Regulation explainerJuly 13, 2026

Municipal Tourist Tax for Short-Term Rentals in Portugal: a practical guide (with rates by municipality)

Official rates by municipality (Lisbon €4, Porto €3, Loulé seasonal…), the real exemptions, what Airbnb and Booking actually handle — and what stays on you. Verified July 2026.

Portugal's Municipal Tourist Tax (Taxa Municipal Turística — TMT) is not uniform across the country. Each municipality sets its own rate, exemptions, night cap and deadlines — and changes them whenever it likes. If you run ALs in more than one concelho, you need to check each one's rules separately.

Golden rule: the only binding document is your municipality's tax regulation. This page gives you verified rates and the official sources — but when in doubt, the regulation wins.

What the TMT is and who pays it

The TMT is charged per guest per night (with wording variations by municipality). The guest pays it; you collect it and hand it to the câmara. The money is never yours — you're the intermediary. That simple fact explains almost everything else: why you still have to declare even when a platform collects for you, and why the tax doesn't belong in your income (more on that below).

The 2026 rates, municipality by municipality

Rates verified on 13 July 2026 against each câmara's regulations and official pages — sources at the end of this article and on each municipality page:

Municipality	Rate	When it applies	Night cap	Minors exempt	In force since
Lisboa	€4 per night	Year-round	7 per stay	Under 13	Sep 2024
Porto	€3 per overnight stay	Year-round	7 per stay	Under 13	Dec 2024
Cascais	€4 per overnight stay	Year-round	7 per person	Under 13	Jan 2025
Albufeira	€2 per overnight stay*	April to October	7 per stay	Under 13	May 2024
Loulé	€1 low season / €2 high season	Low: Nov–Mar · High: Apr–Oct	5 per stay	Under 16	Nov 2024
Lagos	No TMT in force (as of July 2026)	—	—	—	—

* Albufeira has a regulation revision underway in 2026 — the rate may change (details below).

Three notes that prevent expensive mistakes:

Cascais is no longer seasonal. The old €1/€2 structure lapsed; since January 2025 there's a single €4 rate per overnight stay. Anyone still charging the old values is charging wrong.
Loulé is the outlier: a 5-night cap (not 7) and exemption up to age 16 (not 13). It applies across the whole concelho — Vilamoura, Quarteira and Almancil included.
Lagos has no tax. Some websites publish €2/€1 figures for Lagos — those belong to the neighbouring municipality of Lagoa, with its nearly identical name. As of July 2026, no Lagos TMT regulation has been published. If that changes, it's exactly the kind of news ALerta's Radar brings you first.

How to calculate it

TMT due = rate per night × taxable nights × taxable guests

Two details that cause frequent errors:

Night cap: every municipality in the table caps the charge (5 or 7 nights). The wording varies — "per stay", "consecutive nights", "per person" — so check your concelho's regulation. In no case is the cap monthly.
Exempt guests: subtract them before multiplying.

Exemptions: the real ones, not the generic ones

Beyond minors (13 or 16, per the table), the regulations provide specific exemptions — these are the ones actually found in the six municipalities' official texts:

Medical reasons: stays for treatment, with a companion (Lisboa: one companion; Porto: up to two; Albufeira: one).
Disability: in Porto, guests with a disability of 60% or more (and up to two companions).
Students: in Lisboa, incoming students and research fellows at the start of the academic year, up to 60 days.
Pilgrims: in Porto, the first night.
Public rehousing: arranged by a public body (Lisboa and Porto).
Complimentary stays: in Cascais, stays offered free by the operator, up to 5% of the total.
Force majeure and hospitalisation during the stay (Loulé).

Always keep the supporting document for every exemption you apply — at check-in, not afterwards. Without it, as far as the câmara is concerned the exemption never happened. And note: exemptions change when regulations change — worth subscribing to the blog (below) to catch those revisions.

