Municipal AL Rules Beyond Lisbon: Porto Has One in Force, Lagoa and Faro Have Drafts, and Sintra’s Freeze Is Unsourced

What national law lets a council do

Three layers of national law matter. Decree-Law 128/2014 created the AL regime and the RNAL register. Lei 62/2018 added the power to define containment areas, which is the legal basis Porto’s regulation cites. Decree-Law 76/2024, in force from 1 November 2024, then rewrote the regime after Lei 56/2023, the Mais Habitação law published on 6 October 2023. Lei 56/2023 had suspended new registrations for apartments and hospitality units in autonomous fractions, with exceptions for interior territories, Fundo Revive Natureza and the autonomous regions. It also made registrations non-transferable and set a 2030 reappraisal. The copy of Decree-Law 76/2024 we read revokes articles 18 to 21 and 52 of Lei 56/2023. Law-firm summaries (Cuatrecasas, ECIJA, PLMJ) report that the suspension, the reappraisal and non-transferability went with them.

Under articles 15-A to 15-C of the AL regime as amended, a council may define containment areas, meaning areas with an overload of establishments, and sustainable-growth areas, by parish. It must reassess them at least every three years. The municipal assembly may suspend new registrations in a delimited area by reasoned resolution for up to one year while a regulation is prepared. In containment areas a council may bar new registrations for units that were under a housing lease in the two years before registration, and may set proportional limits on transferring new registrations. Succession and family transfers are protected.

Cancellation is a separate power with its own grounds. The mayor may cancel a registration for missing or unproven mandatory insurance, on a condominium-based request after a reasoned decision by more than half of the permilagem, or in a containment area for a breach of the lease rule. The mayor decides after a prior hearing, may invite a settlement, and may bar the property from AL for up to five years. A condominium can also prohibit AL for future applications by a two-thirds vote. A council cannot simply cancel any licence it dislikes.

The 1,000-registration rule drives the calendar. A council that passes 1,000 registrations must decide within 12 months whether to use its regulatory power. Decree-Law 151/2026, published in Diário da República n.º 146/2026, Série I, on 30 July 2026 and in force the next day, adds a hard stop. A council with more than 1,000 registrations at 31 December 2025 that has not yet decided must deliberate by 31 December 2026. A running suspension can be extended once, an expired one gets one additional suspension, and both lapse at the latest on 31 December 2026 or when a regulation takes effect. Nothing is retroactive, so registrations made before a suspension takes effect stand. The decree text we read says the council must deliberate, which is a duty to decide whether to regulate. Adopting a rule stays optional, and PLMJ’s summary reads the provision as a power. Neither the decree nor the press lists which councils are eligible.

The EU regulation that applied from 20 May 2026 changes data flows, not these municipal powers. Our article on Regulation 2024/1028 explains what it altered.

Porto: the one regulation in force

Porto’s Regulamento n.º 495-A/2023 was published in Diário da República, 2.ª série, n.º 85, on 3 May 2023, after the executive approved it on 21 April and the municipal assembly on 27 April. Its test is a ratio of AL registrations to housing units, counted as units with a water meter used as permanent housing or long-term rental, at 31 October 2022. A parish below 15% is a growth area. A parish at 15% or above is a containment area, where the limit on new registrations is zero. The citywide ratio was 7.0%, from 9,975 registrations against 142,645 housing units.

The table ties out. The five containment parishes hold 5,881 registrations, the ten growth parishes hold 4,094, and the two add to the 9,975 in the regulation. Housing units tie the same way, 14,390 plus 128,255 giving 142,645. The five parishes hold 59.0% of the city’s registrations on 10.1% of its housing (both derived). The 2023 table was read from a machine-extracted copy with possible OCR errors, but every parish ratio recomputes from its own counts.

In containment parishes the regulation allows exceptions approved by the mayor or a delegated councillor. There are eight, among them mixed-use buildings with at least 50% housing and 20% affordable housing for 25 years, units vacant for more than three years, units rehabilitated in the last two years that gained two conservation levels, industrial conversions, and re-registration within 24 months after a divorce, a death or a change of management company. No exception applies if the unit was let or lent as housing in the last three years. Room-type AL (quartos) is always permitted in containment areas.

Growth parishes are capped as well. The regulation sets the total for those parishes at 15% of their housing, which is 19,236 registrations against 128,255 units, and leaves headroom for 15,142 new ones on top of the 4,094 already registered. A parish that uses its cap becomes a containment area automatically. The tables are reviewed every two years. Porto fenced the historic core and left the rest of the city open to roughly four times its existing stock there.

