temporary stay for the purpose of life partnership
Residency route facts
Identity
| Official name (local) | privremeni boravak u svrhu životnog partnerstva as of 2026-08-15[7] The Act's own term, heading above art. 70. The Act treats formal life partnership (životno partnerstvo) and informal life partnership (neformalno životno partnerstvo) together throughout. |
|---|---|
| Official name (English) | temporary stay for the purpose of life partnership as of 2026-08-15[3] The Ministry's English rendering of the fifth purpose in its list of purposes of temporary stay. |
| Legal basis | Zakon o strancima (NN 133/20, 114/22, 151/22, 40/25, 55/26), čl. 70. u vezi s čl. 59., 61., 68., 69. i 89. as of 2025-03-07[7][8] Art. 70(1) sets who may be granted it; art. 70(2) the exemption from the means test for the partner of a Croatian citizen; art. 70(3) applies arts. 69 and 71 by analogy; art. 70(4) refuses it where either partner is already in a life or informal life partnership with another person or the partnership is not genuine. Art. 61(1) second indent point 2 and art. 61(5) set the term; art. 68(4) applies the marriage-of-convenience test. |
| Instrument type | residence permit as of 2026-08-15[3] Granted as temporary stay; the holder is issued a biometric residence permit. |
Who can apply
| Nationals not served by this route | EU, EEA, EFTA as of 2026-08-15[3] The temporary-stay chapter applies to third-country nationals only. |
|---|---|
| Minimum age | Not established from a qualifying source No minimum age is stated in art. 70. |
| Criminal-record condition | Yes as of 2026-08-15[7] Art. 70(1) requires the general conditions of art. 59, which include art. 59(1)(5) on a first application. |
Permit terms
| Initial duration | up to 2 years as of 2025-03-07[8] Art. 61(1) second indent point 2 as substituted by NN 40/2025: up to two years for life or informal life partnership with a Croatian citizen, with a third-country national on long-term or permanent stay, with a person granted asylum or subsidiary protection, or with a third-country national holding temporary stay; art. 61(5) caps it to the expiry of the sponsoring partner's own temporary stay and to two years in any case. |
|---|---|
| How the initial term is set | matches the sponsor's permit |
| Renewable | Yes as of 2026-08-15[7] Art. 62(1): an application to extend is lodged at the latest 60 days before expiry. |
| Renewal duration | up to 2 years as of 2025-03-07[8] The same rule governs extension. |
| Work rights | Recorded at the source, but not reducible to a single value as of 2026-08-15[4][7] As on the family-reunification route, the answer turns on the partner's status. Art. 89(1)(2) frees from any permit a person on temporary stay for life partnership with a Croatian citizen, or with a third-country national holding long-term residence, permanent stay, asylum or subsidiary protection; art. 89(1)(3) extends the same to the life partner of an EU Blue Card holder or an intra-corporate transferee. A life partner of an ordinary work-permit holder is not in the list. Same schema gap as on hr-spajanje-obitelji. |
Permanent residence and citizenship
Requirements
| Who can sponsor | citizen, permanent resident, temporary permit holder, specific permits as of 2026-08-15[7] Art. 70(1): a Croatian citizen, a third-country national with long-term residence, permanent stay or temporary stay, or a person granted asylum or subsidiary protection. |
|---|---|
| Eligible relations | registered partner, unmarried partner as of 2026-08-15[7] Art. 70(1) covers both the formal life partner (životni partner) and the informal life partner (neformalni životni partner). Registered_partner is used for the formal partnership entered on the register and unmarried_partner for the informal one; Croatia's separate category of common-law opposite-sex partner (izvanbračni drug) belongs to the family-reunification route, not to this one. |
| Sponsor income requirement | 0.57 × average monthly net paid salary, previous year per month as of 2026-01-09[5][6] The general level in regulation art. 2(1) as substituted by NN 3/2026 – 57 % of the previous year's average monthly net paid salary, EUR 825.93 at the 2025 figure – with the art. 2(2) increments of 15 % for a two-member family and 10 % for each further member. Art. 70(2) exempts the life or informal life partner of a Croatian citizen from proving means altogether. |
| Sponsor accommodation requirement | Not established from a qualifying source No accommodation condition for this route was found in the retrieved text. |
| Sponsor waiting period | Not established from a qualifying source |
| Pre-entry language test | No as of 2026-08-15[7] Neither art. 59(1) nor art. 70 contains a language condition. Recorded false on the closed list of conditions. |
