1,413 tourist lets in Porto cancelled

Porto council to cancel 1,413 Alojamento Local short-term tourist lets over insurance breaches.

Créditos: Gonçalo Lopes | idealista/news

Lusa

28 May 2026, 9:00

Porto City Council is going to cancel 1,413 holiday rentals, or Alojamento Local (AL) establishments, because they are “non-compliant”.

According to the president of the Portuguese Local Accommodation Association (ALEP), most of the cancellations of these short-term rentals are concentrated in the city’s historic centre.

An official source at Porto City Council told Lusa that the municipality will move forward, “in line with other municipalities”, with “the procedure to cancel 1,413 non-compliant AL establishments in the city” and that “the procedure will make it possible to regularise the situation of establishments that are in breach of the law”.

Asked what these breaches consist of, the same municipal source explained that they relate to a “lack of the necessary documentation, which is now required by law”, particularly documentation relating to civil liability insurance.

“Over recent months, the municipality of Porto has carried out a series of support and clarification initiatives under the procedure to cancel AL establishments that have not submitted the data relating to civil liability insurance, attempting in various ways to alert non-compliant economic operators to the need to submit this information,” reads a written response sent to Lusa news agency.

More than 10,800 AL establishments in Porto

Data from the Registo Nacional de Alojamento Local (RNAL – National Local Accommodation Register) consulted by Lusa indicate that the number of AL establishments in the city of Porto currently stands at 10,821, 3% more than at the end of 2025.

In a telephone interview with Lusa, ALEP president Eduardo Miranda explained that the majority of the AL registrations that will be cancelled in Porto, between 50% and 60%, are located in the city’s historic centre.

He added that, under the law currently in force, AL registrations cancelled in Porto’s historic centre will not be able to restart their tourism activity in the historic centre area.

The Regulation for the Sustainable Growth of Local Accommodation in Porto, in force since May 2023 – Municipal Regulation no. 495-A/2023 – creates “Sustainable Growth Areas” and “Containment Areas” to control tourism pressure and protect permanent housing.

Cancellations in Lisbon as well

Lisbon City Council stated in February that it would cancel 6,765 AL registrations, “equivalent to around 40%”, out of a total of close to 20,000, noting that 11,779 AL licences were active on 1 February this year.

Comparing these cancelled AL registrations in Lisbon with Porto, Eduardo Miranda points out that in Porto the number of cancelled AL registrations is lower because Porto is the Portuguese city “that most closely monitored and inspected the sector and carried out all the initial inspections, whereas Lisbon did not”.

According to him, Porto “kept a tighter control”, particularly through inspections. “There was no lack of publicity. There was no lack of public notices,” he stressed.

The obligation for AL establishments to have civil liability insurance has existed since 2018, but the requirement to upload this document to the RNAL platform was only introduced with the most recent amendment to the law, in 2024.

In June 2025, ALEP stated that it was aware that “several municipal councils” would begin, later that month, to notify local accommodation operators that had not uploaded the insurance to the register, after having granted a grace period.

In the city of Porto, as of 30 June, there were still 2,408 AL registrations that had not yet submitted the mandatory civil liability insurance, according to data sent at the time by the municipality to Lusa.