There is no railway between Split and Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik has no rail connection of any kind, so there is no line, no seasonal service and no replacement service to find. The corridor is road, or — for part of the year — sea.
The answer is no, and it is not a close call
This is worth stating without qualification because almost nobody does. Pages on this query tend to open with a paragraph about how the rail network is limited, then pivot to a coach schedule, which leaves the reader unsure whether they have missed something. They have not. There is no track, no station and no service to be seasonal about.
What people usually mean by the question is narrower: they want a fixed, published, sit-down way of covering the distance that they can book in advance and rely on. That is a reasonable thing to want, and Croatia does have a version of it. It runs on water.
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railway lines reach Dubrovnik
The state coastal register is the nearest thing this coast has to a rail timetable. It lists licensed routes with the operator, the vessel class and, crucially, whether the service carries a public service obligation — a contract to sail, including in winter, at a tariff published in advance. Fares change on a fixed date and revert on another: 29 May and 27 September.
The state line at the southern end, and how often it changes shape
The catch is that a contract to sail is not a contract to sail the whole route. Line 9807 is published as Ubli – Korčula – Polače – Sobra – Šipanska Luka – Dubrovnik, and it is the state service that comes closest to linking the southern islands with the Dubrovnik end of the corridor. Its published route changes four times in the year.
| Published period | Ports actually served | Sailings a day each way |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Jan – 28 May and 28 Sep – 31 Dec | Sobra, Šipanska Luka, Dubrovnik — Ubli, Korčula and Polače not served | 1 |
| 29 May – 2 Jul | Polače, Sobra, Šipanska Luka, Dubrovnik — Ubli and Korčula not served | 2 |
| 3 Jul – 30 Aug | Full route: Ubli, Korčula, Polače, Sobra, Šipanska Luka, Dubrovnik | 2 |
| 31 Aug – 27 Sep | Polače, Sobra, Šipanska Luka, Dubrovnik — Ubli and Korčula not served | 2 |
Two names on that route spend most of the year off it. Korčula and Ubli are served between 3 July and 30 August and at no other time; Polače, the national park landing on Mljet, disappears from 28 September until 29 May. A timetable that changes this often is not a fallback, which is the practical difference between it and the train somebody was hoping to find.
What to decide before you book
- If the point was to avoid driving, the sea services on this corridor carry foot passengers only, which suits you exactly. But the direct ones are commercial lines and nothing in the register obliges them to sail, so check they exist for your dates before anything else is booked.
- If the point was a published, contracted timetable, the state coastal lines are the closest equivalent, with tariffs that change on 29 May and revert on 27 September. Build around those and treat everything else as weather.
- If the point was to see the coast, line 9807 runs its full route only between 3 July and 30 August. Outside that window it serves Sobra, Šipanska Luka and Dubrovnik alone, and the scenic half is gone.
- If you are carrying a car, no registered coastal route between the two cities takes one, in any month. The question was never really about the train.
Where that leaves you is set out in full on the Split to Dubrovnik page, which compares every way of making the move, and on the coach corridor page, which maps the ferry ramps along the road. Neither of them will print a schedule this site cannot source.
What do you need to work out next?
The railway question is closed. These are the real ones.
Where to stay
Where should I stay on arrival?
Every registered coastal route at Dubrovnik uses the Gruž port.
Getting around
So what actually connects the two cities?
Road all year, and commercial catamarans in summer.
When to go
Why does July change the answer?
Line 9807 serves Korčula only between 3 July and 30 August.
Planning
No track south, so what sails instead?
Twenty-four of the 68 registered coastal routes carry vehicles; the rest are foot only.
Ferry data: Agencija za obalni linijski pomorski promet (ZOLPP), 2026 state coastal line register and per-line timetables.