New Year was greeted with tens of thousands of party goers on the Stradun. Fireworks exploded in the still night sky, music echoed around the stone facades and laughter filled the city.

The Mayor of Dubrovnik, Mato Frankovic, wished everyone a happy new year and raised a glass of champagne in celebration.

The main singer for the biggest night in the city was Dino Merlin, and he certainly managed to attract an audience from neighbouring countries. The Stradun was packed from one end to the other and the fun went on long into the early morning hours.

Dubrovnik was among the first cities in Croatia to have a new born baby in 2018. At five minutes past midnight Nada Cebalo gave birth and became one of the first mothers of 2018 in Croatia.

The Prefect of the Dubrovnik – Neretva County, Nikola Dobroslavic, visited the Dubrovnik General Hospital on New Year’s Eve to meet the employees and also congratulated Cebalo.

And Dobroslavic had an extra reason to be pleased as the new mum is the sister of the Deputy Prefect, Josko Cebalo. The County Prefect congratulated her on her birth and wished everyone a happy new year.

As Dubrovnik entered the New Year fireworks exploded over the historic Old City lighting up the night sky.

These amazing photos were taken by Zeljko Tutnjevic from the Srd Mountian overlooking Dubrovnik and give a great “bird’s eye view” of the colourful entertainment. It was certainly a night to remember in Dubrovnik.

Check out the fireworks display from New Year 2018

From all of us at The Dubrovnik Times have a happy New Year.

Let us celebrate this exciting, colourful, grand, magical New Year with a great big smile. Wishing you a year full of happiness and prosperity.

Be prepared for long traffic delays if you were thinking of celebrating the New Year in the Old City of Dubrovnik.

These photos, sent to us by a reader, show the long traffic jams around the city and it isn’t even close to midnight. Many of the roads around the city will actually be closed for this evening and the city has announced that there will be free parking in the Port of Dubrovnik.

A good idea to avoid the crush and get the bus instead of looking for parking.

The New Year will start with some great news for all Croatian expats around the globe. The Croatian National television broadcaster, HRT, will launch a special channel aimed at catering for the needs of the Croatian diaspora.

The English language channel will start broadcasting on the 1st of January 2018 and is named HRT 5. Available on satellite the new channel will be open to viewers in Europe, Australia, America and New Zealand, basically all of the major hotspots for expats.

The plan is to schedule 8 hours of daily programs, including news, documentaries and special interest programs, and to repeat these hours twice a day to cover all the differing time zones. More information will be available on the website of the national broadcaster from the 1st of January – see info here

The last Saturday of 2017 in Dubrovnik was filled music and good spirits as the countdown to the biggest nights of the year ticks away.

The historic Old City of Dubrovnik was a mixture of locals passing on New Year’s greetings and tourists enjoying the sights and sounds of the city. The café bars were full as al fresco coffees were the order of the day.

Check out the last weekend in 2017 by Zeljko Tutnjevic

"For this excellent tourism season that is behind us all of the employees in tourism need to be praised because they have invested so much into the tourist offer,” commented the Prefect of the Dubrovnik – Neretva County, Nikola Dobroslavic, at the seventh annual session of the Dubrovnik – Neretva County tourist board.

The meeting, which took place yesterday in the Valamar Lacroma Hotel, concluded all the tourism figures for the county for 2017. A total of 1.9 million tourist arrivals were recorded, which is a 15 percent increase over last year, and an impressive 8.3 million overnight stays were achieved, 12 percent more than 2016. The director of the county tourist board, Vladimir Bakic, said that the season was very successful and that the indicators for 2018 were even more impressive.

The largest number of tourists, in terms of nationality, in 2017 were from the UK and in total they made up 1.8 million overnight stays.

Breaking down the figures the county tourist board added that there are 22,500 hotel beds in the county and last year they achieved 3.5 million overnight stays, an increase of 31 percent over last year. In private accommodation there are 44,000 beds and they achieved 3.3 million overnight stays last year.

Nikola Dobroslavic addresses the meeting in Valamar Lacroma - Photo Zeljko Tutnjevic