Tourist Licence in the Canary Islands: Requirements

The Canary Islands spent a decade with holiday homes regulated by a decree the courts kept trimming article by article, and the result was a regime that hardly anyone described the same way twice. That period ended in December 2025.

What changes for anyone registering today is not the paperwork, which is still a declaración responsable (a self-certification of compliance). It is who decides the answer: before, the declaración responsable plus a few equipment requirements were enough; now the town council must have expressly allowed the tourist lodging use on that land, and on four of the seven islands no registration is possible without it.

This is what the rule in force requires, with the island-by-island exceptions and the deadlines that are already running.

Which law governs holiday rentals in the Canary Islands

The main rule is Ley 6/2025, de 10 de diciembre, de Ordenación Sostenible del Uso Turístico de Viviendas (the LOSUTV), published in the BOC (the Canary Islands official gazette) number 246 of 12 December 2025 and in force from the following day¹. It is a rule with the rank of law, not a regulation like the Decreto 113/2015 on holiday homes, whose registration regime it displaces, and that jump in rank changes who can strike it down: a regulation is challenged before the Tribunal Superior de Justicia, which is how articles of the 2015 decree were annulled, while a regional law can only be challenged before the Tribunal Constitucional, and only by a closed list of parties.

The penalty regime is not in that law but in Ley 7/1995, de 6 de abril, de Ordenación del Turismo de Canarias, which the LOSUTV amended to add new offence categories².

Three rules, then, and a clear division of labour: the LOSUTV says how the authorisation is obtained, Ley 7/1995 says what non-compliance costs, and Decreto 113/2015 still governs day-to-day operation in everything the law did not repeal.

The Registro General Turístico and the home’s VV number

The regional register is called the Registro General Turístico de la Comunidad Autónoma de Canarias, and you do not apply for registration: the cabildo does it on its own initiative when it receives the declaración responsable.

“Before starting to operate the tourist lodging use in homes, their owners or, where applicable, the natural or legal persons to whom the owner has previously entrusted their operation must file a declaración responsable with the cabildos insulares […], which shall register the activity, of their own motion, in the Registro General Turístico de la Comunidad Autónoma de Canarias.”

That registration produces the number the platforms verify, and publishing it is mandatory:

”[…] shall necessarily contain a registration number, whose inclusion shall be mandatory in any publication or advertisement through which the property in question is offered as tourist accommodation, whether through digital platforms or through any other means of dissemination that makes it possible to learn of the property’s offer and/or to formalise its booking or contracting.”

The register is public: the Gobierno de Canarias publishes the full list of registered holiday homes as open data, with address, bed places and registration number. As of 10 September 2026 there are 72,440 registered holiday homes and 307,852 bed places, and 86 records do not state the island⁴.

The full number has four blocks: the VV prefix, the province code (35 for Las Palmas, 38 for Santa Cruz de Tenerife), one island digit and seven figures. In Tenerife the oldest records keep the A- prefix instead of VV- and remain valid: it is the same register. They account for 5,613 of the 72,440 registered homes, and on the other islands there is none with that prefix⁴. If your Airbnb or Booking listing asks for a code, that is the one to paste in.

Requirements for a holiday rental in the Canary Islands

The requirements come in two layers: the law’s planning rules, which decide whether your home is eligible at all, and the transitional technical requirements, which apply until the implementing regulation is approved.

Ten-year minimum age and express planning authorisation

The first two on this list rule out most new applications:

• Express planning authorisation. You need a cédula urbanística (a planning certificate issued by the town council) proving that the planning expressly allows the tourist lodging use in that home. The plot’s residential classification, on its own, does not allow any tourist use. This requirement is not demanded on El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma until 13 December 2027: the ninth transitional provision suspends it there during the law’s first two years, and on those islands Ley 14/2019 still prevails¹.
• Minimum age of ten years for the home, counted from the planning permit, the building permit, the first-occupancy licence, the declaration of new construction or the cadastral certificate. It drops to five years on El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma and in municipalities declared to face demographic challenges.
• 90% reserved for residential use. When a town council allows the tourist use, it must keep at least 90% of the residential buildable area excluded from that use (80% on El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma).
• Stressed market area, registrations suspended. If the housing authority declares a stressed residential market area, the authorisation of new homes is automatically suspended for as long as the declaration lasts.
• One home per cadastral reference, unless the Land Registry proves that the reference contains two or more.
• Certificate from the comunidad de propietarios (the owners’ association) confirming that neither the founding deed, nor the bylaws, nor a resolution of the general meeting bars a use other than habitual residence.
• Never in substandard housing or in homes that are, or in the last ten years have been, subject to public protection, official protection or capped-price regimes. Of all the prohibitions that article 4.4 imposes on planning, these two are the only ones article 4.5 also keeps on El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma.

