Croatia hosts two very different rallies. Croatia Rally is a round of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC), raced by rally cars on closed tarmac roads. Dinaric Rally is a seven-day cross-country rally raid for motorcycles, quads and SSV, navigated with a roadbook on gravel and mountain tracks around Knin. Here is how they differ, and which one you can enter yourself.
Croatia Rally (WRC) in short
- Championship: FIA World Rally Championship
- Vehicles: rally cars, a driver and a co-driver reading pace notes
- Surface: tarmac
- When: spring. The 2026 edition ran 9–12 April as round 4 of the WRC calendar.
- Spectators: tickets, stages and news on the official site, rally-croatia.com
Dinaric Rally in short
- Discipline: cross-country rally raid
- Vehicles: motorcycles, quads and SSV, plus DARE! for first-timers on big adventure bikes
- Surface: gravel roads, mountain tracks and rocky Dinaric terrain in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Navigation: roadbook only, no marked route
- When: 21–27 August 2027, based in Knin
- Format: prologue and five stages
The main differences
| Croatia Rally (WRC) | Dinaric Rally | |
|---|---|---|
| Type of rally | WRC round, short special stages | Rally raid, long stages over a week |
| Vehicles | Rally cars | Motorcycles, quads, SSV |
| Surface | Tarmac | Gravel, rock, mountain tracks |
| Navigation | Pace notes on known stages | Roadbook on an unknown route |
| Duration | 4 days | 7 days |
| Month | April | August |
| Can amateurs enter? | Only with a rally car and an international licence | Yes, with your own bike, quad or SSV |
Watch one, ride the other
The two events are four months apart, so you can follow WRC on Croatian tarmac in April and race your own rally in August. If you ride off-road and have never done a rally, DARE! uses the real Dinaric Rally stages without the stopwatch, and the Roadbook Rally Bootcamp teaches you to navigate before you come.