Everything in a short-term rental plan hangs on one document: the Alojamento Local registration number. No number, no listing, no income. The platforms now check that number against the national database before your ad goes live, and since May 2026 an EU regulation has made them share booking data with the authorities too. My earlier piece covered the dream versus the math. This one is the rulebook: the law as it stands in October 2026, where new licences are still possible, how registration works step by step, and what to verify before you buy a property for its rental potential.
The law as it stands in 2026
The base regime is Decree-Law 128/2014, and it has been rewritten twice in two years, so most of what you read online is stale. Here is the current version.
The Mais Habitação package (Law 56/2023) froze new registrations nationwide, forced licences to be renewed every five years, created a 15% extraordinary contribution called the CEAL, and demanded unanimous condominium approval for new licences. Almost all of that is now gone.
Decree-Law 57/2024, published in September 2024, revoked the CEAL with retroactive effect to 31 December 2023. If a guide still warns you about the 15% contribution, the guide is out of date. Cross it off.
Decree-Law 76/2024, in force since 1 November 2024, did the heavy lifting. It lifted the freeze on new registrations. It ended the five-year renewal: registrations no longer expire. It restored transferability, so the operator named on a registration can be changed to a buyer. It handed the real power to the municipalities: each câmara can now draw containment areas and write its own rules, inspect properties, and cancel registrations for non-compliance. It capped capacity at nine rooms and 27 guests, and it made civil liability insurance mandatory.
The short version: the national door reopened, but each council now holds its own key.
Where you can still get a new licence
The default answer in most of Portugal is yes. The freeze is gone, and outside the pressure zones registration works as it used to. Then there are the exceptions, and they cover exactly the postcards.
Lisbon: no new licences. The entire municipality has been a suspension area since 1 April 2025. Existing registrations can still be transferred, but no new ones are issued. Lisbon then published its own municipal regulation, with absolute and relative containment areas drawn parish by parish: relative containment applies where AL units make up between 5% and 10% of the housing stock. There are narrow exceptions, mostly for renting out rooms in your own permanent home. The map is drawn street by street, so check the parish, not the city.
Porto: suspension areas cover the historic centre parishes, Cedofeita, Santo Ildefonso, Sé, Miragaia, São Nicolau and Vitória, plus Bonfim. Nazaré and Viana do Castelo have suspension areas too.
Open: the interior, the Alentejo coast, most of the Algarve outside the pressure zones, and the islands, Madeira and the Azores, which run their own regimes.
The rule of thumb: the busier the postcard, the harder the licence. And the binding answer always comes from the câmara. Get it before the promissory contract, not after. A beautiful apartment in a suspension zone with no existing licence is not a rental investment, whatever the listing implies.
The registration process, step by step
Step one: start the activity. Before anything else, register the activity (iniciar atividade) with the tax authority as self-employed under IRS Category B. You need a NIF first.
Step two: file the prior communication (comunicação prévia) to the mayor through the Balcão Único Eletrónico, the single electronic counter, reachable through the ePortugal portal. The file needs a term of responsibility, the caderneta predial (the property tax document proving ownership), your activity declaration, proof of liability insurance, your ID, and, if you are not the owner, the contract authorising the activity. Buildings completed after 1951 may be asked for the licença de utilização; Lisbon requires a residential use licence.
Step three: wait, but not blindly. You receive a process number by email immediately. The câmara has 60 days to decide, 90 in a containment area. Some councils charge an inspection fee; the amount sits in the câmara's fee table, so confirm it locally.
Step four: the number. Your RNAL registration number must appear in every listing: Airbnb, Booking.com, all of them. Any number can be checked in Turismo de Portugal's public registry, which is also how you verify a seller's licence during due diligence.
The categories: moradia (whole house), apartamento (apartment), quartos (rooms in your home), estabelecimento de hospedagem (hostel-type).
The condominium question
You no longer need the condominium's prior approval to register. That requirement died with the 2024 reforms, and anyone quoting it is reading the old law.
But the neighbours are not powerless. The condominium assembly can cancel an existing registration with a two-thirds majority of the ownership shares (permilagem) at a general meeting.
