Croatian citizens have travelled to the United States without a visa since 2021. An ESTA linked to your biometric putovnica now replaces the embassy interview for stays of up to 90 days, whether you fly from Dubrovnik, Zagreb or Split.
90 days
Maximum stay per visit
2 years
ESTA validity
Multiple
Entries permitted
72 hours
Apply at least this far ahead
100% online
No embassy visit
Overview
Until 2021 a Croatian planning a trip to the United States had to book an interview at the embassy outside Zagreb and wait for a visa to be placed in the passport. Croatia's designation into the Visa Waiver Program that year replaced all of that with an online form, and travel has grown since: to relatives in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Cleveland, to conferences, and on first-time holidays to New York and California.
The document that makes visa-free travel work is the ESTA, issued electronically by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Croatian citizens must have one approved before an airline will carry them. Because the arrangement is still fairly new, plenty of travellers are applying for the first time, often without relatives or colleagues who have done it before.
This guide concentrates on what a Croatian applicant actually runs into: č, ć, đ, š and ž in names, the five-year passports held by younger adults, the position of people who hold both Croatian and Bosnian documents, and how to fit a long-haul trip around a working year that revolves around the Adriatic summer.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes, and it replaces the visa for short stays. With an approved ESTA a Croatian citizen may spend up to 90 days in the United States as a tourist, business visitor, patient or transit passenger. The requirement is the same at airports, seaports and, since 2022, at the road crossings from Canada and Mexico.
Only the putovnica will do. The osobna iskaznica that gets you to Ljubljana or Munich cannot be used, and the passport must be the biometric kind. An application is needed for each person, so a family visiting an uncle in Ohio files one for every child as well as for the adults.
A great many Croatian citizens live in Bosnia and Herzegovina or hold its passport too. For Visa Waiver purposes it is Croatian citizenship and the Croatian e-passport that count, as Bosnia and Herzegovina is not in the programme. Bosnian nationality is not one of those that bar a dual national; that restriction concerns Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Cuba.
The ESTA does not stretch to seasonal work, university study for credit, reporting for Croatian media or immigration. People refused a US visa in the years before 2021 are in a delicate position: the refusal has to be declared and frequently leads to the ESTA being declined, leaving a new B-1/B-2 application in Zagreb as the way forward.
Stay & validity
Authorisations are generally issued for two years and may be used repeatedly, each visit lasting up to 90 days. Given that Croatia only joined in 2021, many first authorisations have already expired, and returning travellers should check dates rather than assume the old one is still live.
Croatia gives ten-year passports to citizens aged 21 and over and five-year passports to anyone younger. Students and young professionals are therefore the most likely to find their ESTA cut off early by an expiring passport. Look at the datum isteka before paying for anything, and remember that the authorisation does not move to a renewed passport.
Ninety days is the whole allowance for a trip, including any days in Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean along the way, and it cannot be extended once you have arrived. Marriage is a frequent trigger for reapplying, since a new surname means a new passport and, with it, a new ESTA.
Pricing
Live fees for Croatian passport holders, shown all-in — the US government charge and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Croatia
Requirements
Everything Croatian passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality.
A biometric e-passport from a Visa Waiver Program country, carrying the chip symbol on its cover
A valid email address, which is where the decision is sent and which you should keep accessible while travelling
A credit or debit card to pay the government ESTA charge and our service fee together
Your home address, phone number and an emergency contact
Employer details and, if you have them, the address of where you are staying in the United States
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with our team checking every field before anything reaches U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Enter your passport details exactly as printed, your contact and employment information, and answer the eligibility questions. Most applicants finish in about fifteen minutes.
Our team checks your passport number, name spelling, dates and declarations against CBP requirements before anything is submitted.
Your application goes to U.S. Customs and Border Protection with the government charge paid, and we track its status until a decision is issued.
There is nothing to stick in your passport. The authorisation is held electronically against your passport number, and the airline verifies it when you check in.
CBP asks travellers to apply 72 hours or more ahead of departure. The majority of Croatian applications clear quickly, though some are marked pending and take longer, with no way of jumping the queue.
First-time applicants should give themselves more room than that. Questions about previous visas, employment and travel history take longer to answer accurately if you have never seen them, and people who held American visas in the past need the old passport to hand to answer correctly.
Timing in Croatia is shaped by tourism. Those who work the season on the coast tend to travel between November and March and book as soon as contracts end in October; applying in the same week avoids a scramble. Summer travellers leaving after school finishes in June should apply in spring.
On arrival
An approved ESTA gets you on the plane. This is what happens once you land, and how to make the arrival as quick as possible.
Visa Waiver travellers are seen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the first American airport they land at, even when connecting onward. The officer takes a photograph and, for most adults, fingerprints.
There is no paper form to fill in on the aircraft. Your arrival record, the I-94, is created digitally and shows the date by which you must leave. You can look it up online afterwards.
Expect to be asked where you are staying, for how long and what you do for a living. A return ticket and the address of your first night are usually all it takes.
Queues at the busiest gateways can run past an hour at peak arrival times. If you are connecting to a domestic flight, leave a generous margin, since you also reclaim and recheck your bags.
Getting there
Croatia has a single nonstop to the United States, United's summer service between Dubrovnik and Newark, which exists mainly to bring American tourists but is just as useful in the other direction. From Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Osijek the journey involves one change, most often on Croatia Airlines to Frankfurt or Munich for a Lufthansa or United flight, or via Amsterdam, Paris, London or Istanbul.