In the absence of express municipal regulation, the law applies its own default rules: tourist accommodation capacity cannot exceed 10% of the inhabitants of each population centre according to the municipal register, nor 10% of those in each electoral section, percentages that rise to 20% on those three islands and in demographic-challenge municipalities. Within those same default rules, article 5.2.e) closes off agricultural settlements without nuance: there, the lodging use in homes cannot be authorised¹.

Minimum floor area of 35 m² and bathrooms per bed place

The general rule of the seventh transitional provision, as worded since August 2026, is demanding and allows one way out³:

1. 35 m² of usable floor area as a minimum.
2. Two full bathrooms if the home has more than four bed places, and three bathrooms if it has more than eight.
3. Alternatively, the minimum floor area required by habitability rules is enough if the home meets one condition from a list: a private parking space on the plot, its own or a shared pool, sports facilities, health or wellness facilities, 9 m² of private garden per bed place on urban land (100 on rural land), a charging point for zero-emission vehicles, a quality or EMAS certification, a plan to reach a zero-carbon footprint within five years, an A or B energy rating, a noise monitoring system, or self-employed status for the person operating the home.

That third route is what makes registering small flats viable, and it should be read for what it is: a trade of floor area for amenities.

Energy certificate, solar hot water and road access

These three are required in every case:

• Minimum energy rating of F for buildings legally in existence on 31 December 2007 and D for later ones, except homes legally exempt from certification or prevented by heritage rules.
• Domestic hot water from solar panels where technically and legally possible, or from another renewable installation whose technical certificate shows equal or lower emissions and non-renewable primary energy consumption.
• Road access to the plot or to the nearest reasonable approach point. If the final stretch is on foot because of the terrain or the traditional building type, or if the access is unpaved, this must be stated expressly in the advertising and marketing.

How to file the declaración responsable with the cabildo

The procedure is entirely electronic and has no fee: the procedure sheet on the Gobierno de Canarias e-office classifies it at level 4 of e-government, with filing open all year round and “not required” under the fees heading⁵. Nor is there a decision to wait for, and that is not administrative practice but the text of the law:

“Filing the declaración responsable, together with all the required annexed documentation, shall allow the activity to start from the day of filing, and the relevant cabildo insular must register the activity, of its own motion, in the Registro General Turístico de la Comunidad Autónoma de Canarias […], notifying the interested party.”

1. Gather the documents. A report on the tourist activity signed by a qualified technician, with floor plans, elevation and sections, geolocation to the specifications of the Sistema de Información Territorial de Canarias, and photographs of the façade and interior. The cédula urbanística. The owners’ association certificate if the home is in a building under horizontal property (condominium) rules.
2. Download your island’s form. Each cabildo must keep its declaración responsable template published and up to date, accessible electronically.
3. Fill in the minimum content of article 7.4: identification of the home with its cadastral reference and maximum capacity, identification of the operator and the owner, and the statements on planning compatibility, absence of public protection and absence of any prohibition in the bylaws.
4. File. From that same day you can start operating, and the cabildo registers the home on its own initiative and notifies you.
5. Keep the notification. The registration is also communicated to the town council and the Land Registry, and the notice to the town council counts as prior notice of the planning change of use from residential to tourist. That change of use must also be declared to the Catastro (the cadastre), and the town council will apply the fees for the new use.

The whole procedure is compulsorily electronic, for owners and operators alike. Anyone without digital means can file on paper at a registry assistance office, which converts it to electronic format¹.

The authorisation expires after five years and must be renewed

The previous decree put no expiry date on the authorisation. The law does: the declaración responsable is not open-ended and authorises for five years from filing, or ten on El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma and in demographic-challenge municipalities, and the term is stated in the registration itself.

To keep operating you must file a new declaración responsable during the month before expiry, meeting the requirements in force at that time and with a favourable certificate from the town council on the tourist use’s compliance with its bylaws. If the term expires with no new declaration, the cabildo issues a definitive deregistration decision and the home returns to residential use.

Verification, on the other hand, does not expire: the cabildo or the Gobierno can check the declaration at any time while the activity lasts, and an inaccuracy, falsehood or omission in an essential detail bars continuing the activity from the moment the Administration becomes aware of it. Essential details are the holder’s identity, the classified-activities documentation, the horizontal property regime and the capacity, the cadastral reference and the home’s planning status. The decision can also bar starting a new procedure with the same object for up to three years¹.

What happens to holiday homes under Decreto 113/2015

Decreto 113/2015 did not vanish overnight. The LOSUTV repealed its conflicting provisions and, expressly, its articles 12.2 and 13, and before that the courts had already annulled articles 3.2, 12.1 and 13.3 and a sub-section of annex 2, by final judgments of the Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Canarias of 21 March 2017 and of the Tribunal Supremo of 25 May 2017⁶.

