Portugal Focuses on Enforcing Short-Stay Rentals Licences & Insurances

Holiday-let owners are about to discover whether their paperwork is truly in order. After quietly allowing a three-month grace period, Portuguese town halls will begin issuing formal warnings to any Alojamento Local licence that still has not uploaded proof of civil-liability insurance to the national registry. Once the email arrives the margin for error all but disappears; operators will have a maximum of ten working days to attach the policy or watch their registration vanish from the system.

The countdown begins

Portugal has required short-stay rentals to carry liability cover since 2018, but only this year did parliament oblige owners to lodge the document on the Registo Nacional do Alojamento Local website. Councils could, in theory, have enforced the change from day one, yet most chose instead to wait until after Easter travel. That informal moratorium ends now. Industry association ALEP says several municipalities—among them tourism heavyweights in Lisbon, Porto and the Algarve—have notified the group that mass e-mails will go out before July.

Why the new upload matters

A valid insurance certificate shields guests, neighbours and building managers from accidents and damage, but it now serves a second purpose: confirming that a licence is actively used. Officials hope the rule will purge long-dormant registrations and produce a realistic map of the holiday-let economy ahead of next year’s debate on rental caps. According to ALEP president Eduardo Miranda, nearly 70 000 licences, more than half the total on record, have yet to file a policy; perhaps 40-to-50 000 of those belong to owners who stopped renting during the pandemic, leaving roughly 20 000 genuine businesses exposed.

The hosts most likely to miss the memo

Part-time landlords and expatriates face the greatest risk. Many keep a Portuguese flat as a family retreat and pay little attention to legislative tweaks. Others rely on an outdated e-mail address in the registry, so city hall messages bounce. Foreign owners in particular may not follow Portuguese-language news, Facebook groups or the ALEP website, making them oblivious to the approaching deadline. If you live abroad, assume your council will try to reach you only by e-mail and in Portuguese.

How to act fast—and stay compliant

The good news, says ALEP, is that the upload takes minutes. Hosts need a policy that explicitly covers Alojamento Local activity, usually with a minimum €75 000 in liability protection, the licence number and the property’s address. Standard home insurance rarely qualifies. Once the PDF is issued, logging into the RNAL portal and attaching the file under “Seguro de responsabilidade civil” completes the task. The document must be resubmitted every time the policy renews, creating an annual reminder to keep details current.

Consequences of letting the clock run out

Failure to respond within ten business days triggers automatic cancellation. Reactivating a licence later means applying from scratch, paying the municipal fee again and, in some coastal or historic districts, competing for a limited pool of new permits. Running a short-term rental without an active registration carries fines that can reach tens of thousands of euros. In other words, ignoring the e-mail could cost far more than the insurance premium itself.

What happens next

Councils have discretion over when to press send on the notifications, so the timeline will vary by municipality. But the direction is clear: the grace period is over, and the enforcement phase is under way. For foreign owners in particular, checking the inbox linked to your RNAL account—along with its spam folder—should be the first task of the day. A few minutes spent uploading a PDF could spare months of bureaucratic headaches and ensure your summer bookings proceed uninterrupted.