Airbnb, Booking and the tax: who does what (verified July 2026)

This is where most people get it wrong, so let's take it step by step:

Airbnb collects AND remits the tax only in Lisboa and Porto. They are the only Portuguese municipalities with automatic collect-and-remit agreements, per Airbnb's own official documentation. Everywhere else, the platform handles nothing.
Even in Lisboa and Porto, the declaration is still yours. The agreement spares you remitting the money — not declaring. Airbnb-booked nights go into your periodic return in the period total and are netted out in field 4 ("Outras regularizações — dormidas pagas por intermediários turísticos"), on both the Lisboa and Porto platforms. If you skip the declaration because "Airbnb handles it", you're in breach.
Booking.com remits the tax nowhere in Portugal. But mind the nuance: on reservations paid through Booking itself (Payments by Booking.com), the platform collects the per-person tax from the guest — even if you've set it as excluded — and sends it to you in your payout. Remitting to the câmara remains 100% your job. On reservations paid at the property, you collect directly from the guest.
Outside Lisboa and Porto: collection and remittance are always yours, whatever the platform.

How to declare and remit to the câmara

The common model is a periodic return (monthly or quarterly, depending on the municipality) on the câmara's platform:

Aggregate every stay in the period — guests, nights, exemptions, including direct bookings
Complete the return on the municipal platform
Pay within the deadline
Keep the receipt and the submitted return

Particulars confirmed across the six concelhos: each câmara runs its own declaration platform; in Loulé the return is monthly, due by the 15th of the following month, even when it's nil; in Lisboa, Porto and Loulé the operator retains 2.5% of the amount collected as a collection fee (in Albufeira, compensation is only foreseen after the regulation revision). The data you declare — guests and nights — is the same data you already report via SIBA: if the two don't line up, something is slipping through.

When the regulation changes mid-year

Not a hypothetical — it's happening right now:

Albufeira opened a revision of its regulation in February 2026. As of this article there's no new regulation published — the rate remains €2 (April to October) — but the declaration platform migrated in April 2026: operators who didn't register on the new platform lost the ability to declare. Two changes in one year, neither loudly announced.
Cascais swapped its seasonal tax for a single €4 rate — anyone following outdated lists spent 2025 charging half.

Since Decree-Law 76/2024, AL regulation increasingly lives at the municipal level — and tourist-tax regulations change through the same quiet channel. Watching six câmaras is already work; for hosts with ALs in several concelhos, it's a job.

TMT and IRS: the point that confuses everyone

The TMT is not your income — it passes through you on its way to the câmara. It must not inflate your gross income under the simplified regime, and it doesn't belong in your accounts as if it were accommodation revenue.

How to itemise the tax in your invoicing depends on your setup and on how you collect (directly, via platform, with or without automatic remittance) — exactly the kind of detail to settle with your accountant, not with a blog post. What this article can guarantee is the principle: TMT money is not your revenue.

Most common mistakes

Mistake	How to avoid it
Applying another municipality's rate	Check the regulation for the property's concelho (Lagos ≠ Lagoa!)
Charging outdated rates	Confirm the rate in force each season (Cascais is the cautionary tale)
Ignoring the night cap	5 or 7 nights, depending on the concelho — never monthly
Not documenting exemptions	Record at check-in, keep the proof
Including TMT in taxable income	It's a liability — it isn't yours
Assuming the platform handles everything	Airbnb only remits in Lisboa/Porto; Booking collects but never remits

Checklist — before every return

Gathered every reservation in the period (including direct bookings)
Documented every exemption applied
Calculated the TMT with my municipality's correct rate and cap
Checked what the platform collected on my behalf (and what it remitted, if in Lisboa/Porto)
Submitted the return within the deadline (even nil, where applicable)
Paid and kept the receipt
Confirmed the invoicing treatment of the tax with my accountant

This is where ALerta comes in

This article was accurate on the day it was verified — 13 July 2026. The problem is that municipal regulations don't warn you when they change: Albufeira migrated its platform and is revising its rate, Cascais restructured its tax, and Lagos could adopt a TMT next quarter without you noticing.

ALerta's Radar does that watching for you: we follow the regulations of the municipalities where your properties are and alert you when a rate, an exemption or a platform changes — before you overcharge a guest or miss a return. Join the waitlist.