Amsterdam short-term rental rules (2026): permit, night cap and reporting

Amsterdam has some of the strictest short-term rental rules in Europe, and it enforces them. Whole-home holiday rental (vakantieverhuur) is allowed only in your own main residence, with a permit and a registration number, for a limited number of nights a year, to at most four guests, and with every stay reported in advance. This guide sets out how the rules work in October 2026 and what a host or co-host needs to keep on record. It is general information, not legal advice: the municipality changes these rules often, so check the address on amsterdam.nl before you list.

Holiday rental is only for your own home

The starting point is that holiday rental is a way for residents to rent out their own home while they are away, not a business model for a second property. The home must be your main residence, which in practice means you are registered there in the municipal personal records database (BRP) and actually live there. An apartment bought to let to tourists, or a home you have moved out of, does not qualify. Short-stay and hotel permits are a separate regime and are rarely granted for ordinary dwellings.

Bed and breakfast is also a separate category. Renting out part of the home you live in, with you present, needs its own permit and has its own limits on rooms and guests. If you are unsure which category a listing falls into, the municipality treats the use, not the label on the platform, as decisive.

Permit and registration number

Since 2021 every holiday rental listing in Amsterdam must carry a registration number issued by the municipality, and a holiday rental permit is required on top of it. The number is tied to the address and the main occupant. Airbnb and other platforms will not publish an Amsterdam listing without it, and under the EU regulation they now have to check that a number is present and remove listings the municipality flags. A permit is personal: if the occupant changes, the new occupant applies again.

The night cap: 30, or 15 in much of the centre

Whole-home holiday rental is capped at 30 nights per calendar year per home. From 1 April 2026 the cap is 15 nights in stadsdeel Centrum and in De Pijp, where the pressure on housing is highest; the exact boundary follows the municipality’s map, so check it for the specific address rather than relying on a neighbourhood name. The cap counts nights rented, across all platforms and direct bookings together. A home that reaches the cap in June cannot be rented again until January.

Because the cap is per home and per year, the practical risk is double-counting across channels. If a home is listed on two platforms and booked directly, only one record holds the true total. Count nights as bookings arrive, not at year end, and set a warning well before the limit so you can close the calendar in time.

Four guests, and a report for every stay

At most four guests may stay at a time, regardless of the size of the home. Each stay must be reported (melden) to the municipality before the guests arrive, with the dates and the number of guests. The reporting duty is what makes the night cap enforceable: the municipality can compare reported stays with the data platforms now send it.

On top of the local rules, Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 has applied since 20 May 2026. It does not cap or ban short-term rentals; it standardises registration where an authority requires it. Every listing must show the unit’s registration number, platforms must check that a number is present and remove listings an authority flags, and platforms send the authority monthly data on nights and guests per listing. The night counts you see in your own records are now the same ones the authority can see. Short-term rental regulations and compliance explains the regulation in more detail.

Tourist tax

Amsterdam’s tourist tax for holiday rentals is 12.5% of the room price, excluding VAT. Airbnb collects and remits it for bookings made through its platform; for other platforms and for direct bookings the host must charge it and file a return. Owner statements should show it separately from rental income, because it is not the owner’s money. The tourist tax calculator works out the amount for a stay under a percentage model like Amsterdam’s.

Enforcement and fines

The municipality enforces actively, using neighbour reports, platform data and its own inspections. Renting without a permit or registration number, exceeding the night cap, renting to more than four guests or failing to report a stay are each separate violations, and fines run from several thousand euros to tens of thousands for repeat or commercial-scale offences. Housing associations and many owners’ associations (VvE) prohibit holiday rental in their own rules, which applies on top of the municipal permit.

If you co-host or manage for owners in Amsterdam

Because the rules are built around the resident, a manager cannot hold the permit for the owner. The owner applies; the co-host operates within the permit. That makes the division of duties worth writing down: who reports each stay, who tracks the night count, who files the tourist tax when bookings come from outside Airbnb, and what happens when the cap is reached. For each home, keep the registration number, the permit dates, the applicable cap (30 or 15), the nights used this year and the guest limit on the property record. Airbnb co-hosting software covers how a co-host keeps that record alongside the bookings.

How Amsterdam compares

Other European cities reach for different tools. Paris uses a primary-residence condition with a 90-night cap and change-of-use rules for second homes, London caps entire-home lets at 90 nights unless planning permission is granted, Lisbon works through registration and containment zones, and Brussels through registration and planning compliance.