October the 1st, 2025 – Croatian food prices are set to inflate at twice the pace of those in the rest of the Eurozone in 2026.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Edita Vlahovic Zuvela writes, Croats spend about a quarter of their income on food, and if housing, energy and transport costs are added to this, they spend more than half of their total income on these very basic needs. Croatian food prices will increase by an additional 4.1 percent in 2026, which is twice as much as the projected rate across the Eurozone set by the European Central Bank (ECB) at just over two percent.
Unlike Croatia, where food prices will continue to rise, food price increases in other Eurozone countries have already stopped this year. The average growth in food price inflation across the other Eurozone countries has slightly decreased from 3.3 percent in July to 3.2 percent in August. At the same time, the prices of unprocessed food products have increased much more, by as much as 5.5 percent, compared to the prices of processed food, which increased by 2.6 percent in August this year.
croatian food prices will increase in 2026, as they did earlier this year…
Croatian food prices became significantly more expensive during May, June and July, when this growth stopped at seven percent. Back in August, food price growth eased slightly and stopped at 6.6 percent, but food prices grew faster than overall inflation for most of the year.
The CNB pointed out that this year, food prices were the biggest driver of inflation. The CNB’s chief economist, Vedran Šošić, explained this year’s high food price growth by the movement of prices for certain food raw materials on the global market, as well as by relatively strong wage growth. “Strong demand allows producers to pass on rising costs,” Šošić explained. The CNB expects food prices to increase at a lower rate by the end of the year than was the case in previous months.
However, the movement of global food raw material prices cannot explain all the price increases Croatia has been a victim of for many months now. The growth in import prices of food products was at its highest in January this year, standing at 10.6 percent, before falling to 5.9 percent by July. The ECB explained that import price inflation has decreased significantly due to easing pressures in foreign supply chains and the appreciation of the euro. The Eurozone’s common currency strengthened significantly in 2025, mostly against the US dollar, by more than 12 percent. It also did the same against most other leading currencies of the world.
“We’ve got a crisis in domestic agriculture and livestock that’s being ignored, or at least being only partially discussed in the context of rapid growth and high food prices. Import dependence on food has exceeded all reasonable limits, which makes us extremely sensitive to shocks on the global food market. There are also domestic shocks due to diseases in poultry and livestock farming,” explained Marijana Ivanov from the Zagreb Faculty of Economics. She added that because of its high dependence on food imports, Croatia is more sensitive to geopolitical risks that affect food prices, especially meat. “Some inflationary pressures present in Croatia have weakened due to weaker growth in demand from both residents and foreign tourists, but this isn’t really the case with food,” said Ivanov.
In their September projections, the ECB’s macroeconomic experts predict that Croatian food price growth will remain elevated for some time due to the carry-over of the delayed effects of past increases in international food commodity prices. They do however believe that it will decline to levels of just over two percent next year and in 2027. According to their expectations, overall inflation in the Eurozone will be around two percent this year. It should fall to an average of 1.7 percent next year.
energy prices
Energy prices, which account for around 18 percent of the typical Croatian consumer basket, are forecast by the ECB to rise in 2026 and 2027 across the Eurozone. This growth will be influenced not only by global events, but also by the new EU emissions trading system (ETS2) scheduled for 2027. This is the EU’s so-called “green agenda” that will include the building sector, road transport and additional small industry sectors not covered by the existing ETS in the emissions trading system.
In Croatia, energy price growth accelerated slightly during the summer, to 2.7 percent in August. This was in spite of crude oil prices falling on the global market due to higher supply, especially from OPEC+ countries. These countries have announced that they will further increase production this month.
How Croats will manage to cope with the price increases in food, energy and housing, on which they spend more than half of their average salary, also depends on wage trends next year. However, there’s no good news here either. According to current CNB projections, gross wage growth should stop at 5.9 percent by the end of this year, while next year it will grow by three percent, almost half as much as this year.
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