Best time to go
Croatia's own high season points to the answer for many people. If your income depends on the months from June to September, the American trip belongs in the off-season, and late autumn is a good choice: fares fall, cities are lively, and Thanksgiving in late November is worth either joining with relatives or avoiding on account of the airport crowds.
For families bound by the school calendar, classes end around mid-June and resume in early September. That overlaps with the US school summer, the busiest time in the national parks and the most expensive on transatlantic routes. Leaving in the last days of June, before American holiday traffic reaches its height in July, takes some of the edge off.
Weather contrasts are worth planning for. Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, where so many Croatian-American families live, have winters considerably harsher than Zagreb's, with heavy snow and long freezes. Florida is the opposite extreme and lies in hurricane season from June until November.
Zagreb is six hours ahead of New York, seven ahead of Chicago and nine ahead of Los Angeles. With a connection in Germany most itineraries leave early in the morning and arrive on the East Coast in the afternoon, a day of roughly twenty waking hours. Avoid scheduling a long drive straight after landing.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Croatia — we check for every one of them before submitting.
The ESTA has to mirror the machine-readable zone, which has no diacritics. Kovačević is read as KOVACEVIC. Typing the Croatian letters, or converting them phonetically to CH or SH as some people do in emails abroad, produces a mismatch with the passport record.
Before the Visa Waiver Program, refusals at the Zagreb embassy were not rare, particularly for young applicants. Some assume the new system has no memory of them. An undeclared refusal is far more damaging than a declared one.
Dual citizens sometimes begin the form with whichever passport is nearest. A Bosnia and Herzegovina passport cannot support an ESTA because that country is outside the programme. Use the Croatian biometric passport for the application and for the journey itself.
Many Croatians applied in the months after the programme opened. Those authorisations ran for two years at most, and plenty of holders have renewed passports since. Confirm that yours is valid for the passport you now carry before heading to the airport.
Travel to a restricted country
Anyone who has been in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia or Yemen on or after 1 March 2011, or in Cuba on or after 12 January 2021, is generally not eligible for the Visa Waiver Program and needs a visa instead.
A previous visa refusal or overstay
An earlier refusal of a US visa, a denied entry or a past overstay must be declared. Each one commonly leads to an ESTA being refused and the traveller being directed to apply for a visa.
Passport details that do not match
A single wrong character in the passport number, or an expiry date typed in the wrong order, produces an authorisation the airline cannot find at check-in.
Conditions
These conditions are set under the Visa Waiver Program and do not vary by nationality. The 90-day limit and the passport-linking rule catch out a great many otherwise well-planned trips.
Your authorisation is held electronically against the passport number you enter. If you renew or replace that passport, change your name or change citizenship, the ESTA no longer applies and you need a new one.
Every person travelling under the Visa Waiver Program needs their own ESTA, including babies and children, each linked to that traveller's own e-passport.
An approved ESTA generally lasts two years from the date of authorisation, or until the passport it is linked to expires, whichever comes first.
Within its validity you can make repeated trips. Each stay can be up to 90 days, and time spent in Canada, Mexico or the nearby Caribbean islands during a trip counts towards those 90 days.
A Visa Waiver stay cannot be extended and cannot be converted into another immigration status from inside the United States. Anyone who needs longer must apply for a visa before travelling.
An ESTA lets you board a carrier bound for the United States. Admission is decided by a CBP officer at the port of entry, who can ask about your plans, your funds and your ties to home.
Consular services
The American embassy for Croatia is in Buzin, on the southern edge of Zagreb. ESTA applications do not pass through it and involve no appointment. Its consular section deals with visas, which Croatian citizens now need only for purposes such as work or study, or when they do not qualify for the Visa Waiver Program.
FAQs
The questions Croatian passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United States.
No. Since Croatia joined the Visa Waiver Program in 2021, Croatian citizens can travel for up to 90 days for tourism, business, medical treatment or transit with an approved ESTA in place of a visa. Longer stays, employment and academic study still need the appropriate visa.
You can apply, but you must declare the refusal, and a previous refusal commonly results in the ESTA being declined. If that happens, the remaining option is a fresh B-1/B-2 visitor visa application at the embassy in Zagreb.
Leave the diacritics out and copy the spelling from the two machine-readable lines on your passport's photo page. Č and ć become C, š becomes S and ž becomes Z. For đ, use exactly what your passport shows there.
Yes, using your Croatian e-passport. Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a Visa Waiver country, so its passport cannot be used, but holding it does not disqualify you. Only an additional nationality of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria or Cuba has that effect.
Generally two years, or until the passport expires if sooner. Croatians under 21 have five-year passports, so their authorisations are the ones most often shortened. A renewed passport requires a new ESTA.
United operates a nonstop between Dubrovnik and Newark during the summer season. At other times, and from Zagreb or Split, you travel with one connection through a hub such as Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, Paris or Istanbul.
No. Employment of any kind is excluded, including seasonal and casual work. Any work placement requires a visa obtained before you travel.
No later than 72 hours before the flight, in line with CBP's recommendation. First-time applicants, and anyone who needs to look up details of old visas, are better off applying as soon as the tickets are bought.
Your nationality is already set to Croatia. Complete the form in about fifteen minutes, and our team will check every detail before it reaches CBP.
Other nationalities
Routes, passport rules and the practical details differ by country. Here are the guides for other Visa Waiver Program nationalities.
