BUPi Property Registration Stays Free Until 30 September — Then €15 Per Plot, and No Rural Land Sells or Draws EU Funds Without a Georeferenced Map

The countdown has started for foreign owners of rural and mixed property in Portugal. Under Decreto-Lei n.º 87/2026 of 15 April, published last week in the Diário da República, registration of rural (rústicos) and mixed (mistos) properties at the Balcão Único do Prédio (BUPi) stays free until 30 September 2026. From 1 October it becomes a paid service — and a missing or absent representação gráfica georreferenciada (RGG) becomes a hard wall standing between the property owner and any future sale, donation, inheritance transmission, or EU/national subsidy application.

The Ministério da Economia and the Ministério da Justiça framed the diploma in their joint communiqué as a measure that “guarantees that more Portuguese can regularise their property without additional charges,” but the more important reading is the back end: the law turns the simplified cadastral framework — which has been a long-running, voluntary, free-and-funded campaign since 2017 — into the gatekeeper of all rural land transactions in Portugal.

What the BUPi actually is

The Balcão Único do Prédio sits inside the Sistema de Informação Cadastral Simplificada (SiCS), a parallel cadastral track Portugal launched after decades of failure to build a proper national rural cadastre. Unlike the Spanish or French systems, Portugal's rural land has historically not been mapped to a central registry: in much of the interior — Trás-os-Montes, Beira Interior, Alto Alentejo — boundaries were defined orally, by stone walls, or by reference to a neighbour’s grandparent. The Diário da República of 2017 created a voluntary route, BUPi, by which an owner could draw the polygon of their rural plot on a digital map, attach it to their caderneta predial from the Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, and produce a georeferenced graphic representation accepted by both the AT and the Conservatórias do Registo Predial.

The carrot was that the work was free, paid for by EU recovery funds and the state. The stick was that no one could be forced to do it. Almost a decade in, large stretches of Portugal’s rural cadastre remain unmapped — which is precisely the gap the new diploma now addresses.

The 30 September deadline

Article 1 of Decreto-Lei n.º 87/2026 reads: “The acts and procedures provided for in the present law that cover rural or mixed properties with an area equal to or less than 50 hectares are free until 30 September 2026.” That sentence is the entire window for free registration. The 50-hectare cap covers nearly all foreign-owned land in Portugal — the typical expat-purchased plot in the Algarve interior or central Alentejo runs from 0.2 to 5 hectares. Larger commercial estates above 50 hectares already paid market rates; nothing changes there.

From 1 October 2026, each RGG produced by qualified technicians — defined in the diploma as “workers of the municipalities and intermunicipal entities, or service providers to those entities, registered in BUPi” — costs €15 for up to nine representations per applicant and €10 each for ten or more. For an owner with a single plot the cost is symbolic; for the typical Alentejo smallholder with five inherited parcelas spread across three freguesias, it is €75. For a community-owned baldio with dozens of fragments, it stacks fast.

The harder change — RGG becomes mandatory

The bigger story sits below the price list. Under the new diploma, “the presentation of a georeferenced graphic representation (RGG) becomes mandatory in the documents that title acts of transmission of the right of property.” In practice that means: from 1 October, no escritura pública for a rural or mixed property can be signed at the notary or at the Casa Pronta service without an RGG number. No partilha following an inheritance can be processed without an RGG. No donation, no sale, no exchange, no desanexação of a fragment.

The diploma also covers the funding side. “All procedures of application, attribution or concession of financial support, subsidies, incentives or co-financing — independent of their origin, namely European Union funds, national funds or other instruments of analogous nature — that have rural or mixed properties as their object must be instructed with an RGG.” In other words, an Alentejo cork producer cannot apply for the next round of PEPAC (the Portuguese implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy) on a plot that has not been delimited. A landowner cannot draw on the next forestry-restoration tranche after the autumn fires unless the parcel has an RGG. The Banco de Fomento’s storm-recovery line for rural businesses, which we covered when the IFIC envelope was bumped to €1.5 billion, will eventually require RGGs as part of its eligibility instruction.

