Ryanair’s Chief Commercial Officer, Jason McGuinness, will hold a press conference in Zagreb next Wednesday, where he is expected to unveil the airline’s plans for the Croatian market for the 2026 summer season. The carrier told EX-YU Aviation News last week that it is in the process of finalising its schedule. Ryanair maintains a base in Zagreb, as well as seasonal bases in Dubrovnik and Zadar. So far, it has scheduled two new routes for the upcoming summer. from Dubrovnik to Budapest and Gdansk. Unlike in 2025, Ryanair has not scheduled flights from Zagreb to Pisa, Hahn and Marseille; from Zadar to Hamburg and Maastricht; or from Split and Rijeka to Vienna.
This year, Ryanair enters the fifth and final year of the Growth Incentive Model from which it has benefited at Zagreb Airport, an arrangement that led to the opening of its base in the Croatian capital. Under the five-year agreement, the airline was required to add at least 75.000 departing passengers per year in order to maintain the incentives, with the possibility of securing further discounts if it exceeded 150.000 additional departing passengers. This framework provided Ryanair with a strong incentive to steadily increase its traffic from the Croatian capital each year.
Ryanair recently said it would reallocate capacity from several markets to the likes of Croatia. At this stage, the airline has 22.804 flights scheduled on the Croatian market for the 2026 summer season, representing an increase of 4% compared to last year. The low cost carrier currently has a total of 4.258.792 seats on sale on its Croatia services, marking a year-on-year capacity increase of 4.5%. In 2025, Ryanair was Croatia’s largest airline by capacity, holding a 28% market share, ahead of Croatia Airlines, which accounted for 19.4%.