The rule has a start-stop history. Porto’s assembly approved a suspension on 16 July 2019 for the historic centre and Bonfim, effective 24 July 2019 for six months, extendable. Idealista reported that the 2023 regulation was set aside after Mais Habitação took effect. After Decree-Law 76/2024 the executive approved a six-month suspension of the historic centre and Bonfim on 28 October 2024. A Diário de Notícias headline of 11 December 2024 says Porto resumed the regulation and freed Bonfim and Cedofeita. A commercial AL manager’s blog cites Regulamento n.º 1462/2024 of 19 December 2024 as the instrument. We could not open that text, so the 2023 table is the last one we read in the Diário da República. ECO wrote on 30 July 2026 that new creation is fully suspended in Bonfim as well, which conflicts with the other two sources, so we treat it as contested.

What did the rule do to the register? Porto’s registrations kept rising. The city held 1,832 in July 2016 and 8,551 at the end of 2019, according to Lusa’s reports of the RNAL. The register reached 9,975 in October 2022, 10,489 at the end of 2025 and 10,821 in May 2026, up 3% on the end of 2025 (Lusa via idealista). The council then ordered 1,413 cancellations in May 2026, describing the establishments as non-compliant. Diário de Notícias put that at about 12%. We get 13.1% if 10,821 is the base and 11.5% if 10,821 is what remained after the cancellations, as DN described it, and we could not establish which. ALEP’s president said 50% to 60% of the cancelled units were in the historic centre. That is an association estimate and the council has published no breakdown.

A commercial AL manager’s blog, using water-meter data and RNAL records, gives July 2026 ratios of 60.0% for Vitória, 46.9% for São Nicolau, 39.4% for Sé, 35.0% for Santo Ildefonso and 21.2% for Miragaia. Each is lower than the 2023 value, and all five stay above 15%. We show them as unverified because the official ratios sit on a council map we could not open. New registrations continue. Casa Yes, citing Jornal de Notícias and Lusa on 7 October 2026, reported 583 new registrations in Porto against 124 in Lisbon, with the period unspecified. Our Porto tourism statistics article carries the hotel, airport and tourist-tax context.

Lagoa: a draft whose containment areas are public housing

Lagoa’s “Projeto de Regulamento Municipal para o Crescimento Sustentável do AL” is dated 5 January 2026 and is labelled for approval and public discussion. An Edital n.º 4/2026 for consultation exists, but its page was blocked to our tools. We found no evidence of approval by the municipal assembly or publication in the Diário da República. We treat the regulation as not in force, with a verification gap.

The draft’s test has two parts that must both be met. A containment area needs a pressure ratio above 50% and a relevance ratio above 15%. A sustainable-growth area needs pressure above 25% up to 50% and relevance above 5%. Relevance is AL registrations divided by all dwellings. Pressure is AL registrations divided by vacant and secondary dwellings. The data are as of 1 October 2025.

Read against its own thresholds, the draft’s annex produces a result the draft does not print. No listed territory meets both containment tests. The Carvoeiro urban rehabilitation area (ARU) has the highest relevance at 32.00% but a pressure ratio of 44.98%, which is 5.02 points short of containment. Four territories fall in the growth band. This reading is ours and is derived from the draft’s table. The containment areas the draft actually names are public and social housing sites such as municipal housing, SAAL schemes, cooperatives and Casas dos Pescadores. On the draft’s numbers the tourist coast would not be in containment.

The annex also lets us compute a concelho-wide figure. The four freguesia groupings sum to 3,728 registrations against 21,144 dwellings, or 17.6% (both sums derived). New registrations would be barred in containment areas with listed exceptions, and existing AL there could suspend for up to five years. The draft’s look-back periods are inconsistent, at two years in one article and five in others. An earlier measure, Edital n.º 114/2025, suspended new registrations in Lagoa’s ARUs for three months, extendable. We know it only from a blocked PDF’s title, so its dates and status are unknown.

Lagoa’s cancellations are real and unrelated to the draft. Diário de Notícias counted 598 cancelled out of 3,755 registrations (15.9%, derived) for missing insurance, with 89 more owners notified and 1,132 registrations carrying expired insurance. Observador reported that the process had concluded in Lagoa and Lagos. For the wider Algarve picture see our Algarve tourism statistics.

Faro: a draft that the council says changes little

Faro put Regulamento n.º 766/2025 to 30 days of public consultation on 27 June 2025, after the câmara approved the project in April. The draft introduces containment and sustainable-growth areas and an AL ombudsman, the Provedor do Alojamento Local. Observador’s report gives no numeric thresholds and does not name the historic centre as a containment area. The council said the text does not significantly change the current situation and left decisions to the executive elected in autumn 2025. We found no adoption and no suspension.

