Twenty-three scheduled services touch Split in the 2026 register, against eight at Dubrovnik and three at Šibenik. Ten are state lines; thirteen are commercial and run to summer demand. Six island groups are reachable. The room itself is the booking engine’s department, not ours.
“The main gateway” is a claim, so here is the count
Every guide calls Split the gateway to the Dalmatian islands and none of them says what that means numerically. The 2026 state coastal line register does. Twenty-three of its sixty-eight routes have Split in their published route string, which is more than any other port on the coast and nearly three times Dubrovnik’s eight.
The composition matters more than the total. 10 of the 23 are state lines with a public service obligation and 13 are commercial catamarans that carry none. Five of the twenty-three take a vehicle, and all five are state car ferries. Nothing commercial anywhere in the register carries a car.
Scheduled services in the 2026 register whose route string names each port. Source: Agencija ZOLPP, 2026 state coastal line register, verified 6 August 2026.
Zadar is the only port that comes close, at sixteen, and it is a different shape of network — short hops into a dense archipelago rather than long runs down the coast. What Split adds is reach: six separate island groups, from Šolta at twenty minutes to Lastovo at the far end of the line, all of them served without changing boats.
The six, and what serves them
Here is the substance of the gateway claim. Six island destinations, each with its own set of lines and its own answer on whether a car can come.
| Island | Ports served from Split | Lines | What the register says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brač | Supetar, Milna, Sutivan, Bol | 631 — and 9601, 9603 | Car ferry and catamaran. Brač is the closest of the six and the only one with an airport in the DZS series. |
| Šolta | Rogač | 636, 9601 | Car ferry and catamaran. The shortest island run out of Split. |
| Hvar | Hvar town, Stari Grad, Jelsa | 604, 635 — and 9602, 9603, 9604, 9608 | Sixteen services in total connect Split with the island; thirteen reach Hvar town and two carry a vehicle, of which one docks at the town. |
| Vis | Vis town | 602 — and 9602 | Car ferry and catamaran. Line 602 is the only crossing in the register and the only one whose 2026 tariff we hold: €7.20 off-season, €9.10 in season. |
| Korčula | Vela Luka, Prigradica, Korčula town | 9604, 9608 | Foot passengers only from Split. The vehicle route to Korčula is line 634 from Orebić, on the Pelješac road. |
| Lastovo | Ubli | 604, 9604 | The furthest of the six. Split–Ubli is €8.60 off-season and €12.00 in season on line 9604. |
Two things in that table repay attention. Hvar has three ports and they are not interchangeable; and Korčula is reachable from Split on foot but not with a car, because the vehicle route to Korčula runs from Orebić on the Pelješac peninsula instead.
Set it to winter and watch it halve
The finder below lists every Split service by season. The summer view is the twenty-three. Switch it to winter and the thirteen commercial entries vanish, because a commercial line has no obligation to sail and no reason to when the demand is gone.
Departing from
Season
What remains in the winter view is the ten state lines, and that is the network a Split address genuinely guarantees you. Everything above it is seasonal supply. Booking a February week on the strength of a summer route map is the commonest planning error on this coast, and it is entirely avoidable.
Planning island-to-island hops on the state network
Three state catamarans link islands to each other without returning to the mainland first: 9602 through Vis and Hvar, 9604 through Ubli, Vela Luka and Hvar, and 9608 through Korčula and Hvar. That looks like a chain you could ride down the coast. It is not, because each of them runs at most one rotation a day, and only 9604 has a per-line PDF in the bundle we hold, so we can state its times and not the others’.
The practical rule is that Split is a hub and the spokes are the network. An itinerary that goes Brač, then Hvar, then Vis, then Korčula on scheduled boats will spend most of its mornings coming back through Split, and in the shoulder seasons some of those legs will not exist at all.
None of the above says anything about the property in the title, and that is on purpose. We hold no rate, no rating, no room count and no photograph, so there is nothing here to describe. Availability and price are what the booking engine is for. The size and shape of the network your address sits on is what it never shows you.
What to decide before you book
- How many islands, realistically? Six groups are reachable from Split; only 10 of the 23 services are obliged to run at all.
- Which month? Thirteen of the twenty-three are commercial. In winter the list is ten.
- Car or not? Five services from Split carry a vehicle and none of them is a catamaran.
- Hub or chain? Island-to-island state sailings exist but run once a day at most.
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What do you need to work out next?
Gateway sized. These four follow.
Where to stay
Which part of Split, given all this?
Ten state lines run year-round; thirteen commercial ones do not.
Getting around
Can I chain the six in one trip?
Island-to-island state catamarans run one rotation a day.
When to go
Which month keeps the whole network?
Only 3 July to 30 August holds both peak fares and peak timetables.
Planning
Which island should be first?
Brač is 395.4 km², the third largest in Croatia.
Ferry data: Agencija za obalni linijski pomorski promet (ZOLPP), 2026 state coastal line register and per-line timetables.