February the 13th, 2026 – Dubrovnik Airport is expecting further growth throughout 2026 with the recently announced introduction of new routes from both Ryanair and Wizz Air, as well as planned investments.
Popular budget airlines Wizz Air and Ryanair have both recently announced their plans for flight expansion from Dubrovnik to various destinations. As we reported on February the 6th, Wizz Air will introduce a brand new seasonal route from Dubrovnik to Cluj in Romania this year.
It will be available to passengers as of mid-May 2026, with the first flight between the two cities scheduled for May the 23rd, 2026. Dubrovnik has therefore been added to the list of summer destinations that people can visit directly from Cluj, without the need to bother with any additional transfers.
wizz air and ryanair go head to head in the south
Flights will operate twice a week during the summer season (every Tuesday and Saturday), until October the 24th, 2026. Wizz Air also plans to connect Dubrovnik with Budapest in Hungary and Gdansk in Poland. There will also be a long-standing seasonal route to Warsaw introduced.
Not long after Wizz Air’s announcement, Ryanair swooped in as a rival with its own new flights from Dubrovnik. As of June the 2nd, Ryanair will launch its own new Dubrovnik-Budapest route which will operate three times per week all the way until September the 29th. In addition, and as a further blow to Wizz Air, Ryanair will launch yet another new Dubrovnik route linking the city with Gdansk.
further growth for dubrovnik airport in 2026
As Sinisa Malus/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Dubrovnik Airport Director Viktor Šober recently announced that he expects passenger numbers at Dubrovnik Airport to grow by 4-5% in 2026. He added that the problem of disrupted supply chains is being particularly felt in negotiations for new routes with various airlines.
“The geopolitical situation across the world has also seriously affected the aviation industry. It isn’t easy to negotiate new routes. They have a problem with delays in the procurement of new aircraft. Boeing is having problems, and recently Airbus has been experiencing the same issue as well. That’s just one of the obstacles and they will need more time to deal with things,” revealed Šober.
A major investment is also planned for Dubrovnik Airport in 2026 in the passenger and baggage screening system. “We’re going to be the only Croatian airport to have this latest technology, which isn’t a classic X-ray but a CT scan. Passengers will pass through it very quickly and will not need to remove their belongings, cosmetics or their liquids,” explained Šober.
Dubrovnik Airport otherwise handled almost 3.1 million passengers in 2025, representative of a 4.4% increase compared to the numbers recorded back in 2024.
