Croatia's Nepali Workforce Tops 35,000 — Nepal Is Now Its Second-Largest Foreign Labour Source
35,635 Nepalis are in active employment in Croatia — Nepal is now the country's second-largest foreign labour source. What's driving the surge.
By Nepalese Events Australia Editorial
Published: 2026-10-01T11:48:06.000000Z
Category: Community
Croatia's Adriatic tourism economy has an unlikely backbone: Nepali workers. 35,635 Nepalis are in active employment in Croatia, making Nepal the country's second-largest of foreign workers, according to data compiled by Katmandu Journal. Croatia issued some 75,000 construction and residence permits in 2025 alone, and 8,701 fresh Nepali labour approvals were recorded for the country in FY 2025/26.
Schengen changed everything
Croatia's entry into the Schengen zone transformed it from a peripheral posting into a strategic destination. A Croatian residence permit now opens document-free movement across most of the EU — which explains why, as Katmandu Journal's reporting documents, workers like Yam Kumar Rupakheti treat Croatia as a legal springboard: arrive on a permit, work through its validity, then move deeper into the Schengen zone. The pattern makes official employment statistics fluid — workers counted in Croatia's books may already be in Italy or Austria — but the scale of the entry corridor is unambiguous.
Where the jobs are
The demand is concentrated in construction, shipbuilding, tourism and seasonal hospitality — hotels and restaurants along the Dalmatian coast, infrastructure projects inland, and food processing. Wages are lower than Western Europe but substantially above Gulf rates once labour protections are factored in, and employers increasingly recruit directly through Nepal-facing agencies.
The agreement gap
Like most of the new corridor, Croatia lacks a bilateral labour agreement with Nepal — talks are underway alongside Croatia, Poland, Portugal, Malta and Spain, per New Business Age. Until one lands, the same advice holds: verify the employer and the job terms with the Department of Foreign Employment before money changes hands, because the individual-visa route dominates and disputes are hard to unwind across borders.
Community life follows
A workforce of 35,000 is no longer just a labour statistic — Zagreb now hosts Nepali groceries, festival gatherings and the beginnings of organised community life. Families bridging the distance can use our Nepal–Zagreb time converter and EUR to NPR er. For the bigger picture on why Europe is absorbing this flow, read our Europe corridor report.
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