The subject of this report is three actors on the political scene in Croatia: Radnička Fronta (Workers’ Front, RF, founded in May 2014), Nova ljevica (New Left, NL, December 2016) and Zagreb je Naš! (Zagreb is Ours, ZJN, March 2017). They put up candidates in local elections in May 2017 in several cities, enjoying the most success in the capital city of Zagreb in a broader coalition with two other small parties, where they won four (out of fifty one) seats in the city assembly, along with sixty five seats on the city district level. While this is not the first time since Croatian independence in 1990 that small parties to the left of the social democrats have won seats in various elections (Vukobratović, 2016), there is a sense of novelty and significance, which characterizes all three parties in different ways. All three parties were formed by activists and identified themselves explicitly as new left initiatives. They all attached great importance to participatory politics and equality and included a significant number of members who had developed politically through exposure to contemporary leftist theory. Perhaps most importantly, these three parties found ways to work together, both during the election campaign and in the political institutions in which they are now representatives. We begin this study with a short survey of relevant historical and more recent political events to contextualize the emergence of these parties.