January is Split's quietest and coldest month: highs of about 11 °C, a sea around 15 °C, roughly eight wet days and almost no visitors. Worth it for the palace, the museums and cheap trips to Krka — not for anyone who wants to swim or island-hop.
By Marin Perić
Yes, if you want the city rather than the coast. January is close to the emptiest month of the year: Split Airport handled about 42,000 passengers in January 2026, against roughly 787,000 in July 2025. What that buys you is Diocletian's Palace with nobody in it, lunches where every other table is speaking Croatian, and rooms at off-season rates. What it costs you is the sea, easy island day trips and nearly every boat tour. Come for a long weekend of walking, eating and museums, not for a beach week.
At the DHMZ Split-Marjan station the average January high is 10.7 °C and the average low 5.9 °C, which makes it the coldest month of the year by a small margin. About 73 mm of rain falls on roughly eight days, and the sun manages four and a half hours a day on average. A night below freezing happens once or twice in a typical January — rare, but it does happen.
What the averages hide is the bura, the cold north-easterly that drops off the mountains in winter. A bura day is usually clear and brilliantly lit, but the wind along the Riva cuts straight through a light jacket, and it is the usual reason a catamaran gets cancelled. Pack a windproof layer and a hat, and keep an indoor plan in your pocket.
Not comfortably. The sea off Split averages about 15 °C in January, and over the last ten years it has ranged from roughly 12 °C to 17 °C. The exception is New Year's Day, when a crowd plays picigin — the local keep-the-ball-up game — in the shallows at Bačvice. Watching is free, and the coffee afterwards is the point.
If you want to know what you are watching, read our guide to picigin at Bačvice.
Open: the palace streets (a lived-in neighbourhood, not a ticketed site), the cathedral, the green market, the galleries, cafés and most restaurants in the centre. Expect shorter winter hours and check before crossing town for one thing.
Shut or paused: beach bars, kayak and paddleboard rental, the Blue Cave speedboat tours and most sunset cruises. On the islands, many konobas close from late autumn until around Easter.
Reduced: ferries and catamarans run their winter timetables.
The state fast boats to Hvar town keep an off-season timetable from 1 January to 28 May and from 28 September to 31 December. On line 9608 that means one sailing a day from Split at 16:00 and one back from Hvar at 07:30 on weekdays, at a winter fare of €6.40 in 2026, and the other year-round fast line through Hvar, towards Vela Luka and Lastovo, also leaves Split in the afternoon and comes back in the early morning. That is a timetable for islanders, not day-trippers — you cannot do Hvar as a day trip on it. Brač is the easy island in the off-season: since January 2026 Jadrolinija has kept at least 12 ferry sailings a day between Brač and the mainland all year.
The best January day trip is Krka. The park's published price list puts adult entry at €7 from January to March and in November and December, against €40 from June to September. The catch is that the boat from Skradin only runs from 1 April to 31 October, so in winter you arrive by road.
Read the Krka day trip guide for how to get there without a car.
1 January — public holiday, and the New Year's Day picigin at Bačvice.
6 January — Epiphany, a public holiday, and the last day of Advent on the Riva.
Late January — Night of Museums (Noć muzeja), when museums across Croatia open free for an evening. In 2026 it fell on Friday 30 January, from 18:00 to 01:00, with a free bus between Split's Archaeological Museum and Salona.
If you are arriving in the first week, Advent in Split is still running.
Walk the palace at eight in the morning, when the Peristyle is yours and the cellar arcades echo. Spend a slow afternoon at the Meštrović Gallery. On a clear bura day, climb Marjan for the view across to the islands, which is sharper in winter than at any time in summer. If it rains, the old town copes well — the lanes are narrow and half-covered — and there is a whole list of indoor plans.
Start with Diocletian's Palace, then the gallery and the hill.
For the wet days: things to do in Split when it rains.
For the clear ones: Marjan hill.
Very little needs booking. Book a room where the heating works — ask directly, because older apartments are built for August. Book Friday and Saturday dinner if you have a specific konoba in mind. If Krka or Mostar is the reason for the trip, confirm the tour actually runs on your date, because winter departures depend on numbers.
Comparing months? Read Split in winter and
Where these numbers come from: air temperature, rain and sunshine are the 1991–2020 climate normals for the Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service (DHMZ) station at Split-Marjan, 122 m up on Marjan hill, as published by the World Meteorological Organization through NOAA. A rain day is one with at least 1 mm. Sea temperature is the ten-year average for Split from seatemperature.info. Daylight and sunset are for the 15th of the month. Passenger figures are from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.
Get out there
Guided trips that include this stop, with live availability.
Boat trips
A full day on a fast twelve-seat boat: the Blue Cave on Biševo, the Monk Seal cave, Stiniva's famous cove, lunch on Vis and a swim off Budikovac's turquoise lagoon, finishing with a stop at Hvar town. Ten and a half hours, small group, no coach transfer.
History
Ninety minutes through the palace with a guide who lives inside it: the Golden Gate, the cellars, the Peristyle, the cathedral and the streets in between. Small group, no flag, and a proper explanation of why a Roman emperor retired to a cabbage patch in Dalmatia.
Boat trips
Five hours to Šolta and back on a ten-person boat: three swim stops in coves you cannot reach by road, an hour in Maslinica for dinner or a drink, and the run home across the channel as the sun goes down behind the island.