Spain's October 2026 rental decrees were repealed on 2 October: what applies to a lease again, and what those days leave behind

A Dutch owner has two flats in Los Cristianos. One has been let since 1 March 2022 to a family that lives there all year, for €950 a month, on a contract whose five years run out at the start of March 2027; the other goes every winter, from November to March, to the same retired couple from Hamburg on what both sides have always called a seasonal contract. At the end of September 2026 the Government rewrote the rules of both flats by decree: Real Decreto-ley 26/2026, published on 30 September and in force from 1 October, and Real Decreto-ley 27/2026, published on 1 October and in force from 2 October. On 2 October the Congress voted on the two decrees and repealed both: the first by 178 votes to 172, the second by 184 votes to 166. The five-year extension and the year's rent for not renewing, the two extra years at the tenant's request, the 2 % ceiling on updates and the «temporary housing» lease that had replaced the seasonal let were law for a few days and have been voted out. This note was first written on 1 October to explain the two decrees. It now says which rules a lease is under again, keeps a record of what the decrees had changed, and looks at what was done on the days they were in force. Quotations are in Spanish with the reading in English.

What the vote did, and from when

A decree-law is the Government legislating alone in a case of urgency, and the Constitution keeps it on a short leash: it must be put to a vote of the whole Congress en el plazo de los treinta días siguientes a su promulgación — within thirty days of its promulgation — and the chamber must decide expressly on su convalidación o derogación — its convalidation or its repeal (article 86.2). This time the vote came two days after the first decree was published and one day after the second.

A repeal is made public by a resolution of the Congress printed in the Gazette. For the previous rental decree, Real Decreto-ley 8/2026 of March, the vote was on 28 April and the resolution appeared on 30 April, and the Gazette's own database dates the end of that decree on the day of that publication. What becomes of the articles a repealed decree had rewritten is shown by an older case. In December 2018 a decree-law reformed the Urban Leases Act; the Congress repealed it on 22 January 2019, and the Gazette's consolidated text of the Act went back to the earlier wording on 24 January, the day the resolution was published. This time the Gazette did not wait: both resolutions were printed on the day of the vote, in a second issue dated 2 October 2026, and its consolidated text of the Act went back to the wording of 30 September from that same day. The measures that lived only in the decrees, such as the extraordinary extension, the 2 % ceiling and the suspension of evictions, went with them.

It is the second time this year. The March decree carried an extraordinary extension and a 2 % ceiling very close to those of September, and the Congress repealed it thirty-eight days after its publication. The measures came back in September and have fallen again. They may come back a third time, by decree or as a bill; until a text passes its vote, a landlord or a tenant should act on the law in force that day, in writing and with dates.

The lease of a habitual home: four months' notice, three more years

With the second decree gone, article 10 of the Urban Leases Act is again the one the 2023 housing law left. When the lease of a habitual home has completed its five years, or seven when the landlord is a company, and neither side has given notice, el contrato se prorrogará obligatoriamente por plazos anuales hasta un máximo de tres años más — the contract is extended, mandatorily, by yearly periods up to a maximum of three more years (article 10.1). The landlord's notice must be given at least four months before the term ends, the tenant's at least two. During those three years only the tenant can step out, with a month's notice before the end of each year. And a landlord who gives notice in time needs no reason and owes nothing: the twelve months' rent of the second decree hung from an article that no longer exists.

Two extensions at the tenant's request remain, because they were in the Act before the decrees. A tenant who proves a situation of social and economic vulnerability, with a report or certificate issued by the social services in the last year, may ask for one more year, and a landlord who is a large holder of housing must accept (article 10.2). Where the home is in an area declared a stressed housing market, the tenant may ask for yearly extensions up to three years, which the landlord must accept unless the parties agree other terms, sign a new lease or the landlord has notified a need for the home (article 10.3). The extraordinary extension of up to two years that the first decree gave to any tenant who was up to date with the rent is gone.

For the family in Los Cristianos the calendar is the old one again. Their five years end at the start of March 2027. If the owner wants the flat back on that date, he has until the last days of October 2026, four months before, to tell them, and he does not have to say why or pay anything. If he says nothing, and they do not give notice themselves, the lease goes on year by year until March 2030 at the latest, on the same terms, and during that time he cannot end it by notice.

Rent updates: the clause of the contract, and its ceiling

Article 18 goes back as well. An update still needs a clause: En defecto de pacto expreso, no se aplicará actualización de rentas a los contratos — in the absence of an express agreement, no rent update applies. Whatever index the clause names, the yearly increase no podrá exceder del resultado de aplicar la variación porcentual experimentada por el Índice de Precios al Consumo — cannot exceed the result of applying the percentage variation of the consumer price index (article 18.1, a ceiling the Act has carried since March 2019). For leases signed from 26 May 2023 the ceiling is another: the IRAV, the index the National Statistics Institute publishes for this purpose, as the 2023 housing law ordered (eleventh additional provision of the Act). Leases signed before that date keep the rules they were signed under. The first decree had put every lease under the IRAV and, until the end of 2027, under a temporary ceiling of 2 % when the parties did not agree a new figure. Neither ceiling survives.

