Country-wide policy
Croatia Has Two Settled Statuses and Only One of Them Asks You to Learn Croatian
Most countries have one permanent residence. Croatia has two, they sit in adjoining chapters of the Zakon o strancima, and the difference between them decides whether a person ever has to sit a Croatian examination. Dugotrajni boravak, the Union long-term residence of Directive 2003/109, is reached after five continuous years of temporary residence and asks for a travel document, means of support, health insurance, no danger to public order - and knowledge of Croatian and the Latin script. Stalni boravak, the national permanent residence, is not open to everybody: article 156(1) lists the eight classes who may ask for it, among them the spouse of a Croatian citizen after four years, a returning Croatian emigrant or their descendant after three, and a graduate after five of which three were a degree. For those people article 157(4) asks for a valid foreign travel document and that the applicant not be a danger to public order, national security or public health, and nothing else at all. The language examination has fee-paying providers and its own exemptions - preschool children, anyone schooled in Croatia, and anyone over 65 who is not in work - but the simpler fact is that the people the state most wants back never meet it.
Topics it changes
- Residency through work
- Residency through ancestry
- Residency through marriage
- Residency as a student
- Becoming a citizen
What it requires
- Five years of temporary residence, means, insurance and Croatian, for long-term residence
- Or membership of one of the eight classes in article 156(1), and then only a passport and a clean record
- Croatian citizenship is a third question again, and asks for eight years and an examination unless you are a descendant of an emigrant
At a glance
- Long-term residence
- 5 continuous years of temporary residence
Article 150(1) of the Zakon o strancima, as substituted by article 28 of NN 40/2025, which renamed the status from dugotrajno boravište to dugotrajni boravak.
- Language for long-term residence
- Croatian and the Latin script
Article 153(1) point 4 of the Zakon o strancima, which is unamended in all four amending acts.
- Language for permanent residence
- None in article 157(4) of the Zakon o strancima, which asks only for a travel document and no danger to public order
Article 157(4) was read in the 2020 Act and checked against NN 114/2022, NN 151/2022, NN 40/2025 and NN 55/2026; NN 55/2026 added two paragraphs about withdrawing an application and left paragraph 4 untouched.
- Exemptions from the examination
- Preschool children, anyone educated in Croatia, and anyone over 65 not in work
Article 154(2) of the Zakon o strancima.
- Who pays for the examination
- The applicant
Article 154(3) of the Zakon o strancima.
What the law says
«(1) Dugotrajno boravište odobrit će se državljaninu treće zemlje koji uz uvjete iz članka 150. ovoga Zakona: 1\. ima valjanu stranu putnu ispravu 2\. ima sredstva za uzdržavanje 3\. ima zdravstveno osiguranje 4\. zna hrvatski jezik i latinično pismo 5\. ne predstavlja opasnost za javni poredak ili nacionalnu sigurnost.»Our translation - not official
(1) Long-term residence shall be granted to a third-country national who, in addition to the conditions of article 150 of this Act: 1\. has a valid foreign travel document 2\. has means of support 3\. has health insurance 4\. knows the Croatian language and the Latin script 5\. does not represent a danger to public order or national security.
Five conditions for the Union status, and the fourth is the one the national status does not have.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Croatia's official gazette, at narodne-novine.nn.hr. An act takes legal effect on publication here and carries the gazette's issue number and date as part of its identity - the Zakon o strancima is NN 133/2020 and nothing else. Every item since 1990 is addressable twice: as /clanci/sluzbeni/<year>_<month>_<issue>_<seq>.html, and, for anything published since about 2016, by ELI at /eli/sluzbeni/<year>/<issue>/<seq>, which answers a 302 to the first form. The ELI-era pages also carry RDFa in the head: eli#amended_by and eli#changed_by list every amending act of a statute, which is how the amendment chain of a recent act is established rather than guessed. Items published before ELI - the Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu of 1991 among them - carry no metadata at all. The site serves plain HTTP to an ordinary client with no proxy and no warm-up. Its search form is ASP.NET and needs a POST with viewstate, but the complete yearly register is downloadable without one: /get_index_file.aspx?year=<YYYY>&type=csv returns every item of that year as tab-separated title, document type, issuing body and link, and 1990 to 2026 is 22 MB. That register is what makes a negative answer about an amendment possible.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes acts as enacted and does not consolidate them.** There is no consolidated text of any Croatian statute on this site. The whole gazette has carried 222 items with 'pročišćeni tekst' in the title since 1990, and since 2016 they are statutes of professional chambers, party statutes and collective agreements; the last consolidated text of an Act was the Zakon o državnim službenicima in 2012. So what is read here is the act as published plus each amending act, and an article number quoted from an amending act is an instruction to amend rather than an article of the resulting law - it must be cited as the article of the amended Act, naming what put it there. A consequence worth stating plainly: because nothing on this site is a consolidation, no citation of it carries a consolidation cut-off, and an apparently current article may have been replaced by a later amending act published in a different issue. The register at /get_index_file.aspx is title-indexed, so an amending act whose title does not name the statute it amends will not be found by searching it. The gazette cannot be cited for anything it does not publish: the shortage-occupation decision under article 101(1) of the Zakon o strancima is made by the Employment Service's governing council and does not appear here, nor does the evidence the ministry competent for demography and emigration requires for the certificate on which the whole diaspora residence route turns, nor the average monthly net salary that every means threshold in Croatian immigration law is a fraction of, which the state statistics office publishes separately. zakon.hr and informator.hr carry consolidated Croatian texts and are commercial publishers, not government ones; they are not cited here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«(4) Stalni boravak odobrit će se državljaninu treće zemlje iz članka 156. stavka 1. ovoga Zakona ako ima valjanu stranu putnu ispravu i ne predstavlja opasnost za javni poredak, nacionalnu sigurnost ili javno zdravlje.»Our translation - not official
(4) Permanent residence shall be granted to a third-country national under article 156(1) of this Act if he has a valid foreign travel document and does not represent a danger to public order, national security or public health.
