Zagreb airport handled 337,851 passengers in November 2025, against 62,250 at Split and 49,275 at Dubrovnik — three times the two coastal airports combined. It is the one Croatian airport that does not empty out in winter, and no ferry route touches the city.
November, in passenger numbers
The DZS monthly airport series is the cleanest evidence there is for how seasonal Croatian travel actually is, and Zagreb is the exception that proves it. In November 2025 Zagreb carried 337,851 passengers. Split carried 62,250. Dubrovnik carried 49,275. Add the two coastal airports together and Zagreb is still more than three times their combined traffic, in a month when the coast is at its thinnest.
| Airport | November 2025 | June 2025 | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zagreb (ZAG) | 337,851 | Not published in this series | The only genuine year-round hub. Inland. |
| Split (SPU) | 62,250 | ~578,000 | Central Dalmatia and the island ferries. Intensely seasonal. |
| Dubrovnik (DBV) | 49,275 | Not published in this series | The far south, the Elafiti, cruise connections. |
| Zadar (ZAD) | Not published in this series | Not published in this series | Northern Dalmatia and the Kornati. Budget carriers. |
| Pula (PUY) | Not published in this series | Not published in this series | Istria. Strongest German and Austrian links. |
| Rijeka (RJK) | Not published in this series | Not published in this series | Kvarner, Krk and Opatija. Small. |
Six of the nine airports in the series publish no monthly figure in this dataset, including Pula, Rijeka and Zadar, so nothing more can be said about them here than that they exist and are counted. The three that do publish tell a consistent story: Split moved around 578,000 passengers in June 2025 and 62,250 in November, a swing of roughly nine to one. Zagreb has no equivalent collapse because most of its traffic is not holiday traffic.
337,851
passengers through Zagreb airport in November 2025
For an off-season trip this is the operative fact and it changes the itinerary, not just the flight booking. Routes into Split and Dubrovnik thin out with the season; routes into Zagreb largely do not. Compare the three side by side on the airport page before fixing a November or March arrival point.
Zagreb is not a coastal base
The 2026 state coastal line register lists 68 routes. None of them touches Zagreb, which is obvious enough on a map and consistently ignored in practice. The nearest ports with an entry in the register are Rijeka with two lines, Zadar with sixteen, and Split with twenty-three. Every one of those is a land journey from Zagreb before the sea journey starts.
Flying into Split for a November coastal trip
Split airport carried 62,250 passengers in November 2025 against roughly 578,000 in June 2025. Thirteen of the twenty-three ferry routes touching Split are commercial lines with no public service obligation, and they run to summer demand.
An off-season coastal trip routed through Split is therefore fighting two contractions at once — fewer flights and a network cut to ten state lines. Routing through Zagreb and travelling overland to a port with a year-round network, such as Zadar and its fourteen state lines, is the arrangement the data supports.
Distances aside, the register makes the split explicit. Sixty-eight routes, seven regional groupings, and every one of them coastal: Split and central Dalmatia holds seventeen, the Zadar group fifteen, Kvarner and the northern Adriatic nine, Dubrovnik and southern Dalmatia five, Šibenik four, with seventeen commercial lines counted separately and one line filed on its own because it crosses between groups. Zagreb appears in none of them, and neither does any inland town.
The same logic applies to a first-time visit at any time of year: Zagreb is the arrival point that does not depend on the season being right. What it is not is a base for anything involving a boat.
One more figure gives the November comparison its edge. The DZS series also carries partner-country totals for March 2025 — roughly 98,000 passengers from Germany, 32,000 from the United Kingdom and 27,000 from the Netherlands — but those cover Croatian airports in aggregate rather than any single one, so they cannot be used to describe Zagreb’s own mix. What the monthly figures do establish is the ranking, and in November the ranking is not close.
Money, borders and what the national registers hold
Two practical facts belong on a page about the main international gateway. Croatia adopted the euro on 1 January 2023, replacing the kuna at a fixed conversion of 7.53450 kuna to one euro, and joined the Schengen area on the same day. Arriving from another Schengen country now involves no border check, and there is no currency to change. Details are on the currency page.
On the cultural side, the national Register of Cultural Goods held 8,999 entries as of 4 August 2026, of which 31 are UNESCO listings. Those are country-wide totals, not Zagreb figures, and this page will not break them down by city because the dataset does not. There is likewise no DHMZ station for Zagreb in the 1971–2000 normals used across this site — the eight published stations are all coastal or Istrian, and Pazin, the inland one, is inland Istria rather than inland Croatia.
What do you need to work out next?
Zagreb answers the season problem. What it does not answer.
Where to stay
Where to stay for a winter city stop?
November traffic through the airport here is 337,851 passengers.
Getting around
How do most people arrive here?
Zagreb’s 337,851 passengers in November 2025 top every other airport in the series.
When to go
Is November worth it inland?
Zagreb carries three times Split and Dubrovnik combined that month.
Planning
Which airport should you fly into?
Nine airports are in the DZS series; three publish monthly figures.
Passenger figures: Državni zavod za statistiku (DZS), monthly airport traffic releases. 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.