The numbers explain the council’s relaxed stance. The draft counted 1,016 AL registrations at the end of 2024 against 38,638 dwellings, a city ratio of 2.63%. The highest parish was Santa Bárbara de Nexe at 4.49% (135 of 3,010 dwellings), and Sé e São Pedro, the largest by count, held 683 of 26,122, or 2.61%. On the dwelling denominator Lagoa uses, Faro is at 2.6% against Lagoa’s 17.6% (derived). Faro’s register has still grown 5.2 times since July 2016, when Lusa’s RNAL report counted 195 registrations in the municipality.

With 1,016 registrations at the end of 2024, Faro would fall inside the deliberation duty of Decree-Law 151/2026 if it still had more than 1,000 registrations at the end of 2025 and had not decided. We did not find its 2025 count, so that remains unconfirmed. Faro’s tourist tax is €2 from March to October and €1 from November to February, charged year-round from 1 November 2024 according to Postal of 9 November 2024. Another Postal piece gives €1.50 all year, which looks stale. Our tourist-tax article covers the other councils.

Sintra: a freeze that rests on one press report

ECO reported on 11 November 2024, citing Jornal de Notícias, that Sintra had frozen the opening of new AL processes. The report gives no start date, instrument, scope or duration. ECO’s summary of 30 July 2026 says new registrations are suspended in urban parishes with strong tourist pressure, names no parishes and cites no instrument. We could not open the Jornal de Notícias article, so “Sintra has stopped issuing AL licences” is unsourced in our corrections panel.

The law makes the status hard to infer. A suspension under article 15-B lasts at most one year, so a freeze from November 2024 would have lapsed in November 2025 unless the assembly renewed it. Decree-Law 151/2026 now allows one extension or one additional suspension, ending no later than 31 December 2026. We found no assembly resolution. Sintra’s present position is therefore unknown, and so is whether its register passed 1,000 registrations.

What is documented is the insurance track. Sintra told holders from March 2025 to submit insurance data to the RNAL, and formal notifications started on 14 July 2025, after Cascais began on 23 June. ECO’s report of 2 July 2025 said no cancellations had occurred yet. We found no Sintra count of registrations and no Sintra cancellation figure. Our Sintra and Cascais visitor statistics article records 735,048 INE nights in 2024 across 3,916 beds, with hotels at 56.7% and AL plus rural lodging at 43.3%, which shows how much of the municipality’s accommodation a rule would touch. Cascais was reported in June 2026 to have started drafting, with nothing published.

Lagos, Albufeira and the cancellation drive

Diário de Notícias counted 1,548 cancellations out of 6,071 registrations, which is 25.5% (derived) against the 26% DN prints. We found no Lagos containment regulation, suspension or draft. The only sources saying so are broker blogs, which are weak, and we found no council or Diário da República evidence either way. Our own research brief’s suggestion that Lagos adopted a containment rule early is not supported.

The density data come from the council’s own housing document of January 2024. It counts about 5,800 AL units in 2023 against 27,933 dwellings, of which 50.2% are habitual residences. AL equals 41.4% of habitual-residence dwellings, and the document says AL units exceed primary-residence dwellings on parts of the Luz and São Gonçalo coast. It puts AL beds at about 30,400 against about 33,500 residents. A circulating figure that 88% of Lagos housing is non-resident does not appear in it. The 2011 census share of seasonal or second homes was 42.1%.

Albufeira holds the Algarve’s largest register and no rule that we found. Lusa reported 9,955 licences before a clean-up in December 2023, with 6,746 confirmed active. In December 2019 the RNAL counted 7,761 in Albufeira, 5,286 in Loulé, 4,532 in Portimão and 4,266 in Lagos. The Algarve held about 40% of national registrations in February 2026 according to Dinheiro Vivo, but only 9.9% of INE’s AL nights in 2025 (see our AL-versus-hotels comparison). A register counts units, including many that never traded.

The national cancellation drive is the larger event. Diário de Notícias reported on 10 June 2026 that councils had cancelled 10,324 registrations, that 152 councils had notified owners, that 139 had not started formal procedures, and that 119,147 registrations remained active. More than 37,000 registrations lacked insurance. The four reported councils tie to the total: 6,765 plus 1,548 plus 1,413 plus 598 equals 10,324, with Lisbon at 65.5%. The government’s ARTE bulk-cancellation tool had 159 councils interested, 35 using it and 108 that had opened processes without naming a technician, according to Postal on 19 April 2026. ALEP projects about 30,000 further cancellations and a final stock of 88,000 to 93,000 (DN) or 85,000 to 90,000 (Observador). Those are advocacy projections. The mechanics of the Lisbon cancellations are in our licence-purge article.