The figures show the difference. The IRAV published on 15 September 2026, for August, is 2.47 %; the consumer price index for the same month, according to the Ministry of Housing's update calculator, stood at 4.3 %. The Los Cristianos contract is from 2022 and its clause refers to the CPI. On August's figures, the update of March 2027 would add €40.85 a month to the €950; under the decree's temporary rule it would have added €19 at most. A lease with the same clause signed after May 2023 would be held to the IRAV: €23.47. The figure that counts in each case is the one published when the contract's year is up.

The seasonal let is back

The first decree had deleted the let por temporada — for a season — from article 3 of the Act and created, inside the housing rules, a temporary-housing lease: a written and provable reason, a term of more than thirty-one days and, as a rule, no more than twelve months, and a third contract in a row with the same tenant that turned the first into an ordinary lease. With the repeal, article 3.2 again counts among the leases for a use other than housing those celebrados por temporada, sea ésta de verano o cualquier otra — signed for a season, be it summer or any other. Those leases are governed by what the parties agree, then by Title III of the Act and by the Civil Code (article 4.3), and their legal deposit is two months' rent (article 36.1). There is no list of reasons, no minimum of thirty-one days and no count of contracts.

What there is, and always was, is the definition on the other side of the line. A housing lease is the one whose primary purpose is satisfacer la necesidad permanente de vivienda del arrendatario — to satisfy the tenant's permanent need for a home (article 2.1) — and the Supreme Court has long read the season by its purpose, not by the calendar: el requisito de la temporalidad de la ocupación guarda relación, no con el plazo de duración simplemente cronológico, sino con la finalidad a que va encaminado el arrendamiento — the requirement that the occupation be temporary relates not to the merely chronological length of the term but to the purpose the lease serves (judgment 1074/1999 of 15 December, repeating a doctrine formed under the 1964 Act). A contract called seasonal that in fact gives the tenant his only home is, for the Act, a housing lease with its five years, whatever its title says. The retired couple from Hamburg, who keep their home in Germany and spend five winter months in Tenerife, are a season in the plainest sense; a tenant with no other home who signs for eleven months at a time is not.

Lets marketed to tourists and subject to the region's tourism rules stay outside the Act, now without the limit of thirty-one days the decree had written into that exclusion (article 5.e); on the islands they come under the Canary holiday-let law we describe in our note on Ley 6/2025. For the owner in Los Cristianos, this winter's contract with the couple from Hamburg can again be signed as a seasonal contract, and next winter's too, with no count to keep.

The small print that went back

The first decree had also rewritten the small print of the ordinary lease. Each of those changes has been undone.

One rule that this note listed among the changes was already in the Act, and stays: in a housing lease, Los gastos de gestión inmobiliaria y los de formalización del contrato serán a cargo del arrendador — the agency's costs and those of drawing up the contract are borne by the landlord (article 20.1). In a seasonal let, which is not a housing lease, they are again a matter for the contract.

Selling a let home

Article 25 is the old one too. The tenant keeps thirty calendar days to match the price, counted from a formal notice of the sale and its terms, and thirty more from the copy of the deed if that notice was missing or wrong. But the lease may again contain the tenant's waiver of that right, in which case the landlord must tell the tenant of the intention to sell at least thirty days before the sale is signed (article 25.8), and the right does not arise when the flat is sold together with the landlord's other homes or premises in the same building (article 25.7). The duty to state a separate price for the flat in a joint sale, and the buyer's inheritance of the compensation for not renewing, went with the decrees. The tax side of the same sale is in our guide to selling as a non-resident.

Evictions

The first decree had drawn two routes for a vulnerable tenant in arrears: a new paragraph of the Civil Procedure Act, under which the housing administration had two months to offer another home or pay the debt and otherwise took the tenant's place as debtor, and a suspension of evictions that the courts could order until 31 December 2030. Both went with the decree. What remains is the Civil Procedure Act as it stood. In an eviction claim over the defendant's habitual home, the court tells the defendant how to reach the housing and social services, and may suspend the case so that they can act, durante un plazo máximo de suspensión de dos meses si el demandante es una persona física o de cuatro meses si se trata de una persona jurídica — for a maximum of two months if the claimant is an individual, or four if it is a legal entity (article 441, paragraphs 5 and 6). The extraordinary suspension that had been renewed since 2020 ran out on 31 December 2025: the two decrees that extended it through 2026 were repealed as well. The routes against an occupant without a contract are in our note on okupas.

What was done while the decrees were law

The Constitution calls what the Congress did a «derogación», a repeal, and a repeal ends a rule; it does not say what becomes of what was done under it. Three kinds of paper were produced in those days.

