"I have decided that parliamentary elections will be held on Sunday, November 8," said President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.
Croatia's president on Monday called a parliamentary election for November 8, a vote expected to be a tight race as the EU member grapples with a migrant influx and a weak economy.
The polls will pit the current centre-left government, led by the Social Democrats (SDP), against the conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party.
The announcement comes as the former Yugoslav republic struggles to cope with the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants, who have been travelling through the country since mid-September in the hope of reaching western Europe.
"I have decided that parliamentary elections will be held on Sunday, November 8," said a statement from President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, who was elected Croatia's first female president in January.
Grabar-Kitarovic's victory in a run-off vote, in which she defeated her left-wing predecessor Ivo Josipovic, was seen as a major boost for her HDZ party, which has been leading opinion polls for over a year.
But the latest showed the HDZ just one per cent ahead of the ruling coalition, which came to power in December 2011 with Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic pledging economic recovery.
Croatia, the most recent entrant to the European Union, remains one of the weakest economies in the 28-nation bloc.
Badly affected by the global financial crisis, it went into recession in 2008, and Milanovic's government has been blamed for failing to reform the country's inefficient public sector and improve the business climate.
But some positive indicators, such as growth in gross domestic product for the past three quarters, have slightly improved the government's popularity.
The 2011 elections were held amid unprecedented corruption scandals involving the HDZ and its ex-leader and former prime minister Ivo Sanader.
The Supreme Court last week overturned a nine-year prison sentence handed to Sanader for multi-million-euro corruption, and ordered a retrial.
The HDZ as a whole and three of its senior officials had also been found guilty in the initial trial of involvement in the scheme.
The top court's quashing of the verdict may have a positive impact for the HDZ, which hailed the ruling as "removing the stigma" from the party.
Ahead of the polls, the opposing political camps have traded barbs over the migrant crisis.
The HDZ accuses the government of allowing an uncontrolled migrant influx, while the prime minister says the opposition has spread false rumours about potential new migrant routes through Croatia.