Camara do Porto Strips 1,413 Alojamento Local Licences Over Missing Civil-Liability Insurance — Historic-Centre Concentration Holds 50-60% of the Sweep Inside a 10,821-Unit Active Base
Camara Municipal do Porto confirmed on 22 May it will cancel 1,413 Alojamento Local registrations for non-submission of civil-liability insurance to the RNAL. ALEP says 50-60% sit inside the historic centre, where the 2023 containment-area overlay prevents reactivation.
The Camara Municipal do Porto (Porto City Council) confirmed on 22 May it will cancel 1,413 Alojamento Local (short-term rental, AL) registrations across the municipality, the largest single AL purge ordered by the city since the regime took effect in 2014. The trigger is non-submission of civil-liability insurance documentation to the Registo Nacional de Alojamento Local (National AL Registry, RNAL), a requirement folded into the 2024 amendment of Decreto-Lei 128/2014.
Eduardo Miranda, president of ALEP (Associacao do Alojamento Local em Portugal — Portuguese AL Association), told Observador that between 50% and 60% of the cancelled units sit inside Porto's historic centre, the UNESCO-classified parishes of Se, Vitoria, Sao Nicolau and Miragaia where AL density runs highest. The cancellations remove roughly 13% of Porto's 10,821 currently active AL stock, which itself had grown 3% from the end of 2025.
A national purge that started in Lisbon
The Porto announcement extends a national clean-up that ALEP estimates will eventually cancel 40,000 to 45,000 of Portugal's roughly 130,000 registered AL units, leaving 85,000 to 90,000 active. The Camara Municipal de Lisboa moved first in February 2026, cancelling 6,765 registrations — about 40% of its 20,000-unit registry — most of which the camara described as licencas fantasma (phantom licences) attached to dormant properties.
The mechanism is straightforward: holders of an AL registry number must upload proof of civil-liability insurance to the RNAL or face administrative cancellation. The insurance obligation has existed in primary law since 2018, but the upload requirement was only added in the 2024 reform, creating the paper trail that camaras now use to identify non-compliant operators.
The historic-centre overlay
Porto's cancellations land on top of Municipal Regulation 495-A/2023, in force since May 2023, which divides the city into Areas de Crescimento Sustentavel (Sustainable Growth Areas) and Areas de Contencao (Containment Areas). Cancelled units inside the containment zones — which include most of the historic centre — cannot reactivate their tourism activity in the same address. Owners can resume residential use, sell the asset, or push the unit into the long-term lease market, but the AL pathway is closed at that location.
That overlay is what gives the 22 May order its policy weight. A simple administrative cancellation would be reversible: upload the missing insurance and the registry restores the number. Inside Porto's containment areas, the cancellation effectively retires the AL slot. Miranda told Observador that Porto's enforcement has historically been "more rigorous than Lisbon's," a reference to the lighter touch on registry hygiene during the capital's earlier compliance push.
What this changes for the summer
The cancellation order takes effect ahead of the high season — June through September — when Porto's hotel occupation typically runs above 85% in the historic core. The AHP (Associacao da Hotelaria de Portugal — Portuguese Hospitality Association) 2026 summer survey, published earlier this month, already flagged a 10-point drop in expected domestic-market share to 68% and a softer brand-Portugal reading on the foreign side. The 1,413 AL units removed from the supply curve will compress short-stay inventory at the same moment, with the rebalancing effect most visible in Ribeira, Vitoria and Sao Nicolau pricing where the cancellations cluster.