Two conditions for the national status, and neither is a test.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Croatia's official gazette, at narodne-novine.nn.hr. An act takes legal effect on publication here and carries the gazette's issue number and date as part of its identity - the Zakon o strancima is NN 133/2020 and nothing else. Every item since 1990 is addressable twice: as /clanci/sluzbeni/<year>_<month>_<issue>_<seq>.html, and, for anything published since about 2016, by ELI at /eli/sluzbeni/<year>/<issue>/<seq>, which answers a 302 to the first form. The ELI-era pages also carry RDFa in the head: eli#amended_by and eli#changed_by list every amending act of a statute, which is how the amendment chain of a recent act is established rather than guessed. Items published before ELI - the Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu of 1991 among them - carry no metadata at all. The site serves plain HTTP to an ordinary client with no proxy and no warm-up. Its search form is ASP.NET and needs a POST with viewstate, but the complete yearly register is downloadable without one: /get_index_file.aspx?year=<YYYY>&type=csv returns every item of that year as tab-separated title, document type, issuing body and link, and 1990 to 2026 is 22 MB. That register is what makes a negative answer about an amendment possible.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes acts as enacted and does not consolidate them.** There is no consolidated text of any Croatian statute on this site. The whole gazette has carried 222 items with 'pročišćeni tekst' in the title since 1990, and since 2016 they are statutes of professional chambers, party statutes and collective agreements; the last consolidated text of an Act was the Zakon o državnim službenicima in 2012. So what is read here is the act as published plus each amending act, and an article number quoted from an amending act is an instruction to amend rather than an article of the resulting law - it must be cited as the article of the amended Act, naming what put it there. A consequence worth stating plainly: because nothing on this site is a consolidation, no citation of it carries a consolidation cut-off, and an apparently current article may have been replaced by a later amending act published in a different issue. The register at /get_index_file.aspx is title-indexed, so an amending act whose title does not name the statute it amends will not be found by searching it. The gazette cannot be cited for anything it does not publish: the shortage-occupation decision under article 101(1) of the Zakon o strancima is made by the Employment Service's governing council and does not appear here, nor does the evidence the ministry competent for demography and emigration requires for the certificate on which the whole diaspora residence route turns, nor the average monthly net salary that every means threshold in Croatian immigration law is a fraction of, which the state statistics office publishes separately. zakon.hr and informator.hr carry consolidated Croatian texts and are commercial publishers, not government ones; they are not cited here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«»(1) Dugotrajni boravak može se odobriti državljaninu treće zemlje koji neposredno prije podnošenja zahtjeva u Republici Hrvatskoj ima neprekidno pet godina odobren privremeni boravak, azil ili supsidijarnu zaštitu.»Our translation - not official
(1) Long-term residence may be granted to a third-country national who, immediately before lodging the application, has five continuous years of approved temporary residence, asylum or subsidiary protection in the Republic of Croatia.
