NextSpring

The Act Never Counts the Ninety Days - It Points at the Borders Code, and Then Makes Your Host Report You Within a Day

Answer

The general rule applies to you

No exception is recorded for citizens of Cyprus on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.

172 exceptions recorded across 63 countries · none match Cyprus to Croatia · Visiting as a tourist

Croatia has been inside Schengen since 1 January 2023 and the Zakon o strancima says almost nothing about how long a visit may last. Article 55(1) defines a short stay only by reference to article 6 of the Schengen Borders Code, and the 90-days-in-any-180 measure itself comes from Regulation (EU) 2018/1806, which decides whether a traveller needs a visa at all. What Croatian law adds is a reporting duty that falls on somebody else: under article 177(1) the person or business that gave you a bed - a hotel, a landlord, a friend, a marina - has one day from your arrival to report it to the police. Only where they cannot does the duty fall on the traveller, and then it is two days from entry rather than one from arrival. Article 55(2) also says when a person stops being on a short stay at all, and the list is not only about days: an unlawful entry, a spent or expired visa, an entry ban anywhere in the EEA, or more than 90 days in the previous 180 each end it.

Verified with official sourceMonitor - can change2026-10-10

At a glance

Visa
Decided by Regulation (EU) 2018/1806, not by Croatian law

Article 55(1) of the Zakon o strancima sends the length of a short stay to article 6 of the Schengen Borders Code and the Act states no measure of its own.

Who reports your address
Whoever gave you the bed, within 1 day of your arrival

Article 177(1) of the Zakon o strancima, which binds the legal or natural person that provided the accommodation.

If nobody can report it for you
You, within 2 days of entering

Article 177(4) of the Zakon o strancima.

When a short stay ends
After more than 90 days in the previous 180

Article 55(2) point 4 of the Zakon o strancima, which lists seven other ways it ends as well.

How long an unclosed accommodation report lasts
90 days

Article 177(8) of the Zakon o strancima, where the person reporting gave no departure date.

Requirements

  • A travel document, and a visa where Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 requires one
  • No more than 90 days in any 180-day period
  • Your accommodation reported to the police within one day of your arrival, by whoever provided it
  • Where nobody can report it for you, your own report within two days of entry

What applies to you

Nothing changes for a citizen of Cyprus

We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.

What the law says

Text layer - verbatim verifiedZakon o strancima · Članak 55. stavak 1.
«(1) Kratkotrajni boravak je boravak državljanina treće zemlje određen člankom 6. Zakonika o schengenskim granicama.»

Our translation - not official

Short stay is the stay of a third-country national defined by article 6 of the Schengen Borders Code.

The whole of the Croatian Act on how long a visit may last: a cross-reference to a Union instrument.

Read it at the source
About 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

Text layer - verbatim verifiedZakon o strancima · Članak 55. stavak 2. točka 4.
«je u prethodnih 180 dana boravio dulje od 90 dana ili ako je nezakonito boravio»

Our translation - not official

has stayed longer than 90 days in the previous 180 days, or has stayed unlawfully

One of eight circumstances in which a person is no longer on a short stay. The Act states the measure here, as a disqualification, and nowhere as an allowance.

Read it at the source
About 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

Text layer - verbatim verifiedZakon o strancima · Članak 177. stavak 1.
«(1) Smještaj državljanina treće zemlje na kratkotrajnom boravku dužna je prijaviti pravna i fizička osoba koja je državljaninu treće zemlje pružila smještaj u roku od jednog dana od dolaska državljanina treće zemlje na smještaj.»

Our translation - not official

The legal or natural person that provided accommodation to a third-country national is obliged to report the accommodation of a third-country national on a short stay within one day of the third-country national's arrival at the accommodation.

The duty is on the host, not the traveller, and the clock starts at arrival at the accommodation rather than at the border.

Read it at the source
About 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

Text layer - verbatim verifiedZakon o strancima · Članak 177. stavak 4.
«(4) Ako se obveznik prijave iz stavka 1. ovoga članka u trenutku dolaska državljanina treće zemlje na smještaj ne nalazi u Republici Hrvatskoj ili se prijava smještaja zbog drugog razloga ne može obaviti u skladu sa stavkom 1. ovoga članka, državljanin treće zemlje na kratkotrajnom boravku dužan je sam prijaviti svoj smještaj u roku od dva dana od ulaska u Republiku Hrvatsku odnosno od promjene smještaja.»

Our translation - not official

If the person obliged to report under paragraph 1 of this article is not in the Republic of Croatia at the moment the third-country national arrives at the accommodation, or if the report of accommodation cannot be made in accordance with paragraph 1 for another reason, the third-country national on a short stay is obliged to report their own accommodation within two days of entering the Republic of Croatia or of the change of accommodation.

The fallback, and the only place a traveller's own deadline appears.

Read it at the source
About 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

Text layer - verbatim verifiedRegulation (EU) 2018/1806, consolidated text of 30 December 2025 · Article 4(1)
«Nationals of third countries listed in Annex II shall be exempt from the requirement set out in Article 3(1) for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period.»

The exemption and its measure, which the Croatian Act never restates.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.

We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source

Practical notes

Narodne novine publishes acts as they were passed and does not consolidate them, so the current text of the Zakon o strancima is the 2020 Act read together with the amending acts of NN 114/2022, NN 151/2022, NN 40/2025 and NN 55/2026. Every article cited here was checked against all four.

The Schengen Borders Code governs what a border officer checks and is not read in this record.

An ETIAS travel authorisation is a separate Union instrument and is not read here. The Zakon o strancima refers to Regulation (EU) 2018/1240 in articles 47 and 50 as amended by NN 151/2022, but nothing in that amendment states when the system begins to apply.

Article 177(9) excludes crew of cargo and passenger ships accommodated on board, and article 177(10) extends the same reporting machinery to people on temporary, long-term and permanent residence.

Sources2 · all accessed 2026-10-10
  • issues
    NN 133/2020, Zakon o strancima

    Narodne novine

    About 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

  • consolidates
    Regulation (EU) 2018/1806, consolidated text

    EUR-Lex, Publications Office of the European Union · consolidated to 2025-12-30

    About this source

    The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.

    Standing: Maintains the text in force

    Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.

    We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source