Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović Independent[a] Zoran Milanović Social Democratic Party Presidential elections were held in Croatia in December 2019 and January 2020.

[2] Potential candidates were required to gather at least 10,000 signatures from Croatian citizens who have reached the age of 18 in order for their candidacy to become official and for their name to appear on the ballot.

[3][4] In the first round of the election, which was held on 22 December 2019, former prime minister Zoran Milanović finished in first place with 30% of the vote.

The time frame for collecting the said number of signatures is set at 12 days, and after the expiry of this period potential candidates must submit them to the State Electoral Commission for verification.

After official validation of candidates by the State Electoral Commission, the first debate was a confrontation between Katarina Peović (RF and SRP) and Anto Đapić (Democratic Alliance for National Renewal), the most left-wing and the most-right wing candidate respectively, which was filmed by and broadcast on N1 television on 5 December 2019.

[70] The conservative folk musician and former Member of Parliament Miroslav Škoro, who was running as an independent candidate, narrowly failed to reach the run-off election, managing to attract the support of 24.45% of voters.

[70] This marked the first time in Croatian history that the incumbent president did not receive the highest number of votes in the first round.

Milanović won by just over 104,000 votes, becoming the fifth President of Croatia since independence and the second to have been officially nominated by the Social Democratic Party, after Ivo Josipović (2010–2015).