After six years in Germany, the Funduk family packed up and came back to Garčin, a village near Slavonski Brod in eastern Croatia. Their reason wasn't nostalgia — it was arithmetic. Rent, healthcare and everyday costs in Germany kept climbing, and when they compared the numbers, a large affordable house back in Slavonia simply made more sense. Their story is part of a wider shift: Croatia's statistics office counted 16,843 Croatian citizens returning from abroad in 2025, up from 13,290 in 2024 and 10,852 in 2023.
Slavonia, Croatia's easternmost region, is doing more than waiting for returnees to show up. Local municipalities are paying families to come back — or to stay. Gornja Vrba offers grants of €4,000 to €5,000 towards buying or building a home, and the local head, Daniel Grgić, says the scheme will run again next year and could grow if the budget allows. Nearby Garčin pays a bit more, between €4,000 and €6,000, and throws in free kindergarten places. When demand outstripped capacity, the municipality started co-funding private kindergartens and registered childminders too.
The national Ministry of Demography and Immigration is watching closely. State Secretary Mladen Barać notes that Osijek-Baranja County regularly sits in the top three counties for returning citizens, with Brod-Posavina in the top five last year. Croatia has now recorded positive net migration from abroad for four straight years — 56,665 arrivals versus 37,485 departures in 2025 — though that figure includes foreign workers and people under temporary protection, not just Croatians coming home.
For travellers, the trend is a useful signal. Slavonia has long been the part of Croatia tourists skip on their way to the Dalmatian coast, and the region still faces serious population decline despite the encouraging numbers. But that same depopulation is what keeps it affordable and uncrowded — think riverside towns along the Sava and Drava, baroque Osijek, the Kopacki rit wetland nature park, and wine country around Dakovo and Ilok, all at prices well below the Adriatic. The areas investing in young families are also investing in the kind of everyday infrastructure — schools, childcare, housing stock — that makes a place workable for longer stays, remote work or an affordable base.
For the returnees themselves, money is only part of it. Families coming back from Germany or Ireland cite childcare, family networks and raising kids in familiar surroundings alongside the finances. Whether Slavonia can turn this trickle of returns into a genuine demographic recovery depends on jobs as much as grants — but for now, eastern Croatia is one of the few parts of Europe actively paying you to settle in.