The transitional regime for those who were already in comes from there, and it opens four paths with very different deadlines:

• General transitional regime: five years. Anyone whose holiday home was duly authorised on 13 December 2025 has five years to keep operating it on the same terms, that is, until December 2030. After that the effects of the declaration filed back then lapse and the activity must cease, unless the home has already been authorised under the new regime. If the operator is not the owner, the effects lapse earlier: when the contract or title that allowed the operation ends.
• Extension: up to ten. You can ask the cabildo for a single extension of up to five more years, to a total maximum of ten from entry into force, proving that the five-year term does not compensate for the loss of the title. The application is filed within the first four years, allows you to keep operating until there is an express decision, and is decided within six months; once those six months pass with no notification, it is deemed refused.
• Compensation through long-term renting: up to twenty. This is the least known route and the longest. Anyone who proves that the home was wholly used as an authorised holiday home can ask the cabildo, within the first five years, to extend the effects of their declaración responsable up to a maximum of twenty years from the law’s entry into force, in exchange for putting up for residential rent a home that had been unoccupied or in another use for five years. The compensation home must be of the same quality and floor area and lie in the same population centre; if it is in the same municipality but a different centre, two rental homes are needed for each tourist home.
• Consolidated tourist use: no time limit, but no way back. Anyone who is both owner and holder of the declaración responsable can opt, within five years, for the declaración responsable de uso turístico consolidado (consolidated tourist use declaration), which keeps the old declaration in force even against new planning and is not subject to the five-year expiry of article 10¹.

That fourth option has a price worth reading twice before signing:

“The declaración responsable de uso turístico consolidado of the home shall mean that, while it is in force, the home shall not be capable of any residential or habitational use, neither by the owner nor in any other form outside the home’s tourist use. Breaching this requirement shall amount to an express waiver of the home’s consolidated tourist use status and the right shall be extinguished.”

In other words: while the consolidation lasts you cannot move into your own home, nor let a child live in it, nor rent it out as a residence. And the legal status of tourist consolidation allows maintenance, conservation, refurbishment and modernisation works, but does not allow the tourist use to be kept if there is partial demolition, structural consolidation, rehabilitation or remodelling. It is the option for someone who has decided that home is never returning to the residential market.

There is one deadline that admits no extension, and it is the one that will take out the most older homes:

“In those cases where the interested parties filed a declaración responsable before this law entered into force but have not filed the prior notice of classified activities with the relevant town council, they may file it before 31 July 2027.”

Missing that deadline forces you to cease the activity immediately, with automatic extinction of the declaración responsable de uso turístico consolidado. The prior notice is accompanied by a municipal certificate that the home was built in accordance with planning and holds its permits, or by proof that it is outside planning (fuera de ordenación), plus a report from a qualified technician.

The Decreto 113/2015 document signed before occupation

The transitional regime is not all that is left of the 2015 regulation. Its articles 7, 11, 12.4 and 16 were neither repealed nor annulled, and they are the ones that govern the day to day: advertising and the notice with the helpline number, displayed prices, complaint forms, and one document per stay that hardly anyone has ready because no platform asks for it.

“Prior to the effective occupation of the holiday home by the users, if the contract was not made in writing beforehand, it shall be mandatory for both parties to sign a document setting out, as a minimum, the extracted conditions of the contract, stating the hours, the maximum number of people who may occupy the home and the prices to be charged for the accommodation service, with IGIC included. This document shall be drafted at least in Spanish and English.”

Four features set it apart from the admission document other regions require:

• Only where there was no prior written contract. That is the single condition that switches it off. Our reading is that a booking confirmed in writing before arrival, already carrying those conditions, meets the article’s purpose; a platform confirmation that does not carry them does not.
• Both parties sign it. In Andalucía, Asturias or Extremadura the guest’s signature is enough; here the operator’s is needed too.
• Drafted at least in Spanish and English. It is the only region that imposes a language on the document.
• Prices with IGIC included. Not the figure the platform displays, but the price of the accommodation service with the tax inside.

The minimum content is four blocks: the extracted conditions of the contract, the check-in and check-out hours, the maximum number of people who may occupy the home, and the prices. The decree imposes no model or format and sets no retention period, but article 11.2 turns that sheet into the ceiling on what you can charge: no higher prices may be charged, nor unrequested items, nor items that are not stated in the tourist offer channels or reflected in that document⁶.