Process
| Where to apply from | either as of 2025-03-07[8] Art. 58(1) and (2) apply; art. 58(3)(2) expressly lets the life partner or informal life partner of a Croatian citizen lodge at a police administration even where a visa is needed to enter. |
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| Statutory processing time | Not established from a qualifying source No statutory decision period is stated for a temporary-stay application. |
| Fees |
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| Quota |
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Physical presence
| maximum total absence | 180 days · to keep the permit as of 2025-03-07[3][8] Art. 87(1)(6) as substituted by NN 40/2025: a temporary stay granted for up to two years expires if the holder is abroad for more than 180 days in total on multiple occasions from the day the stay was granted. |
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| maximum consecutive absence | 60 days · to keep the permit as of 2025-03-07[3][8] Same provision: more than 60 days on a single occasion, for a stay granted for up to two years. A single absence of up to 90 days for justified reasons notified to the police administration before departure does not end the stay. |
| registration only | to keep the permit as of 2025-03-07[3][8] Registration of residence within 30 days of the grant, or six months where a long-stay visa was required, and reporting of the address within three days of entry; art. 62.a's 15-day duty to report that the conditions have ceased applies here too. |
Family inclusion
| Family members may be included | Yes as of 2026-08-15[7] Art. 70(3) applies arts. 69 and 71 to a life-partnership holder by analogy, and art. 63(1)(4) treats any third-country national holding temporary stay as a possible sponsor, so a further family member may in principle be reunited with the holder. Art. 61(5) caps the resulting permit to the expiry of the holder's own stay. |
|---|---|
| Eligible relations | spouse, unmarried partner, minor child, other dependent as of 2026-08-15[7] Art. 64(1) and (2) apply; the parent limb is unavailable for the same reason as on the reunification route. |
| Family may apply at the same time | Not established from a qualifying source Not stated in the sources retrieved. |
| Family members' work rights | Recorded at the source, but not reducible to a single value as of 2026-08-15[4] Same per-sponsor-category gap as the route's own work_rights. |
Your next step
Read the requirements above considering your own situation: the income multiple, the absence limits, who you can bring. Check the country record for the reference figure those amounts are calculated from, and for anything that has changed recently.
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Verification
| Sources cited | 8 |
|---|---|
| of which official (tier 1) | 8 |
| Oldest as-of date | 2025-03-07 |
| Newest as-of date | 2026-08-15 |
| Reviewed on | 2026-08-22 |
| Schema version | 1.1 |
Sources
- [1] Temporary stay of digital nomads
Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia · official portal · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-15 · Archived copy - [2] Long-Term Residence and Permanent stay
Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia (MUP) · official portal · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-15 · Archived copy - [3] Temporary stay of third-country nationals
Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia (MUP) · official portal · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-15 · Archived copy - [4] Work of third-country nationals
Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia (MUP) · official portal · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-15 · Archived copy - [5] Uredba o načinu izračuna i visini sredstava za uzdržavanje državljanina treće zemlje u Republici Hrvatskoj, NN 14/2021
Narodne novine · Vlada Republike Hrvatske · statute · Tier 1 · Published 2021-02-12 · Accessed 2026-08-15 · Archived copy · Amended by hr-uredba-uzdrzavanje-3-26 - [6] Uredba o izmjenama i dopuni Uredbe o načinu izračuna i visini sredstava za uzdržavanje državljanina treće zemlje u RH, NN 3/2026
Narodne novine / Vlada Republike Hrvatske · statute · Tier 1 · Published 2026-01-09 · Accessed 2026-08-15 - [7] Zakon o strancima (Aliens Act), NN 133/2020
Narodne novine (Official Gazette of the Republic of Croatia) / Hrvatski sabor · gazette · Tier 1 · Published 2020-12-04 · Accessed 2026-08-15 · Amended by hr-zakon-o-strancima-114-22, hr-zakon-o-strancima-40-25, hr-zakon-o-strancima-55-26 - [8] Zakon o izmjenama i dopunama Zakona o strancima, NN 40/2025
Narodne novine / Hrvatski sabor · gazette · Tier 1 · Published 2025-03-07 · Accessed 2026-08-15