nothing more can honestly be said about it. For the three airports that do publish monthly numbers, the airport comparison sets them side by side.
It is worth being precise about what that November figure means, because it is often read as a warning about weather when it is a statement about flights. Zagreb carried 337,851 passengers in the same month and Dubrovnik 49,275. Split’s collapse is a schedule collapse: the carriers that make the coast reachable in June are not flying in November. That constrains arrival more than anything the sea or the road does, and it constrains Makarska specifically because Split is the only realistic gateway.
The planning consequence of all this is simple. Makarska works as a road base on the coast with one guaranteed island crossing attached. It does not work as a hub, and the register will not pretend otherwise: one line, one island, one end of it.
What do you need to work out next?
One ferry, one island. The next decisions.
Where to stay
Is a full-board resort here an option?
Monitoring of Croatian bathing water has run since 1989.
Getting around
What is at the other end of the crossing?
Sumartin, at the eastern tip of Brač, not Bol or Supetar.
When to go
When is the sea warm here?
No station at Makarska; the nearest published sea normals are Split’s.
Planning
How far does this coastline actually run?
The 2026 coastal register covers 68 routes worked by 24 car ferries and 33 catamarans.
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.