Who else has a rule, and why nobody can count them

Beyond the four named councils, the documented picture is thin. Lisbon’s amended RMAL took effect on 6 December 2025 with a 10% absolute and 5% relative threshold. DNoticias reported Funchal’s regulation approved on 12 June 2026, closing the Sé parish to new AL and barring new AL in collective-housing buildings elsewhere. We could not confirm publication. Viana do Castelo froze new apartment registrations in its urban pressure zone for a year from 26 November 2024, where 166 of its 446 registrations (about 37%) sat. ALEP names Mafra’s Ericeira core as a first-generation regulation. A trade blog says Nazaré adopted one in July 2026, which we treat as unverified. Gaia suspended new registrations from 23 January 2023 and extended the suspension through 2024, with its present status unknown.

No official body counts these. Turismo de Portugal, DGAL and the municipal association ANMP publish no list we could find. ALEP’s president, Eduardo Miranda, told idealista on 5 June 2026 that 10 to 15 municipalities were drafting and that 15 to 20 were expected to adopt in the following months. Observador wrote that the government itself does not say how many councils have regulations. Any stated number of municipalities with containment rules is an association estimate or an author’s own list.

Does a municipal rule change anything?

The evidence is thinner than the debate suggests. In Porto the register grew by 3% in the months before the cancellation order, through a containment regime that was already in force. In Lisbon, the 2018 rules had a measurable local effect on prices. IZA Discussion Paper 15706 (Gonçalves, Peralta and Pereira dos Santos, 2022) found that the 2018 ban on new registrations in some zones lowered nearby property prices by about 8% overall and about 20% for two-bedroom flats, and that registrations spiked between announcement and implementation. Lisbon recorded 6,981 new registrations in 2018 and 2,243 in 2019 (Lusa).

Platform data suggest that bookings did not fall with the rules. Eurostat’s series of nights booked through Airbnb, Booking, Expedia and Tripadvisor rose in every region between 2024 and 2025. The Porto metropolitan area went from 7.41 million to 7.79 million (+5.1%, derived), Grande Lisboa from 11.52 million to 11.75 million (+2.0%), the Algarve from 11.99 million to 13.37 million (+11.5%) and Madeira from 4.08 million to 5.42 million (+32.7%). Grande Lisboa then fell 3.1% in the first quarter of 2026 while Portugal rose 4.9%, in our Eurostat series. Registrations and bookings are different measures, and many cancelled registrations were already inactive.

The research on housing costs measures sale prices and not rents. Franco and Santos (2021) found house prices 3.7% higher for each percentage point of Airbnb share across municipalities, and 3.2% higher in Lisbon and Porto parishes. Nobre, Gonçalves and Cruz (published 14 September 2026) found transaction values 2.3% to 6.0% higher for each extra short-term rental per quarter and postcode, using data from 2010 to 2017. A Banco de Portugal study by Amador, reported by Observador on 16 October 2026, treats supply constraints as central and does not mention AL in that report. A Neoturis study hosted on Airbnb’s newsroom domain finds no material AL contribution to rents, and we treat it as industry-adjacent. We found no study that isolates the effect of Porto’s 2023 rule on rents. No source supports a percentage for AL’s share of rent increases, and spillover to Gaia or Matosinhos is not demonstrated in any data we could access.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Nothing in this article stops you booking an AL in Porto, Faro, Lagoa or Sintra. New registrations are barred only in Porto’s five historic parishes, and existing ones stand, so a listing in Ribeira or Sé can be perfectly legal. The practical check is the registration number on the listing and whether the host holds the mandatory insurance, since insurance is the ground behind most cancellations. If a booking is cancelled for that reason, ask the platform for a rebooking. For the neighbourhood choice in Porto see our Porto travel guide, and for the coast see the Algarve travel guide.

Tourism businesses and investors. The binding numbers are Porto’s 15% parish threshold, the 15,142 registrations of headroom in its growth parishes, Lagoa’s two-part test of pressure above 50% and relevance above 15%, and the two-year housing-lease look-back that Decree-Law 76/2024 lets councils apply in containment areas. The dates to watch are the assembly meetings before 31 December 2026, when councils above 1,000 registrations must deliberate. A buyer underwriting AL income should check whether the property sits in a delimited area, whether the registration is new or existing, and whether a suspension is running or has lapsed. A rule that exists only as a draft, as in Lagoa and Faro, changes nothing until the assembly approves it and the Diário da República publishes it. This is not legal advice, and a Portuguese lawyer should read the actual regulation.

Journalists and analysts. The citable figures are Porto’s 2023 parish table (5,881 of 9,975 registrations in five parishes, ratio 40.9%), the 10,324 cancellations tied across four councils, the 119,147 active registrations reported on 10 June 2026, and the text of Decree-Law 151/2026. Do not repeat that Portugal banned new Airbnb licences, that AL is banned in Porto’s historic centre, that Sintra has stopped issuing licences, that Lagoa banned Airbnb, or that 88% of Lagos housing is non-resident. The series finding this article adds is the gap between councils with a rule in force and councils with a draft or a press report, which no authority counts. The comparative spine now includes registrations, thresholds and cancellations for seven councils.