And read the building's constitutive title before you buy: some designate the fractions strictly for residential use, which is a separate legal obstacle no licence can override.
For a buyer this means asking the seller and the building manager whether AL has ever been discussed in the building, and pricing the risk. A licence the neighbours can vote away is worth less than one they cannot.
Buying a property that already has a licence
Since November 2024, the operator named on an existing registration can be changed to the buyer, and the RNAL number can stay the same. In Lisbon's suspension area, existing registrations remain transferable even though new ones are frozen. That distinction, new registration versus operator change on an existing one, is the most commercially important line in the current law.
In containment areas, municipalities may restrict the transfer of new registration numbers for houses and apartments, but the law carves out inheritance, gratuitous transfers to a spouse, partner, children or parents, and divorce settlements. Those always pass.
Due diligence, in order: first, verify the RNAL number is live in Turismo de Portugal's registry. Second, confirm the category matches the property. Third, check for cancellation proceedings or unpaid fines. Fourth, read the municipal regulation for that parish. Fifth, establish the condominium's position. A licence with years of reviews carries commercial value, but whether the reviews survive the operator change depends on the platform's rules, not the law.
The tax that disappeared, and what remains
The 15% CEAL is gone, revoked retroactively to the end of 2023. What remains is the ordinary picture, covered in my companion pieces: income taxed under IRS Category B (the simplified regime covers income up to €200,000, with a 0.35 coefficient for apartments and houses), 6% IVA on accommodation, the municipal tourist taxes, guest reporting to the authorities, mandatory insurance and the complaints book. The full treatment is in the short-term rentals guide.
Two 2026 notes. Since May 2026 the platforms verify your registration number against the national database and share booking data with the authorities, so unregistered listings get pulled. And the 2026 housing package actively rewards the alternative: qualifying moderate-rent long-term leases carry a 10% IRS rate until 2029. If the AL door is closed in your parish, the long-term door is wide open. The purchase taxes themselves, IMT, stamp duty and the rest, are a separate article: the real cost of buying.
How I help
If rental income is part of your plan, tell me at the start, because it changes what we look for. Before we shortlist anything, I check the câmara's position on new AL licences for the exact parish. During due diligence I verify existing licences in the RNAL registry, read the municipal regulation, and establish the condominium's position. And I introduce you to a Portuguese accountant before the deed, not after the first tax bill.
The licence question is binary: either the property can earn, or it cannot. We establish which before you spend a euro.
Sources
- Decree-Law 128/2014 as amended by Decree-Law 76/2024 (in force 1 November 2024): end of the freeze on new registrations and of the five-year renewal, restored transferability of the operator on existing registrations, municipal containment-area powers (Articles 15-A and 15-B), 9-room and 27-guest capacity cap, mandatory insurance (eazyal.com; immolusitania.ch; togofor-homes.com)
- CEAL 15% extraordinary contribution revoked by Decree-Law 57/2024 with retroactive effect to 31 December 2023 (valadascoriel.com; lexology.com; belionpartners.com)
- Lisbon suspension area across the whole municipality since 1 April 2025; suspension areas also in Porto (Cedofeita, Santo Ildefonso, Sé, Miragaia, São Nicolau, Vitória, Bonfim), Nazaré and Viana do Castelo; Lisbon municipal regulation with absolute and relative containment areas (5% to 10% AL-to-housing ratio) and narrow rooms-category exceptions (lisbonapartments.com; lisbonapartments.com; cafimo.pt)
- Registration via prior communication to the mayor through the Balcão Único Eletrónico (ePortugal portal); required documents (term of responsibility, caderneta predial, activity declaration, insurance proof, ID); 60-day council response, 90 days in containment areas; RNAL number mandatory in all listings and verifiable in Turismo de Portugal's registry (pearlsofportugal.com; lisbonapartments.com)
- No prior condominium approval required since the 2024 reforms; condominium assembly may cancel an existing registration by two-thirds majority of the permilage (lisbonapartments.com; pearlsofportugal.com)
- 2026 housing package (Law 9/A/2026): tax incentives for housing supply including moderate-rent leasing (bloombergtax.com); 10% IRS rate on qualifying moderate rents until 2029 (cafimo.pt)