What changed in the short-term rental law?

We're a team from the Minho region that builds websites with a booking engine for short-term rentals — we're not lawyers or accountants. This guide gathers verifiable, dated facts, linked to official sources, to help you find your bearings. It does not replace legal or tax advice.

Two golden rules when reading anything about AL: always check the date (the law has changed several times since 2023) and always check your own municipality, because a large share of the rules — contention zones, quotas and the tourist tax — is decided town hall by town hall. When in doubt, confirm with your local council and Turismo de Portugal.

The recent turning point was Law no. 56/2023, of 6 October — the "Mais Habitação" (More Housing) programme. Among various housing measures, it brought heavy restrictions on short-term rentals, with the stated goal of returning properties to long-term tenancy.

In practice, Mais Habitação introduced, among other measures:

• A suspension of new AL registrations in the apartment and lodging-establishment categories within autonomous units, outside interior territories.
• Expiry of registrations: they would have to be reassessed, with limited validity (a five-year reference).
• A requirement for condominium authorisation to run AL in units of horizontally-divided buildings.
• CEAL — an Extraordinary Contribution on short-term rentals, an annual levy on properties used for AL.

Source: Law no. 56/2023, of 6 October (Diário da República). These measures drew strong pushback from the sector and were mostly reversed soon after.

The reversal came with Decree-Law no. 76/2024, of 23 October, which amended the legal regime for AL (Decree-Law no. 128/2014) and repealed the Mais Habitação measures affecting short-term rentals. It entered into force on 1 November 2024.

What this decree changed, specifically:

• End of the 5-year expiry — AL registrations return to indefinite duration, with no mandatory periodic reassessment.
• End of condominium authorisation as a general requirement (except for hostels). The condominium assembly may still object by a reasoned decision, approved by more than half of the building's ownership share, in cases of repeated and proven disturbance to residents' rest.
• Registrations become transferable again as the general rule (no longer personal and non-transferable) — with exceptions in contention zones, explained below.
• The suspension of new registrations imposed by Mais Habitação was lifted.

Source: Decree-Law no. 76/2024, of 23 October (Diário da República) and Turismo de Portugal. Always check the consolidated, current version, because the law may change again.

The Extraordinary Contribution on short-term rentals (CEAL), created by Mais Habitação in 2023, was repealed by Decree-Law no. 57/2024, of 10 September, with retroactive effect to 31 December 2023.

The practical effect is simple: in practice nobody actually settles this contribution, because the repeal reaches back to the date it would start to apply. Source: Decree-Law no. 57/2024, of 10 September (Diário da República). For your specific tax situation, check with a certified accountant — this is not tax advice.

This is the most important thing to grasp: the 2024 reversal did not make everything identical across the country. It returned powers to the municipalities, so a lot depends on the town hall.

• Contention zones — councils may define areas where new registrations are limited or banned. Municipalities with more than 1,000 AL registrations may set them, based on studies updated every three years.
• Transferability in contention zones — within these areas, transferring a registration (in the house and apartment categories) may be capped or trigger expiry. Family transfers are exempt — to a spouse or de facto partner, ascendants or descendants, and in cases of divorce, separation or dissolution of a de facto union.
• Objection to registration — after the prior notice on the Electronic One-Stop Counter, the council may object within 60 days (or 90 days when the request is for a contention zone).
• Tourist tax — set and collected by each municipality. Whether it exists, the per-night amount and any night caps vary widely from council to council.

So, before buying, registering or transferring an AL, the right question is not only "what does the national law say?" but "what does my council's regulation say, today?".

Don't rely on undated articles or social-media advice. To know what applies to your property, go to the authoritative sources:

• Turismo de Portugal — official information on the AL regime and registration on the Electronic One-Stop Counter.
• Diário da República (diariodarepublica.pt) — the consolidated, current text of the laws (DL 128/2014, Law 56/2023, DL 57/2024, DL 76/2024).
• Your municipality — the local AL regulation, the contention-zone map and the council's tourist-tax rules.

And, for any decision involving money or risk, talk to a lawyer and a certified accountant. This guide is informational and can go out of date — the date at the top tells you when it was reviewed.