Portugal's new building-permit rules aren't starting on 3 August after all
The Government pushed the revised RJUE building-permit regime back to 1 October 2026. Councils get two more months to ready their platforms; until then the old rules apply.
If you had a permit application on hold waiting for Monday, you now have two more months to wait. The Government approved a decree-law pushing the revised Legal Regime for Urbanisation and Building back to 1 October 2026, from the 3 August start date that had been set.
Why were the new building-permit rules delayed?
Because of the councils. The reform forces municipalities to rebuild their IT platforms, configure fully digital workflows and publish their own supplementary rules, and a good share of them were not going to make it. Switching on a regime that half the country cannot process would have meant months of applications stuck in limbo — hence the delay, which the Government frames as a condition for the reform actually working.
In practice, nothing changes until 30 September. Anyone filing in August or September runs under the old rules, with the old deadlines, and gains nothing by sitting on their hands.
What changes on 1 October?
Broadly what we set out when the start date was still 3 August: tacit approval becomes the general rule, so council silence counts as a yes; prior notification covers more types of work; decision deadlines tighten; and a single new planning title replaces today’s scattered paperwork.
That is why the date matters if you are buying a place to renovate or preparing a new build. A project filed on 2 October runs under a different regime from one filed on 25 September, and the gap can be measured in weeks of waiting and in refusal risk. If your calendar has any slack, it is worth a conversation with your architect before you submit.
One note of caution: there is always a gap between approval in the Council of Ministers and publication in the official gazette, and publication is what counts. To confirm the exact date, follow the Diário da República and the Government portal.
Image: Michael Gaylard from Horsham, UK / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
