Online Croatian courses for university up to B2 proof

Croatia has universities in Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Osijek, among other cities. Most programmes are taught in Croatian, and the Study in Croatia portal publishes a separate list of programmes taught in English. According to the portal, EU citizens may enrol under the same conditions as Croatian citizens.

B2 is the fourth of the six levels of the CEFR, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. At B2 you understand the main ideas of complex texts and can interact fluently and spontaneously. A passed B2 test does not yet guarantee that you can follow a lecture in Croatian with ease or write a term paper.

According to Study in Croatia, international applicants may be required to take the standardised Croatian language test at level B2 for some programmes. Different conditions may apply to citizens of non-EU countries, so the university states the exact requirement.

For bachelor's programmes taught in Croatian, admission draws on the results of the State Matura (državna matura), Croatia's national school-leaving exam. Applicants from abroad submit internationally recognised, externally assessed exams instead.

The university decides which Croatian exam counts as proof. Two exams follow the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).

• Croaticum, the Centre for Croatian as a Second and Foreign Language at the University of Zagreb, tests by CEFR level in Zagreb or at Macquarie University in Sydney.
• The ECL Consortium, a European network of exam centres, tests Croatian at levels A2 to C1.

Reaching B2 in Croatian is a long road. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the language school of the US Department of State, expects about 1,000 class hours to reach a professional working level. If you plan a degree in Croatian, start early and combine online courses with intensive courses in Croatia. Croaticum is the Centre for Croatian as a Second and Foreign Language at the University of Zagreb.

According to Study in Croatia, Croaticum also runs a one-month course, summer, autumn and winter schools, a specialised intensive course, an online A1 course and individual lessons. The free courses A1.HR and A2.HR each have 80 units of 45 minutes, with instructions and support in English.

Academic Croatian differs from everyday Croatian in sentence structure and vocabulary. A course for university should practise three features on purpose.

1 Impersonal sentences with se

Croatian academic texts often avoid the first person. They write u radu se analizira (the paper analyses, literally it is analysed in the paper) instead of I analyse. These se-sentences require confident use of cases and verb forms.

2 Croatian terminology

Croatian builds many terms from its own roots where other languages use international words, such as računalo for computer. Serbian or international forms stand out in a term paper as departures from the standard.

3 Spelling according to the Hrvatski pravopis

The Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics publishes the Hrvatski pravopis, the Croatian orthography, online with rules, a dictionary and a glossary. You can check spellings with ije and je or with č and ć there.

A bachelor's degree ends with a završni rad, a final paper, and a master's with a diplomski rad. An academic writing course practises structure, citation and the impersonal style with such texts.

At university you address lecturers formally. You use the polite form Vi and the vocative, the case for addressing someone. Profesor becomes profesore, and profesorica becomes profesorice.

Emails to lecturers usually start with Poštovani profesore or Poštovana profesorice and end with S poštovanjem. You need the same formulas for requests to student administration.

A degree in Croatian needs lead time. Plan backwards from the application deadline of your programme. The levels come from the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), and Croaticum is the centre for Croatian at the University of Zagreb.

1. Start online with the free Croaticum courses A1.HR and A2.HR.
2. Build up the seven cases and your vocabulary to B1, the third of the six CEFR levels, with one-to-one lessons or a group class.
3. Before the degree, take a semester or intensive course in Croatia to reach B2.
4. Register for the exam your faculty accepts. For the Croaticum test you must apply at least ten days ahead, and places are limited.
5. After admission, take an academic writing course before your first seminar papers.

Online one-to-one Croatian lessons cost about 15 to 40 US dollars or euros per hour and group classes about 8 to 20, as of 2026. Teachers trained in Croatian as a foreign language usually charge at the upper end.