Christmas in Croatia 2026: What's Open 24-26 December

Christmas Day 2026 is a Friday, and in Croatia that shuts the shops for three days running. By law, shops are closed on public holidays and on Sundays. Friday 25 December and Saturday 26 December are both public holidays, so every shop outside the exempt categories stays shut from Friday morning until Monday, unless the retailer picked Sunday 27 December as one of its 16 working Sundays. Thursday 24 December, Christmas Eve or Badnjak, is an ordinary working day. It’s the day to buy. The closures are fixed by law; the 2026 Advent hours, Mass times and ZET’s holiday service were still unannounced on 31 October 2026.

What the law closes

Two statutes decide this. The Holidays Act lists 25 December as Božić and 26 December as Sveti Stjepan among the public holidays; 24 December isn’t on the list. The Trade Act, in its text in force since 17 June 2026, says in article 57 that shops are closed on Sundays and on public holidays, and that the Government may name shops that must open on a holiday. Retailers fix their own hours from Monday to Saturday, up to 90 hours a week, and may choose 16 Sundays a year as working days; each picks its own, so check the chain’s announcement for 27 December rather than assuming.

The rule doesn’t reach everything. The same article exempts shops inside airports, railway and bus stations, ports, petrol stations, hospitals, hotels, museums, marinas, campsites and protected nature areas, and it leaves out sales of a farm’s own produce at markets and occasional sales at fairs and public events. Restaurants and cafés aren’t covered either, because the article is about shops, so their hours are their owners’ choice. Phone before you plan a Christmas Day lunch.

Thursday to Sunday, day by day

Every cell above comes from the law or an operator’s or city’s own page, and the sections below say which. Where the 2026 version doesn’t exist yet, we say so and label any older figure with its year.

Buying on Thursday, and where you still can

If you’re in a rented flat for the long weekend, shop for three days on Thursday, and do it early: the Trade Act sets no closing time for 24 December, so each retailer picks its own. Several kinds of selling sit outside the closing rule. Shops inside hotels, airports, stations, ports and petrol stations are exempt, so a petrol-station shop is the fallback for milk and bread. Farm sellers at a market may trade their own produce on a holiday, but each market sets its own hours: Tržnice Zagreb, which runs the city’s markets, posts holiday hours as a news item, and its All Saints’ notice went up on 29 October 2026. The Christmas one isn’t up yet. And occasional sales at a fair or public event are exempt too, which covers the sort of trading Advent huts do. Newspaper kiosks may also open on Sundays and holidays, from 07:00 to 13:00.

Badnjak, cod and the cathedral

The Split Tourist Board’s page on a Dalmatian Christmas names cod as the main dish of Christmas Eve, adding that the fish doesn’t live in the Adriatic. It lists fritule, the fried dough balls, and a toast of Dalmatian dessert wine alongside it. That tells you what home tables look like on the 24th; it doesn’t tell you what a restaurant serves, so ask when you book.

Midnight Mass, the polnoćka, is the other fixed point. In Zagreb the cathedral held its first midnight Mass in five years on 24 December 2025, after being closed for renovation, according to Dnevnik.hr. The 2026 Mass times hadn’t been published by 31 October, so look on the archdiocese’s site, zg-nadbiskupija.hr, in December. For a visitor the practical point is to arrive early and stand towards the back.

Advent on the holiday hours

Advent Zagreb opens on 28 November 2026 and closes on 7 January 2027, and on the holiday itself the markets keep different hours. The last programme with holiday hours, 2025/26, as printed by After5.hr on 13 November 2025, shows how much they differ: Advent Zrinjevac was open 10:00-17:00 on Badnjak and 17:00-23:00 on Božić. Fuliranje, the food market on Strossmayer Square, and the Esplanade terrace both opened at 17:00 on Christmas Day and at 12:00 on 26 December and stayed open until midnight; neither listed separate hours for Badnjak. Those are 2025/26 hours, not 2026/27 ones: the new hours weren’t out when we checked, and the guide to Advent in Zagreb has the markets themselves and how the trams change on weekend evenings.

In Dubrovnik, Advent u Gradu (28 November 2026 to 3 January 2027) puts concerts on Stradun on most nights from 26 December. Christmas markets across Croatia has the dates for Split, Rijeka, Opatija and Osijek as well, and New Year’s Eve in Croatia picks up where this page stops.

Planes, boats and parks

Between London and Zagreb only Friday 25 December has neither a Croatia Airlines nor a Ryanair flight; the landing times either side of it are in London to Zagreb flights. The coast works the same way. The Croatia Airlines flight from Zagreb to Dubrovnik runs on every date in its winter table except Friday 25 December (London to Dubrovnik flights has the detail), and on the Hvar ferry the 08:30 from Split and the 05:30 from Stari Grad skip 25 and 26 December, as set out in where to stay in Hvar.

Parks follow the holiday too. Krka is open 09:00-12:00 on Thursday 24 December and closed to visitors on 25 and 26 December, as its working-hours page says; Croatia in winter has the park’s other winter hours. In Zagreb, ZET’s home page carried a special-service notice for All Saints on 31 October 2026; nothing for Christmas was posted yet.

Notices to watch for

Four of the missing answers are worth watching for as notices: the Advent huts’ hours for 24 to 26 December, the Mass times from the archdiocese at zg-nadbiskupija.hr, ZET’s Christmas service notice on zet.hr and Tržnice Zagreb’s market hours on trznice-zg.hr. None was out on 31 October 2026. Two won’t arrive as one notice at all. Each supermarket chain announces its own working Sundays, so look for 27 December in your chain’s notice, and restaurants set their hours for the 24th to the 26th one by one, which is why a phone call beats any list. The shop closures are the one part already settled.