Croatian Football Cup
men's national association football tournament in Croatia
The Croatian Football Cup (Croatian: Hrvatski nogometni kup), also metonymically referred to as Rabuzin's Sun (Croatian: Rabuzinovo sunce) after its trophy named after Ivan Rabuzin, is an annually held football tournament for Croatian football clubs and is the second most important competition in Croatian football after the HNL championship. It is governed by the Croatian Football Federation (HNS) and usually runs from late August to late May. Cup winners automatically qualify for next season's UEFA Europa League, except when cup winners are also Prva HNL champions, in which case their berth in the Europa Conference League goes to the best-placed team in the Prva HNL who have not qualified for the UEFA competitions through their league performance.
The cup was established in 1992, after Croatian clubs had abandoned the Yugoslav First League and Yugoslav Cup competitions following the breakup of Yugoslavia. As of the most recent 2021–22 season a total of 31 cup seasons were held. The competition has historically been dominated by the two Eternal Derby sides—the most successful club is Dinamo Zagreb (formerly known in the 1990s as HAŠK Građanski and Croatia Zagreb) who appeared in 23 finals and won 16 titles, followed by Hajduk Split who won 8 titles out of 13 finals they appeared in.
Either Dinamo or Hajduk appeared in all but four cup finals (in 1999, 2006, 2020 and 2025) and only three other clubs have won the cup—Rijeka (seven wins), Inter Zaprešić (one win) and Osijek (one win). Although clubs can qualify for the cup via regional county cups, which are usually contested by second-, third- or fourth-level sides, Uljanik Pula in 2003 was the only team in the history of the competition to have reached the cup final from outside the top level.
Format
Entries
Although in theory any club can take part in the cup, 48 teams enter the competition proper, based on three criteria:
Top sixteen best-ranked teams according to club coefficient calculated by the Croatian Football Federation which take into account their cup records in the previous five seasons
Twenty-one club winners of regional cups organised in each of 21 counties of Croatia
Eleven regional cup finalists, from the top 11 counties with the greatest number of active football clubs registered
Competition system
The 32 clubs which qualify via regional cups always enter in the preliminary round, which consists of 16 single-legged fixtures. In case of a draw at the end of normal time, thirty minutes of extra time is played, and if scores are still level, a penalty shootout is held to determine the winner of the tie.
“Croatian Football Cup” enters the record as men's national association football tournament in Croatia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Croatian, Football and men's can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q958034. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 2021, 1999 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Croatian Football Cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.