Ley 7/1995 fines for operating or advertising unregistered

The amounts come from article 79.2 of Ley 7/1995: up to 1,500 euros for minor (leve) offences, 1,501 to 30,000 for serious (grave) ones and 30,001 to 300,000 for very serious (muy grave) ones². These are the offence categories that reach holiday rentals, and the last three were added in August 2026³:

That advertising without a number is muy grave, and not merely grave, is what sets the Canary Islands apart from most regions: the same incomplete listing here opens the bracket from 30,001 euros upwards. The full brackets of the nineteen regional tourism laws are in renting without a tourist licence.

Two more consequences that are not money. First: final muy grave penalties are published and noted in the Registro General Turístico itself, so they are visible to anyone who looks up the home’s record. Second: a muy grave offence is time-barred after three years, a grave one after two and a leve one after one, counted from the day it was committed, and the penalties are time-barred after the same periods from the date the decision becomes final².

Articles 11 and 12, added by Ley 7/2026, also shift the burden of proof. It is presumed, unless proven otherwise, that there is tourist lodging activity when the home is marketed through a tourist offer channel or when guests are lodged for continuous periods of 31 days or less, once or more a year. Rebutting the presumption requires the contract to state the reason for the temporary lodging and its connection to the planned duration, and checking that is the landlord’s burden. Letting for short seasons without that detail in the contract is no longer neutral ground in the Canary Islands³.

The parte de viajeros is still due after the licence

The licence is regional. The parte de viajeros (the guest report) is national and applies the same across the whole archipelago: Real Decreto 933/2021 requires the data of every guest to be transmitted to SES.HOSPEDAJES immediately and, in any event, within 24 hours of the start of the contracted services, regardless of which region registered the home⁷.

They are two separate obligations, with two separate administrations and two separate penalty regimes: Ley 7/1995 for the licence, and Ley Orgánica 4/2015 for the guest report. Failing to send the report is a national serious (grave) offence, fined 601 to 30,000 euros, and no VV number covers it⁸. The split between the licence, the national register and the guest report is broken down in tourist licence, NRUA and guest registration, and the detail of the national obligation in what Royal Decree 933/2021 is.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a tourist licence cost in the Canary Islands? A tourist licence in the Canary Islands costs nothing in fees: the procedure sheet for the declaración responsable to start a holiday home activity states expressly that no fees are required, and the cabildo registers the home in the Registro General Turístico on its own initiative. The real cost lies in the documents you have to provide: the tourist activity report signed by a qualified technician and the cédula urbanística issued by the town council. In addition, the law now allows the cabildos insulares to charge fees for the service of verifying declaraciones responsables, so that expense may appear later depending on the island.

Can you rent a home by the room in the Canary Islands? Renting a home by the room in the Canary Islands is a lodging use for all purposes: Ley 6/2025 defines the lodging use to expressly include renting by the room and classifies it as a tourist accommodation service. That means it needs the same planning authorisation and the same declaración responsable as the whole home, not a lighter regime. Without planning that allows the tourist lodging use in that home, renting rooms is not possible either.

What happens to my holiday home registered before December 2025? A holiday home registered before December 2025 can keep operating for five years on the same terms, with a single possible extension of up to five more years if you prove to the cabildo that that term does not compensate for the loss of the title. If you are both owner and holder of the declaración responsable, you can opt within those five years for the declaración responsable de uso turístico consolidado, which keeps the old declaration alive with no expiry, in exchange for the home admitting no residential use whatsoever while it lasts, not even yours. And there is a third route, compensation by putting another home up for long-term rent, which stretches the effects to twenty years. One date will not wait: if you filed the declaración responsable but never the prior notice of classified activities with the town council, you have until 31 July 2027 to file it, and failing to do so forces you to cease immediately.

How long does it take to register a holiday rental in the Canary Islands? Registering a holiday rental in the Canary Islands involves no waiting: filing the declaración responsable with all the annexed documentation lets you start the activity the same day, and the cabildo registers it on its own initiative and notifies you. Article 8.1 of Ley 6/2025 fixes this, so it does not depend on the cabildo’s workload. What can take weeks is what comes before: obtaining the cédula urbanística from the town council and the technical report, which are the two documents that decide whether the home is eligible.

What is the fine for advertising a home without a registration number in the Canary Islands? Advertising a home without a registration number in the Canary Islands is a very serious (muy grave) offence, fined 30,001 to 300,000 euros. It is defined in paragraph 16 of article 75 of Ley 7/1995, which Ley 6/2025 added precisely to cover advertising on digital platforms and any other means of dissemination. The category covers both those who have no number and those who have one and do not state it in the listing, and a final muy grave penalty is published and noted in the Registro General Turístico.

This article is for information purposes only. It does not replace professional legal advice. Authorising a holiday rental depends on the planning rules of each municipality, and the final classification of an offence rests with the competent Administration in each case.