Najbolji hrvatski tamburaši

Najbolji hrvatski tamburaši ("The Best Croatian Tambura Players") are a Croatian tamburica band from Slavonia, known until 1997 as Zlatni dukati. They are counted among the groups that built a professional career in tambura music and helped revive it.

The group appeared in 1983 with the album Ni sokaci nisu što su nekad bili, released by Jugoton. That first line-up lasted one season. Two of its members, Mato Lukačević and Stanko Šarić, carried on as Zlatni dukati with tambura players from their home village of Štitar, playing around Županja until 1985. A year later Lukačević and Krešimir Bogutovac Stipa brought the group together again, with a regular engagement at the Kristal tavern in 1986 and 1987, and from the summer of 1987 they toured all of Croatia.

In 1987 they began working with the composer Josip Ivanković, and the album Nek zvone tambure followed in 1988, the first of a long series. When that collaboration ended in 1996, the group took the name Najbolji hrvatski tamburaši in 1997, at the suggestion of Croatia Records. Vranac was the last album as Zlatni dukati; Nek me pamte gradovi, Sedam dana, Divne godine, Tamburica od javora suva and Nostalgija came under the new name.

In 1999 the group lost its long-time prim player Hrvoje Majić, and Denis Špegelj from Virovitica took his place. The cellist Krunoslav Golubičić joined in 2006, and the group celebrated twenty years of work in 2007. Slavonijo, biseru Hrvatske (2010) was its first album to win a Porin, for best tamburica album, and "Što te sokol nije volio" won the Porin for best folk song.

Anniversary concerts in Zagreb's Lisinski hall marked 25 years in 2012 and 30 years on 24 November 2017, both released as live albums. Later singles came with music videos: "Zaboravio bih", "Bez tebe mi ne miriše cvijeće", "Sve ću prodat' sutra" and "Teško mi je bez Klobuka". The basprim player Mirko Gašparović died suddenly in September 2025.