What the law also does — the new anexação procedure

Among the procedural changes, Decreto-Lei 87/2026 creates a “special procedure for the annexation of rural property,” which allows a citizen to lodge a request for registration directly at the BUPi counter — bypassing the historically slow Conservatória workflow. This was a chronic complaint of small rural owners: even when the cadastral graphic was correctly drawn, the registration at the local Conservatória could take twelve to eighteen months. The BUPi-direct route is designed to shave that to weeks for the simplest cases.

Why expats should care

Three groups of foreign residents should treat the next 158 days as a deadline rather than a curiosity.

The interior buyer. Anyone who has bought a hectare or two of olive grove, vineyard or scrubland in the Alentejo, the Beiras, or the Algarve serra in the past five years should check the caderneta predial. If the property carries the simplified cadastre tag with an RGG number, nothing further is required. If it does not — and a meaningful slice of plots sold to foreign buyers since 2018 have been transmitted without one — then the registration done before 30 September is free; afterwards, every fragment costs €15.

The recent inheritor. Foreign nationals who have inherited rural property under a Portuguese will (or under the EU Succession Regulation) and have not yet completed the partilha face the same arithmetic. From 1 October, the partition cannot be registered without an RGG. The notary will pause the act and send the heirs back to the BUPi counter. Doing the cadastral work now — at zero cost — is the strict economic optimum.

The CAP applicant. Smallholders running an olive, vineyard, cork, or pine operation under any PEPAC line should treat 1 October as the date after which an unregistered fragment becomes de facto ineligible. The Banco de Fomento, the Fundo Ambiental, IFAP, the AICEP and the IAPMEI will all read off the same cadastral file. A single missing RGG can disqualify a multi-year support stream.

How to do it before 30 September

The process runs through the bupi.gov.pt portal or, in person, at any participating municipal counter — most of the rural and interior councils have a dedicated Balcão BUPi. The applicant needs the property’s caderneta predial from the AT (downloadable from the Portal das Finanças), an identity document with NIF, and either GPS coordinates of the property corners or, more commonly, a guided session in which a municipal technician helps the owner draw the polygon from satellite imagery. The session typically takes 30 to 90 minutes for a single-plot rural property. The output is the RGG number, which is then attached to the caderneta.

For owners abroad, the procedure can be initiated via the chave móvel digital if it has been activated — see our complete CMD guide — and can be delegated to a Portuguese technician with a procuração. Given the 158-day window, the practical advice is to start now and file before the summer parliamentary recess; municipal staff will be progressively saturated through July and August as the deadline closes.

The political math

Decreto-Lei 87/2026 is the second piece of cadastral legislation passed by the Montenegro government in five months — the first, Decreto-Lei 134/2025 of November, extended the BUPi geographical coverage to the final municipalities not yet inside the simplified cadastre. Together the two diplomas complete the legal architecture of the rural cadastre that has been under construction since the original 2017 law. The price-and-mandate combination introduced now is the closing piece: free up to a deadline, then mandatory, then paid.

The economic reading is that Portugal is finally enforcing the cadastral discipline that the Spanish, French and Italian systems have had for decades. The political reading is that the cost is being borne by the smallest and most fragmented rural owners in the country, the ones who never had the resources to register voluntarily — and that the state has now narrowed the free window to just over five months from publication.

The 1 October bottom line

For any foreign-resident owner of rural or mixed property under 50 hectares, the calculation is simple. From now until 30 September: free. From 1 October: €15 per plot, with a hard requirement at every notary, every Conservatória and every funding application. Five months is enough to do the work; ten months from now the door closes on the free track and the cost becomes a recurring item on every rural transaction.

Sources: Decreto-Lei n.º 87/2026 of 15 April (Diário da República); joint communiqué Ministério da Economia/Ministério da Justiça, 23 April 2026; Observador (Alexandra Machado), 24 April 2026; Jornal de Negócios coverage of cadastral reform, April 2026.