March the 17th, 2026 – A brand new terminal for Zadar Airport will soon be a reality as all Croatian airports see January growth.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Sinisa Malus writes, airports across Croatia served 365,000 passengers in January, which is an encouraging 8.8% increase compared to that same month last year. The vast majority of these passengers, (295,000 of them in total) passed through Zagreb Airport, which is up 6.4% year-on-year, according to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
In addition to the increasingly busy and excellently connected Zagreb Airport, other major airports across Croatia also saw an increase in the number of passengers they served during the month of January 2026 compared to January 2025. That being said, there were still significantly fewer passengers than were recorded in Zagreb.
The largest increase for January 2026 of 24% was achieved by Split Airport, with 42.3 thousand passengers served, while 23 thousand at Dubrovnik Airport represented an increase of 16.3%. Just over 1,590 passengers were served at Zadar Airport, which is 14% more than back in January 2025. January is traditionally an exceptionally quiet month, particularly in coastal airports where intense seasonality dictates the amount of people present. This is something that Zagreb Airport doesn’t really suffer from, and the numbers during the quiet time of the year reflect precisely that.
Growth has been seen across the board with the exception of Rijeka Airport and Zadar Airport will soon get a new passenger terminal. Approximately 15 million euros have been invested in the new facility, it was announced recently. In addition to the new terminal building, as part of the project to modernise and expand the entire capacity of Zadar Airport, there are also plans to extend the runway by around 700 metres and expand the car park.
