Sixteen of the 68 routes in Croatia’s 2026 state ferry register touch Zadar, and fourteen are state lines carrying a public service obligation — four more all-year services than Split manages. Five take a car. Only two Zadar routes are commercial summer catamarans.
Every line that leaves Zadar
Split has the bigger network on paper, twenty-three routes to Zadar’s sixteen. But thirteen of Split’s are commercial lines with no public service obligation, and they exist because summer demand exists. Zadar’s ratio is the reverse: fourteen state lines, two commercial. In February Zadar has the largest working island network in Croatia, and that is not a claim anyone makes about it.
Departing from
Season
Switch the season to Winter and only two rows disappear — the Jadrolinija catamaran to Silba and Mali Lošinj, and the Pine Line service from Dražanica. Do the same on a Split page and more than half the network goes with it. This is the single strongest argument for a Zadar base outside July and August, and it is entirely a register fact.
The five that take a car, and where they leave from
The other thing the register quietly tells you is that Zadar has two ferry addresses. The passenger ships and catamarans work from the town quay. Every car ferry is listed as Zadar/Gaženica, the deep-water port south of the centre. Book a vehicle crossing and turn up at the old town and you have made a mistake that costs a sailing.
| Line | Islands and calls | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 401 | Ist/Kosirača · Olib · Silba · Premuda/Krijal · Mali Lošinj | State line |
| 431 | Preko · Ošljak | State line |
| 433 | Rivanj · Sestrunj · Zverinac · Molat · Ist/Kosirača | State line |
| 434 | Brbinj | State line |
| 435 | Bršanj · Rava · Rava Mala | State line |
Line 401 is the outlier and the useful one: it runs from Gaženica out through Ist, Olib, Silba and Premuda to Mali Lošinj, which is the only vehicle link between the Zadar network and Kvarner. Everything else on that list is a short mainland-to-island hop of the kind Zadar has more of than anywhere else — Preko and Ošljak on 431, Brbinj on 434, Rava and Bršanj on 435.
The vessel mix is the other thing Zadar has that nowhere else does. Three of the eleven passenger ships in the entire 2026 register work out of Zadar — lines 405 to Rava and the Iž islands, 406 to Sali and Zaglav, and 409 to Preko. Passenger ships are the small, slow, foot-only boats, and they exist where the crossing is short and the traffic is local. Six fast catamarans and five car ferries sit on top of them. No other port on the coast has all three vessel classes working at this density, and it is the reason Zadar's islands feel closer than their distance suggests.
Rain arrives in September, not October
Zadar's normals hold one figure that changes how you read the shoulder season. September rainfall is 104.0 mm — more than any month of summer, more than June, July and August combined, and within three millimetres of October and November. The temperature curve and the rainfall curve do not turn at the same time, and most planning assumes they do.
Zadar: mean monthly rainfall, millimetres. Source: DHMZ (meteo.hr), climate normals 1971–2000.
Zadar also runs cooler than Dalmatia proper across the whole year, which is worth knowing if you are choosing between here and Split. July mean is 23.9 °C against Split's 25.7 °C, and the count of days reaching 25 °C is 28.8 in July and 27.7 in August against Split's 29.5 and 29.0. The gap is small in high summer and widens either side of it: 15.9 warm days in June against Split's 22.0, and 12.0 in September against 15.4.
Against that, September still delivers 12.0 days above 25 °C and a mean of 19.9 °C, so the month is not written off — it is a month where the weather has two modes rather than one. July, at 30.4 mm and 3.6 rain days, is the driest month on the Zadar record by a wide margin.
There is no sea temperature for Zadar
The 1971–2000 normals publish sea temperature for Split, Hvar and Dubrovnik only. Zadar has no sea row, and neither do Rovinj, Rijeka or Mali Lošinj. A monthly Zadar sea temperature on any other site has been borrowed from a station hundreds of kilometres away. The one figure that is real is dated: 26.6 °C on 6 August 2026, in a sixteen-station survey whose mean was 27.5 °C. For the stations that do publish a full year of sea normals, see the month-by-month figures.
What do you need to work out next?
The network is the reason to be here. Next questions.
Where to stay
Where to stay for an early sailing?
Car ferries leave Gaženica, not the old-town quay.
Getting around
Which island is easiest from here?
Croatia's island register counts 1,244 units, of which 78 are islands.
When to go
When does Zadar's rain arrive?
September brings 104 mm, more than any summer month.
Planning
Can you hop between these islands?
Only two of Zadar's sixteen routes are commercial summer lines.
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. Bathing water monitoring: Institut za oceanografiju i ribarstvo (IZOR).