Moving to Croatia: A First-Steps Guide for Expats

Croatia changed status quite suddenly. At the start of 2023 it adopted the euro and joined the Schengen area in the same move, which removed both currency conversion and border checks with its EU neighbours. Combined with a remote-work residence permit introduced a couple of years earlier, that turned a place people had visited into a place people move to.

The coastline needs no advertising. What is worth understanding is that the coast and the interior are two quite different countries to live in, and the one that appears in the photographs is the harder one to build an ordinary life in.

The right to stay

EU, EEA and Swiss citizens may live and work in Croatia, registering their residence with the police administration after arriving.

Non-EU nationals apply for temporary residence for a defined purpose - work, which usually involves a residence and work permit obtained with an employer, study, family reunification, or digital nomad residence for people working remotely for foreign employers or their own foreign companies.

That last route is the distinctive one. It is aimed squarely at people whose income comes from outside Croatia, and its terms - income requirement, duration, renewal, and crucially whether the time spent counts towards permanent residence - are specific and have been adjusted. Check them directly rather than from a summary, because the residence-clock question in particular changes what the permit is worth to you. The Croatia visa section covers the routes, and the general remote-work picture is in digital nomad visas in 2026.

If you are on that route, the tax question deserves proper attention rather than an assumption - see tax residency explained.

The OIB and the opening steps

The OIB - the personal identification number - is Croatia’s universal identifier, used for tax, banking, contracts, utilities and every dealing with the state. Get it first; nothing much proceeds without it.

Then registration of residence, a bank account, and health insurance registration. Croatia’s e-government services are reasonably developed and much can be done online once you are in the system.

The general sequence is your first 90 days abroad.

Healthcare

Compulsory health insurance funded through contributions, administered by the national fund, covering the insured and their dependants. Registration follows from employment or from paying contributions directly, and non-EU residents generally need to demonstrate cover as part of their permit.

Coverage is broad with modest participation charges, and many residents hold a supplementary policy to cover the remainder. Standards are good in the larger cities; provision on the islands and in rural areas is necessarily thinner, which is a genuine consideration if you are drawn to a small coastal town.

Details in the Croatia healthcare section, and the general model question in public versus private healthcare.

Money, tax and the seasonal economy

Croatia taxes residents on worldwide income, with a progressive personal income tax where the rates are set partly at municipal level, plus mandatory contributions. Salaries are modest by EU standards, and the economy leans heavily on tourism, which makes it markedly seasonal.

That seasonality is the thing to understand before choosing where to live. In Dubrovnik or on the islands, a large share of the local economy runs from May to September and then substantially closes. That is wonderful if you are working remotely and want a quiet winter, and difficult if you need local employment year-round.

The euro removes exchange-rate exposure for anyone paid in euros, which is a real simplification compared with the neighbours to the east. Structure is in the Croatia tax section.

Housing, and the tourism problem

Here is the practical difficulty on the coast. A large amount of housing stock is committed to short-term holiday letting, because a summer season earns more than a year-round tenant. The result is that long-term rentals in Split, Dubrovnik and the popular islands are scarce and expensive, and a common pattern is a winter lease that ends in spring when the owner switches back to tourists.

Ask specifically whether a rental is year-round. Being asked to move out in May is a known and demoralising experience.

Inland is a different market entirely. Zagreb is a real capital with a proper year-round economy, culture and universities, and it is considerably cheaper than the coast. Rijeka, Osijek and the continental towns more so again. If you want ordinary Croatian life rather than a seasonal one, that is where it is.

Foreign buyers face rules that depend on nationality and reciprocity, so check before assuming - buying property as a foreigner covers the general considerations.

Language and daily life

Croatian is a Slavic language with the usual case system and a reputation for difficulty. English is widely spoken along the coast and among younger people, German and Italian have historical footholds in particular regions, and administration runs in Croatian.

Socially, Croatia is warm, direct and family-centred, with a strong café culture that functions as the main social infrastructure - long coffees are a genuine institution. Foreigners on the coast are entirely normal; foreigners inland are more of a curiosity and generally met with interest.

The bura wind, the winter rain on the coast, and the sheer emptiness of a resort town in February are the seasonal realities that holiday visits do not reveal.

Getting around

Croatia’s shape - a long, thin country wrapped around a mountain range with over a thousand islands - makes transport more of a daily consideration than in most European countries.

The motorway network connecting Zagreb to Split and the coast is modern and tolled, and the drive is genuinely scenic. Rail is much weaker: the network is limited, slow, and does not serve the coast well, so intercity buses do the work that trains do elsewhere and are frequent, cheap and reliable.

Ferries are infrastructure rather than tourism if you live on or near the islands. Schedules thin out substantially outside the summer season, weather can cancel sailings, and car ferry capacity in peak months requires planning. If you are considering island life, look at the winter timetable rather than the summer one before deciding - it is the single most useful piece of research you can do.

Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik and Zadar all have airports with good seasonal connections and thinner winter ones, which is the same seasonality that shapes everything else about coastal life here. Bringing a car raises the usual licence-exchange deadline covered in exchanging your driving licence abroad.

What catches people out

Signing a rental that quietly ends when the tourist season starts. Assuming the digital nomad permit counts towards long-term residence without checking. Underestimating how seasonal coastal life is. And expecting the summer version of a place to be the year-round version.

For neighbours, moving to Slovenia is immediately north with a smaller coastline and a higher cost base, and moving to Italy is across the Adriatic with a different administrative culture entirely.

Regional detail, permit routes and cost breakdowns are in the Croatia country guide and the cost of living section. For current digital nomad permit experiences, the digital nomads and remote work forum is where people compare notes.