Short-Term Rental Rules by City, 2026
Most “Airbnb rules” articles give you a number and leave. The number is the easy part. The hard parts are which number applies to you, what counts towards it, and how you would prove your figure if anyone asked — and those are the three things almost nobody writes down.
This is the index. Each row links to the detail.
Checked 27 September 2026. Short-term letting rules move fast — Paris cut its cap in January 2025 and Amsterdam cut parts of the city in April 2026. Verify against the authority before you act on anything here. This is general information, not legal advice.
The biggest change is not a night cap
Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 applies from 20 May 2026 across all 27 member states. It sets no EU-wide night limit. What it does is oblige platforms to check your registration number against a national database, show it on your listing, and report your activity to the authorities every month.
Which means the counting is happening whether you do it or not. The full picture is here.
Night and availability caps
| Place | The limit | What it counts | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | 90 nights / calendar year | nights let | Deregulation Act 2015 s.44, relaxing GLC (General Powers) Act 1973 s.25 |
| Paris | 90 nights / calendar year | nights let, principal residence | loi Le Meur (2024‑1039); Paris deliberation 2024 DLH 398, from 1 Jan 2025 |
| France (elsewhere) | 90–120, set by the commune | nights let, principal residence | national default 120; communes may cut to 90 |
| Amsterdam | 30 nights / year | nights let | municipal; 15 nights in eleven Centrum and De Pijp neighbourhoods from 1 Apr 2026 |
| Copenhagen | 70 nights / year | nights let | conditional on the platform reporting income to the tax agency |
| Vienna | 90 nights / year | nights let, main home | with municipal approval |
| Berlin | ~90 nights / year | nights let, secondary home | a permitted principal residence has no cap |
| Cape Town | 50% of availability | nights offered | draft by-law — above it, Business & Commercial rates |
Cape Town is the odd one out and the most dangerous, because it counts what you offer, not what you sell. A listing left open all year is at 100% whether it books or not, and doing nothing is how you breach it. Everywhere else, an empty calendar is safe.
Registration numbers
| Place | What you need | Note |
|---|---|---|
| EU, all 27 | national registration number | from 20 May 2026; platforms verify and delist |
| Italy | CIN | on every listing and displayed physically at the property; fines to €8,000 |
| Greece | AMA (via AADE) | on every listing, every platform; 60+ day lets fall outside the STR regime |
| Portugal | Alojamento Local number | permanent and transferable since Nov 2024; Lisbon containment zones close new ones |
| Paris | 13-character municipal number | free, one-off, via the national téléservice |
| Kenya | Tourism Regulatory Authority licence | inspection before licensing; 2% tourism levy deducted at source from mid-2026 |
| Namibia | Namibia Tourism Board registration | operating unregistered is a criminal offence — fine to N$20,000 and/or two years |
Where a cap will not save you
Some places have moved past limits.
Barcelona is not issuing new tourist licences, and all ~10,101 existing HUT licences expire by November 2028 with no renewal — upheld by the Constitutional Court in March 2025. Lisbon has suspended new Alojamento Local and now closes a neighbourhood entirely once AL reaches 10% of its housing. Athens has a moratorium in central districts. In these cities no amount of calendar management helps; the question is what you do before the date.
The question underneath all of them
Every rule above eventually asks you the same thing: how many nights, and can you show your working?
That is not a calendar question. A calendar shows today. It cannot tell you what was offered last March, because a block you add now silently closes days that were open when it mattered, and a channel feed that disappears takes its blocks with it.
It is an accounting question, and we wrote about why that matters.
What to do this week
Knowing the number is not the same as being able to prove it, and the proof is the part that takes months to accumulate. It is worth starting before you need it.
- Create an account — start free; a card is needed at sign-up.
- Import your booking history. Paste your Airbnb or Booking.com iCal link, or upload a CSV. Past bookings come in too, so the counter is right from the first day rather than from today.
- Turn on the letting limit for the property and pick your city’s rule from the list. It is four settings — what you count, per night or per room-night, over which window, up to what limit — and the presets fill them in.
- Add your registration number once. It renders on your listing wherever Airflow publishes it.
Then leave it alone. It counts every night, tells you the date you are forecast to cross, and can close the least valuable nights automatically to keep you under.
Sources: EUR-Lex — Regulation (EU) 2024/1028, City of London — short term letting, service-public.gouv.fr — meublé de tourisme, Gemeente Amsterdam — vakantieverhuur melden.