The five years, and the renaming. NN 40/2025 changed boravište to boravak throughout, which is why the two statuses now differ by one word.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Croatia's official gazette, at narodne-novine.nn.hr. An act takes legal effect on publication here and carries the gazette's issue number and date as part of its identity - the Zakon o strancima is NN 133/2020 and nothing else. Every item since 1990 is addressable twice: as /clanci/sluzbeni/<year>_<month>_<issue>_<seq>.html, and, for anything published since about 2016, by ELI at /eli/sluzbeni/<year>/<issue>/<seq>, which answers a 302 to the first form. The ELI-era pages also carry RDFa in the head: eli#amended_by and eli#changed_by list every amending act of a statute, which is how the amendment chain of a recent act is established rather than guessed. Items published before ELI - the Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu of 1991 among them - carry no metadata at all. The site serves plain HTTP to an ordinary client with no proxy and no warm-up. Its search form is ASP.NET and needs a POST with viewstate, but the complete yearly register is downloadable without one: /get_index_file.aspx?year=<YYYY>&type=csv returns every item of that year as tab-separated title, document type, issuing body and link, and 1990 to 2026 is 22 MB. That register is what makes a negative answer about an amendment possible.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes acts as enacted and does not consolidate them.** There is no consolidated text of any Croatian statute on this site. The whole gazette has carried 222 items with 'pročišćeni tekst' in the title since 1990, and since 2016 they are statutes of professional chambers, party statutes and collective agreements; the last consolidated text of an Act was the Zakon o državnim službenicima in 2012. So what is read here is the act as published plus each amending act, and an article number quoted from an amending act is an instruction to amend rather than an article of the resulting law - it must be cited as the article of the amended Act, naming what put it there. A consequence worth stating plainly: because nothing on this site is a consolidation, no citation of it carries a consolidation cut-off, and an apparently current article may have been replaced by a later amending act published in a different issue. The register at /get_index_file.aspx is title-indexed, so an amending act whose title does not name the statute it amends will not be found by searching it. The gazette cannot be cited for anything it does not publish: the shortage-occupation decision under article 101(1) of the Zakon o strancima is made by the Employment Service's governing council and does not appear here, nor does the evidence the ministry competent for demography and emigration requires for the certificate on which the whole diaspora residence route turns, nor the average monthly net salary that every means threshold in Croatian immigration law is a fraction of, which the state statistics office publishes separately. zakon.hr and informator.hr carry consolidated Croatian texts and are commercial publishers, not government ones; they are not cited here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«(2) Ispit iz znanja hrvatskog jezika i latiničnog pisma ne moraju položiti: 1\. djeca predškolske dobi 2\. polaznici, odnosno osobe koje su završile osnovno, srednje ili visoko obrazovanje u Republici Hrvatskoj 3\. osobe starije od 65 godina ako nisu u radnom odnosu.»Our translation - not official
(2) The following are not obliged to pass the examination in knowledge of the Croatian language and the Latin script: 1\. preschool children 2\. participants in, or persons who have completed, primary, secondary or higher education in the Republic of Croatia 3\. persons over 65 years of age if they are not in employment.
Three exemptions, and the third turns on employment as well as age.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Croatia's official gazette, at narodne-novine.nn.hr. An act takes legal effect on publication here and carries the gazette's issue number and date as part of its identity - the Zakon o strancima is NN 133/2020 and nothing else. Every item since 1990 is addressable twice: as /clanci/sluzbeni/<year>_<month>_<issue>_<seq>.html, and, for anything published since about 2016, by ELI at /eli/sluzbeni/<year>/<issue>/<seq>, which answers a 302 to the first form. The ELI-era pages also carry RDFa in the head: eli#amended_by and eli#changed_by list every amending act of a statute, which is how the amendment chain of a recent act is established rather than guessed. Items published before ELI - the Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu of 1991 among them - carry no metadata at all. The site serves plain HTTP to an ordinary client with no proxy and no warm-up. Its search form is ASP.NET and needs a POST with viewstate, but the complete yearly register is downloadable without one: /get_index_file.aspx?year=<YYYY>&type=csv returns every item of that year as tab-separated title, document type, issuing body and link, and 1990 to 2026 is 22 MB. That register is what makes a negative answer about an amendment possible.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes acts as enacted and does not consolidate them.** There is no consolidated text of any Croatian statute on this site. The whole gazette has carried 222 items with 'pročišćeni tekst' in the title since 1990, and since 2016 they are statutes of professional chambers, party statutes and collective agreements; the last consolidated text of an Act was the Zakon o državnim službenicima in 2012. So what is read here is the act as published plus each amending act, and an article number quoted from an amending act is an instruction to amend rather than an article of the resulting law - it must be cited as the article of the amended Act, naming what put it there. A consequence worth stating plainly: because nothing on this site is a consolidation, no citation of it carries a consolidation cut-off, and an apparently current article may have been replaced by a later amending act published in a different issue. The register at /get_index_file.aspx is title-indexed, so an amending act whose title does not name the statute it amends will not be found by searching it. The gazette cannot be cited for anything it does not publish: the shortage-occupation decision under article 101(1) of the Zakon o strancima is made by the Employment Service's governing council and does not appear here, nor does the evidence the ministry competent for demography and emigration requires for the certificate on which the whole diaspora residence route turns, nor the average monthly net salary that every means threshold in Croatian immigration law is a fraction of, which the state statistics office publishes separately. zakon.hr and informator.hr carry consolidated Croatian texts and are commercial publishers, not government ones; they are not cited here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The two statuses are easy to confuse because NN 40/2025 renamed one of them: until 15 March 2025 the Union status was dugotrajno boravište and the national one stalni boravak; since then they are dugotrajni boravak and stalni boravak, one word apart.
The Pravilnik on how the Croatian examination is conducted and what it costs is made under article 154(4) and is not read here, so no fee is stated.
Croatian citizenship asks for eight years of residence and a wider examination covering culture and the social order, and that is a third threshold again, in a different statute.