Twenty-three of Croatia’s 68 registered ferry routes leave Split and five of them carry a car. Seven island groups are reachable directly, from Brač and Šolta to Lastovo. Thirteen of the twenty-three are commercial lines that stop when summer demand does.
Split is a harbour with a city attached
What is worth doing in Split divides cleanly into things inside the city and things that need a boat, and only the second half has published data behind it. The 2026 state coastal line register lists every scheduled sea service in the country, and twenty-three of them call here — more than any other port. That is the practical answer to what there is to do: seven island groups, all boarding from the same waterfront.
| Island group | Services from Split | Of those, state lines | Vehicle line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brač | 10 | 4 | 631 |
| Hvar | 16 | 6 | 604, 635 |
| Korčula | 8 | 3 | 604 |
| Šolta | 2 | 2 | 636 |
| Vis | 3 | 2 | 602 |
| Lastovo | 2 | 2 | 604 |
| Mljet | 1 | 0 | None |
Read the last column first. Brač and Hvar look like the best-served islands and they are, but most of that density is foot-passenger catamarans; each island group has at most two services that will take a vehicle and Mljet has none at all. Bring a car and the table collapses to a short list of slow crossings.
Registered services from Split by destination island group. Source: Agencija ZOLPP, 2026 state coastal line register, verified 6 August 2026.
The five services that take a car
Every vehicle service out of Split is a state line, which is the good news, and there are only five of them, which is the rest of it. Every commercial catamaran in the harbour — the fast, direct, frequent half of the network — is foot passengers only.
| Line | Where it goes | Vessel | What is verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| 602 | Vis | Car ferry | Two sailings a day off-season, three from 3 July to 20 September |
| 604 | Vela Luka (Korčula), Hvar, Ubli (Lastovo) | Car ferry | Register entry only — its per-line timetable is not in the verified bundle |
| 631 | Supetar (Brač) | Car ferry | Timetable not in the verified bundle |
| 635 | Stari Grad (Hvar) | Car ferry | Lands at Stari Grad, not Hvar town |
| 636 | Rogač (Šolta) | Car ferry | Timetable not in the verified bundle |
The blanks in the last column are deliberate. Only line 602’s per-line timetable is in the verified bundle, so only its sailing counts appear here. For the other four the register confirms the route and the vessel type and nothing further can be stated without inventing it. Line 635 is the one worth memorising: it lands at Stari Grad, a separate town from Hvar town on the same island.
5
of Split’s 23 registered services will carry a vehicle
That ratio is the single most useful number for planning a week here, because it is decided before you arrive, at the hire-car desk. Two visitors with identical itineraries have completely different networks available to them depending on that one booking.
The two decisions that matter — whether you have a car, and how many nights you can give the island — between them settle where you should go.
How you are travelling
How long you have
The day trips that actually work →
Every recommendation there is a register fact rather than a preference, which is why the car column is so much shorter than the foot column.
Treating a once-a-day line as a day trip
State catamaran 9604 runs Ubli to Vela Luka to Hvar to Split, and it runs one rotation a day. One rotation means the boat goes out and comes back once, so an out-and-back to Korčula island on the state timetable is not a day trip in either direction — it is an overnight with a fixed return.
The lines that genuinely support a day out are the ones with a published multi-sailing frequency. Line 602 to Vis runs two sailings a day off-season and three from 3 July to 20 September. Before booking anything as a day trip, check how many rotations the line actually makes; frequency, not distance, is what decides it.
One clarification the register forces, and it saves arguments: a destination in a timetable is a port, not an island. Hvar island has three of them — Hvar town, Stari Grad and Jelsa — and Brač has four in the register: Supetar, Milna, Sutivan and Bol. Booking “Brač” on the fast catamaran and expecting to wake in Supetar is the same class of mistake as booking “Hvar” and landing at Stari Grad. Read the port name in the route string, not the island name in the listing.
Everything above comes from the register, which describes what exists rather than how often it runs. Sailing frequencies are only stated on this page where the 2026 per-line timetable has been checked, which for Split means line 602 alone. For the other twenty-two services the register confirms the route, the operator, the vessel type and whether it will take a car, and nothing here goes further than that.
When the harbour is worth being at
Split has one of only three Croatian stations publishing a sea-temperature normal, and the shape of its year is not the shape most visitors assume. Air temperature peaks in July at 25.7 °C; the sea peaks a month later at 23.6 °C and is still 19.3 °C in October, when the air has fallen to 16.8 °C. Swimming outlasts sunbathing here by several weeks.
The register turns on roughly the same dates. The fare season runs 29 May to 27 September, the commercial catamarans run to summer demand, and line 602 adds its third daily sailing from 3 July. Late September is the last week in which the timetable, the tariff and the sea all still agree with each other — see September in detail.
What do you need to work out next?
You know what the harbour reaches. These come next.
Where to stay
Which Split address puts the port in reach?
Sixteen services connect Split with Hvar island and 13 reach Hvar town.
Getting around
What is genuinely doable in a day?
Line 9604 runs one rotation a day, so Korčula is not a day trip.
When to go
When does the sea here peak?
August at 23.6 °C, and still 19.3 °C in October.
Planning
Only ashore for one day here?
The 2026 register lists 11 passenger ships alongside the state car ferries.
Ferry data: Agencija za obalni linijski pomorski promet (ZOLPP), 2026 state coastal line register and per-line timetables. Climate data: DHMZ (meteo.hr), climate normals 1971–2000.