Open House Zagreb: architects open the city's doors each October

Every October, Zagreb opens its doors for three days. Palaces, railway stations, housing estates, schools and new family homes take in visitors, and architects and art historians lead the tours. The festival is called Open House Zagreb. Every tour is free and needs a registration on openhousezagreb.org.

The Association for the Promotion of Architecture and Design Zagreb Open House organises the festival. Dubravka Vrgoč is its creative director and Tomislava Blatnik its executive director. The Zagreb Tourist Board is the main partner. Zagreb joined the Open House Worldwide network in 2023, and the first festival ran from 20 to 22 October that year. The format began in London in 1992. The network now links more than 80 cities, among them Copenhagen, New York, Milan and Prague.

Open House Zagreb 2027

As of 20 October 2026, the organisers have announced no date for Open House Zagreb 2027. The festival website still shows the 2026 programme. All four editions so far ran from Friday to Sunday in October:

• 2023: 20 to 22 October, 35 buildings, the first edition.
• 2024: 18 to 20 October, 41 locations and 85 guided tours.
• 2025: 17 to 19 October, 41 sites under the theme Heritage of the Future.
• 2026: 9 to 11 October, 36 buildings and urban sites.

The last three editions were presented in September. The festival held its programme press conference on 16 September 2024 and on 23 September 2025. In 2026 the Zagreb Tourist Board published the dates on 3 September, and the full programme was online by 23 September. Registration opened ten days before the festival in 2024, on 1 October in 2025 and two weeks before the start in 2026. The 2027 date will appear on openhousezagreb.org.

How the tours work

• The programme goes online on openhousezagreb.org. A filter sorts the buildings by day and by theme. Each building has its own page with address, guide and history.
• Every tour is free. Each slot needs a registration on the website, and the groups are limited.
• Popular slots fill early. In 2026 the quota for the former tobacco factory was full before the festival began, tportal reported.
• Most buildings have one or two fixed slots. In 2026 the funicular had tours on Friday at 9:00 and 10:00. The HAZU palace followed on Friday at 14:00 and 15:00, the main railway station on Sunday at 17:00 and 18:00.
• Guides are architects, art historians, conservators and urban planners. Some buildings are shown by their designers. In 2026 architects Vesna Milutin and Mirko Buvinić led the tours of Kuća Kadmo, a house with three flats they designed in Savska Opatovina.
• When registration closes, each building page shows the line Prijave su zatvorene, Croatian for registrations closed.
• The programme pages are in Croatian. The festival news also appears in English on the same site.

What the programme opens

An expert jury picks the buildings each year. Jury president Irena Kraševac said in 2025 that the festival changes its sites from year to year. Jury member Senka Dombi named the first criterion: good architecture that moved function or form forward when it was designed.

The lists mix centuries. The 2026 edition reached from the HAZU palace on Zrinjevac, built in 1880 to a design by Friedrich Schmidt and worked out by Herman Bollé, to the Budućnost kindergarten in Podbrežje, dated 2026. Between them stood the main railway station of 1891 to 1892 by Ferenc Pfaff, 186.5 metres long. The funicular, built between 1888 and 1890, has carried passengers since 1893.

Housing returns every year. The 2024 urban walks led through Cvjetno naselje, Voćarsko naselje on the slopes of Šalata, Zapruđe and Ulica grada Vukovara. In 2026 the theme of socially conditioned housing opened POS estates in Zapruđe, Špansko and Jelkovec, Studentski grad in Dubrava and Malešnica. POS Zapruđe alone holds 519 flats in five blocks.

Institutions open their doors too. The first edition began at the Vrapče psychiatric clinic, the first psychiatric hospital in Croatia, and ended at the Croatian State Archives. The 2025 list included the Meštrović Atelier, the Kastner & Öhler department store, the Infobip campus, the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall and the Academy of Fine Arts.

Planning the weekend

Many buildings stand close to the centre. The HAZU palace faces Zrinjevac, the main station closes the eastern row of squares of the Green Horseshoe, and the funicular links the Lower Town with the Upper Town. Our guide to what to see in Zagreb covers the same streets. The housing estates lie further out, in Zapruđe, Podbrežje, Špansko, Jelkovec and Dubrava, so plan each as its own trip.

The rest of the weekend fills easily. Our Zagreb weekend itinerary links cafés, museums and parks, and the rainy-day museum route covers the Upper Town. Other autumn dates are in Croatia's 2027 festival calendar. Hotels, transport and the city overview are on the Zagreb city page.

Open House Zagreb 2026 in review

The fourth edition ran from Friday 9 to Sunday 11 October 2026. It opened 36 buildings and urban sites under three themes: socially conditioned housing, innovation in heritage preservation and the city's new look. The programme began on Friday at 8:00 at Novinarski dom, the journalists' house at Perkovčeva 2. Bruno Bauer designed the building, completed in the mid-1930s. Two days earlier, art historian Irena Šimić led a preview tour there, the Croatian Journalists' Association reported.

On Friday at 17:00 visitors entered the former Zagreb tobacco factory, built in 1882 to designs by Rupert Melkus. It is becoming the new seat of the Croatian Restoration Institute, and the quota for the tour was full in advance. At the small flats on Selska cesta in Trešnjevka, architect Paula Mazarekić, a recent graduate of the Faculty of Architecture, led a group of about fifteen. The one-room houses were built for workers who came to Trešnjevka after the First World War, and people still live in them.

On Sunday, conservation architect Boris Dundović guided visitors through the main railway station. It was badly damaged in the 2020 earthquakes and has been under structural and energy renovation since 2022. Ivana Andabaka Vujičić, director of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU), and architect Saša Randić showed the Meštrović Pavilion at 11:00, also under renovation. The crematorium at Mirogoj, set in a native beech forest, had tours at 15:00 and 16:00.

The Zagreb Tourist Board, Zagreb Airport, OTP banka, Oktavijan, VMD and Velux supported the 2026 edition. By 20 October the organisers had published no visitor total for 2026.

Earlier editions in numbers

The first festival in 2023 brought 1,400 visitors to 35 buildings in 75 tour slots. It had 42 guides and 30 volunteers. In December 2023 the Open House Europe summit in Lisbon singled out Zagreb, with Tirana and Copenhagen, as one of the most promising festivals in Europe.

The 2024 edition counted 2,000 visitors in total at 41 locations in 85 slots, with 35 volunteers. One theme marked the 150th anniversary of the birth and the centenary of the death of architect Viktor Kovačić. The festival closed at the Faculty of Agriculture with a talk by architect Hildegard Auf-Franić. In 2025 the third edition opened 41 sites under the theme Heritage of the Future and presented its programme at the Croatian Chamber of Trades and Crafts.