2025 Croatian local elections

Local elections were held in Croatia on 18 May 2025, with a second round on 1 June. All seats of the county prefects, mayors and municipality heads and members of county, municipal and city councils were up for election. Additional elections for national minorities representatives were held on October 5 of the same year.

Election system

Croatia's county prefects, mayors and municipality heads are elected to four-year terms by a majority of votes cast within applicable local government units, with a runoff election if no candidate achieves a majority in the first round of voting. Members of county, city and municipal councils are elected to four-year terms through proportional representation, with the entire local government unit as a single constituency. The number of council members is defined by the councils themselves, based on applicable legislation. Electoral committees are tasked with determining whether the national minorities are represented in the council, adding further members to the council by selecting them from unelected-candidate lists. Election silence, as in all other elections in Croatia, is enforced on the day of the elections and the previous day, ending at 7:00 pm when the polling stations close and exit polls may be announced.
Number of seats in each county, city or municipality is defined by the Law on Local and Regional Self-Government and depends on their population.

Population of the county	Seats
with more than 300,000 inhabitants	47
between 200,000 and 300,000 inhabitants	41
between 100,000 and 200,000 inhabitants	37
between 60,000 and 100,000 inhabitants	31
up to 60,000 inhabitants	27

Population of the cities and municipalities	Seats
with more than 300,000 inhabitants	47
between 200,000 and 300,000 inhabitants	41
between 100,000 and 200,000 inhabitants	31
between 60,000 and 100,000 inhabitants	27
between 35,000 and 60,000 inhabitants	21
between 20,000 and 35,000 inhabitants	19
between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants	15
between 2,500 and 10,000 inhabitants	13
between 1,000 and 2,500 inhabitants	9
up to 1,000 inhabitants	7

Election results

In some counties the elections for the first round needed to be repeated at six polling stations

Elections in major cities

Analysis

HDZ increased its number of county governors from 13 to 14 and its number of city mayors from 56 to 61. The party also increased its number of city and municipal mayors in Istria County and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, traditional strongholds of IDS and SDP.
As expected, Tomislav Tomašević was re-elected as mayor of Zagreb, defeating the independent candidate Marija Selak-Raspudić.
In Split HDZ’s candidate Tomislav Šuta defeated the incumbent mayor
Ivica Puljak, who subsequently announced that he was retiring from active politics.
Rijeka, Croatia's third most populous city, elected a nonpartisan mayor for the first time since Croatia gained independence in 1991. SDP's candidate was eliminated in the first round. Iva Rinčić defeated the incumbent mayor Marko Filipović.
In Osijek the incumbent mayor Ivan Radić was re-elected by a landslide, winning more than 70% of the votes.

Additional elections

In counties, cities, towns, and municipalities where the regular elections resulted in the underrepresentation of national minorities or ethnic Croats, additional elections were held on 5 October 2025.
The Government of Croatia initially called additional elections for 75 regional and local councils, but as no candidates were submitted for 12 of them, elections were ultimately conducted for 63 councils. In 50 local units, only a single political party submitted its list of candidates.
A total of 474 polling stations were opened on election day. The additional elections were marked by a very low voter turnout of 7.5%. The lowest turnout, only 1.07%, was recorded in the elections for the County Council of Istria. The highest turnout of 58.7% was registered in the municipality of Nijemci, where the Independent Democratic Serb Party received 65 votes, narrowly defeating the Social Democratic Party of Croatia, which won 58 votes.