In most major cities, yes — a licence or registration number is now mandatory in the majority of the 117 markets we track, and since May 2026 EU platforms must verify it. Scotland has required a short-term let licence for every host since 1 October 2023. Northern Ireland requires Tourism NI certification. England is phasing in a national registration scheme legislated under the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. Assume you need something and check the register before you buy.
The detail
The EU moved from patchwork to uniform in May 2026, when Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 on short-term rental data became applicable. Every EU host must hold a registration number issued by their local authority, and platforms are legally required to display it, verify it and report activity data to the member state. In practice that ends the informal grey market: an unregistered EU listing is now a listing the platform is obliged to remove.
Beyond registration, city-specific regimes stack on top and vary enormously. Amsterdam requires a registration number and caps letting at 30 nights a year. Paris requires registration and caps primary residences at 120 nights, with the November 2024 loi Le Meur allowing communes to cut that to 90. Barcelona is not issuing new tourist-apartment licences at all and has announced that all 10,101 existing HUT licences will expire by November 2028. New York's Local Law 18 requires the host to be present and limits a booking to two guests, which removed roughly 80% of the city's whole-home short-term listings within six months of enforcement starting in September 2023. Portugal requires national Alojamento Local registration, with new registrations frozen in the densest Lisbon and Porto parishes.
The consequences of skipping it are not nominal. Operating an unlicensed short-term let in Scotland is a criminal offence carrying a fine of up to £2,500 and a five-year bar on reapplying. In Catalonia, serious repeat infringements of the tourism accommodation rules can attract penalties running to €600,000. In London, breaching the 90-night planning limit can be prosecuted with fines of up to £20,000 per offence.
The numbers that matter
Where this stops holding
Licensing is the fastest-moving variable in this entire model, and any list of rules — including this one and including our city pages — is a snapshot that starts decaying immediately. Rules also change mid-purchase: several cities have introduced moratoria between exchange and completion. Treat everything here as a prompt to check the primary source, which is always the local authority's own register, and do that check before you are contractually committed rather than after.
Sources
- Scottish Government — short-term lets licensing
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 on short-term rental data collection
- Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023
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A HostPal Invest report runs the real occupancy, nightly rate, RevPAR, regulation risk and a buy / wait / avoid verdict for one specific property or drawn area, in any of 117 markets — not a national average. Street-Level reports from £29.