Visas in Dubrovnik

Good to Know

• Croatia only joined Schengen on January 1, 2023 — any time spent there before that date does not count toward your current 90/180-day Schengen limit, which surprises long-time nomads who visited during the COVID era.
• The 90 days are shared across the WHOLE Schengen Area, not per country — so time spent in Italy, Greece, France etc. all counts against the same 90-day allowance as time in Dubrovnik.
• Leaving Croatia for a short trip to a non-Schengen neighbor (e.g. Montenegro or Bosnia) pauses your day count during the trip but does not reset your 90-day allowance.
• The EU's new Entry/Exit System (EES), which records fingerprints and a facial photo on first entry, is now rolling out across Schengen borders including Croatia, so expect biometric registration and possibly longer border queues.
• Visa-free entry does not permit employment or remote work under a tourist stay in the strict legal sense — nomads planning to stay long-term should look into Croatia's dedicated Digital Nomad residence permit rather than relying on repeated 90-day tourist stays.
• The income threshold auto-updates every year (2.5x the prior year's average Croatian net salary), so the figure you saw in an older blog post is likely out of date — check the current requirement before applying.
• You now need six months of bank statements or payslips to prove income, up from three months under the pre-2025 rules — start gathering these early.
• This permit is designed as a temporary arrangement, not a stepping stone to settling permanently — after your stay ends you must leave Croatia for 6 months before you can reapply, and time on this permit doesn't count toward permanent residency.
• Croatia's foreign-income tax exemption for permit holders is widely cited as applying even past 183 days in-country, but this point isn't stated with perfect consistency across sources — if you'll be close to or over 183 days, it's worth getting individual confirmation from a Croatian tax adviser or the Porezna uprava rather than assuming it applies automatically to your situation.
• The tax exemption only covers Croatia — your home country's tax obligations (e.g. US worldwide-income filing) are unaffected.
• Criminal record certificates need to be apostilled or consular-legalized, which can take extra weeks — start that process early if you're on a timeline.