The first is the tenant's request for the extraordinary extension. The same question arose in April, when the March decree fell with requests already made, and it stayed open for five months: the September decree had to say that those requests se tendrán por válidamente formuladas, sin necesidad de nueva comunicación — are deemed validly made, with no need for a new notice (first transitional provision). That sentence has now been repealed with the rest. A request made on 1 or 2 October, and the requests of the spring, are back where they were in May: made under a rule that existed, and confirmed by none that exists. A landlord should not ignore such a request, and should not treat it as binding without advice.

The second is the landlord's notice of non-renewal. A notice sent in those days is still a notice, and under the Act it needs four months and no reason. Whether a notice given while the second decree was in force carries the year's rent that decree attached to it is not settled; it should be reviewed before the home is handed back.

The third is the contract signed in those days: an ordinary lease on the decree's terms, or a winter let written as a temporary-housing lease with its reason. The reforms of 2019 and 2023 each left earlier contracts under the rules of the day they were signed; the repeal comes with no transitional rule of its own. A contract of those days should be read by a lawyer before either side relies on it.

A landlord's checklist after the repeal

• Take the decrees out of the calendar: the six months' notice, the five-year extension and the year's rent are gone; the date that counts is four months before each term ends.
• Date your leases all the same: signing date, end of the five or seven years, next update; if nobody gives notice, the lease runs for up to three more years.
• Update with the contract's clause: the IRAV is the ceiling only for leases signed from 26 May 2023; older leases follow their own clause, with the CPI as the limit since 2019; no clause, no update.
• Sign this winter's let as a seasonal contract, for tenants who keep their home elsewhere, and say so in the contract.
• Have anything signed or sent between 1 October and the repeal reviewed: a lease, a notice, an extension request or its answer.
• Read the Gazette, not the headline: these measures have come by decree twice in 2026 and have fallen twice.

A decree-law is law from the first morning and may stop being law within days. Read what the law says on the day you sign, write down what you do under it, and keep the date.

Our property team at the Costa Adeje and Corralejo offices handles purchases, sales and leases on both islands, and can review a lease, a notice or an extension request written in those days; the consultation is a paid one, quoted in advance. The service is described on our property law page, and the contact page has both offices' hours.

Common questions

Are the October 2026 rental decrees still in force?

No. The Congress repealed both on 2 October 2026: Real Decreto-ley 26/2026 by 178 votes to 172, and Real Decreto-ley 27/2026 by 184 votes to 166. The two resolutions of the Congress were published in the Gazette that same day; since then the Urban Leases Act reads as it did on 30 September, and the measures that existed only in the decrees no longer exist.

My tenant's five-year lease ends in 2027. Can I end it?

Yes, by giving notice at least four months before the term ends, without a reason and without compensation. If neither side gives notice, the lease is extended year by year for up to three more years, and during that time only the tenant can leave. A vulnerable tenant of a large landlord, and a tenant in an area declared a stressed housing market, can ask for a further extension.

My contract says the rent rises with the CPI. Can I apply it?

Yes, if the lease was signed before 26 May 2023: the clause applies, and the CPI is also its ceiling. In a lease signed from that date the increase cannot exceed the IRAV. The 2 % ceiling of the decree no longer exists. On the figures for August 2026 the difference is 4.3 % against 2.47 %.

I let my flat every winter to the same couple. Is that a seasonal contract again?

Yes. The Act again treats a let for a season as a lease for a use other than housing: it is governed by the contract, the legal deposit is two months' rent, no written reason is required and there is no limit on repeating it. What matters is that the tenants really have their permanent home elsewhere; a contract called seasonal for a tenant with no other home is a housing lease.

A tenant asked me for the two-year extension on 1 October. Do I have to grant it?

The rule that gave that right has been repealed, and no rule in force says what a request made in those days is worth. The same doubt followed the March decree; the September decree declared those requests valid, and that declaration has been repealed too. Do not ignore the request and do not treat it as binding without advice: answer in writing, and have the lease and its dates reviewed.

This article is general information as of 2 October 2026, not advice on any particular lease. It was first published on 1 October 2026, when both decrees were in force, and rewritten after the vote. The texts cited are Real Decreto-ley 26/2026 of 29 September (Official State Gazette of 30 September 2026) and Real Decreto-ley 27/2026 of the same date (Gazette of 1 October 2026), both repealed by the Congress on 2 October 2026, by resolutions published in the Gazette of that day (the vote totals are those of the Congress's own press note); the Urban Leases Act (Ley 29/1994) in the wording in force before them; Ley 12/2023; the Civil Procedure Act; the Constitution; Real Decreto-ley 8/2026 and the resolution of the Congress of 28 April 2026 that repealed it; Real Decreto-ley 11/2020; and judgment 1074/1999 of the Supreme Court. The IRAV is the National Statistics Institute's figure for August 2026. A consultation with our property team is a paid service.