January the 16th, 2026 – Zagreb Airport successfully served over 4 million passengers throughout 2025, which is representative of a significant 9.4% increase compared to 2024.
As Sinisa Malus/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Zagreb Airport transported an extremely impressive 4,721,564 passengers throughout 2025, marking its busiest year in history. This figure represents an encouraging 9.4% increase compared to 2024, or an additional 404,945 passengers, as reported by Ex-Yu Aviation News. The number of aircraft operations in 2025 stood at 51,664, also marking an increase of 3.4%.
While significant growth during the summer months when Croatia’s tourist season is in full swing can be referred to as entirely expected, a particularly interesting part of the year was autumn, which produced above-average results in 2025. September recorded growth of 11.4%, October 10.8%, while November was up 7.8%. Data for the months of September and October confirm that seasonality has decreased and that Croatia is moving towards becoming a year-round destination at the national level. Throughout 2025, Croatia Airlines was the largest carrier in terms of available seats, just ahead of the wildly popular Ryanair, while the Airbus A320 was the most common aircraft type present at Zagreb Airport.
During the year, the Croatian capital was most connected to Frankfurt, followed by Dubrovnik, Split and Munich. Domestic airport statistics for the first 11 months of last year also confirm a clearly upward trend. In nine Croatian airports throughout the first 11 months of 2025, there were slightly more than 13.5 million passengers, or 6.8% more served than in the same period back in 2024. This figure was strongly contributed to by the continued growth of passenger traffic during the month of November alone by 9.2%, according to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). During November, 456,000 passengers passed through all nine Croatian airports.
As the winter flight schedule with fewer tourist flights came into effect in November, airports situated along the Adriatic served significantly fewer passengers than Zagreb Airport did. However, Split Airport achieved a year-on-year increase in passenger traffic of 29.2% in November, successfully serving 62.2 thousand passengers.
In total, 3.8 million passengers passed through Split Airport in the first 11 months of 2025, or 7.4% more than during the same period in 2024. In third place with 49.2 thousand passengers is Dubrovnik Airport, which is 4.4% less on a monthly basis, while in the first 11 months of 2025, this airport also saw an increase of 4.3%, with 3.04 million passengers served. All other airports across Croatia had significantly lower passenger traffic in November.
According to the latest CBS data, the largest international passenger traffic realised during November was again achieved with German airports, with 105,000 passengers served, which is 6.1% more than in November 2024. German airports were followed by airports in the United Kingdom (UK) with 31,000 passengers transported, or 8.5% less, followed by airports in France with 26,000 passengers served, representative of almost 3% less.
Unlike passenger traffic, in November and the first 11 months of 2025, freight traffic at Croatia’s airports continued to decline compared to the same months in 2024. In November alone, this decline stood at about 5%, with 715 tonnes, and in the first 11 months of 2025, freight traffic at Croatian airports fell by 1.2%, to 8,900 tonnes.
