Spain's Single Rental Register (NRUA): 2026 status

From 1 July 2025, Spain's Single Rental Register (Registro Único de Arrendamientos) required every holiday let and every mid-term furnished let to be registered at the Land Registry to obtain a Single Registration Number (NRUA) before it could be advertised on Airbnb, Booking.com or similar platforms. In 2026 Spain's Supreme Court struck down that requirement in three rulings. Today the NRUA can no longer be demanded, but your regional tourist licence number (in Andalusia, the VUT number) is still compulsory.

This guide explains what the scheme was, what the court annulled, what survives (the Digital Single Rental Window), and what you should do as an owner, especially if you live outside Spain. Everything below was checked against the BOE, Spain's official gazette, on 11 October 2026.

What the Single Rental Register was

It was created by Royal Decree 1312/2024 of 23 December to apply EU Regulation 2024/1028 on short-term rental data. It came into force on 2 January 2025 and started to apply on 1 July 2025.

It had two parts:

• The Single Register: the owner (or whoever operated the property) applied to the Land Registry (Registro de la Propiedad), or the Movable Property Registry for boats, for a number for each unit. It covered both tourist lets and mid-term lets (for work, study, medical treatment and so on). For tourist lets you also had to provide your regional licence or registration. The number began with "ES" followed by letters and digits.
• The Digital Single Rental Window (Ventanilla Única Digital de Arrendamientos): a gateway run by the Ministry of Housing through which platforms send activity data for each listing and check numbers.

Platforms had to require the number before publishing a listing, and the Ministry could order listings with invalid or revoked numbers to be taken down.

The annual filing

Article 10.4 required owners to file, every year at the Land Registry, an anonymised list of the previous year's lets and their purpose. Order VAU/1560/2025 approved that information form: it was filed in February, one per property, on paper or as an XBRL file, for the first time in February 2026 with 2025 data. If it was not filed, or showed misuse, the registrar could withdraw the number.

What the Supreme Court struck down

The Supreme Court's administrative chamber upheld, in whole or in part, three challenges to Royal Decree 1312/2024:

The reasoning is about powers: alongside the registration procedure, the ruling annuls the first final provision insofar as it relied on central-government powers to regulate it. The first ruling annuls article 5 (landlords' obligations), article 8 (the register), article 9 (application and number) and article 10 (number checks and annual filing), letters b) and c) of article 12, the second additional provision and articles 1, 2 and 6 insofar as they concern the register, plus "any other provision or mention" of the single register. The rulings of 21 May and 1 June annul essentially the same provisions. It also removes the obligation to register at the Land Registry to obtain a number for advertising on platforms.

In practice:

• You no longer need an NRUA, for either tourist or mid-term lets.
• The February annual filing has lost its legal basis, because it depended on the annulled article 10. The February 2026 filing was made under the rules then in force; on the current BOE there is no obligation to repeat it in February 2027.
• If you already have a number you may keep showing it, but no national rule requires it.

What still applies

The annulment is partial. According to the consolidated text of Royal Decree 1312/2024 in the BOE, these remain:

• The Digital Single Rental Window (article 7), run by the Ministry of Housing.
• The duty of platforms to send the Window regular activity data for each listing under EU Regulation 2024/1028 (article 6, to the extent not annulled).
• The use of that data for official statistics (article 11).

On top of that, Royal Decree-law 29/2026, published on 7 October 2026, rewrites Title V of the Urban Leases Act with a penalty regime for platforms that fail to send data to the Single Digital Window (articles 38 to 51): €100,000 for minor breaches, €500,000 for serious ones (up to 1% of annual turnover) and €1 million for very serious ones (up to 2%). Its article 20 also requires every rental offer or advert to include "the identifying number, code or title of the let unit, where applicable". Like any royal decree-law, it must be ratified by the Congress within 30 working days; with Parliament dissolved for the general election (Royal Decree 806/2026), the vote falls to its Standing Committee (Diputación Permanente). As of 11 October 2026 it has not yet been voted on.

The registration you do need: your region's

The rulings do not affect regional tourism registers, which are what make a holiday let legal. In Andalusia this is the Andalusian Tourism Register (Registro de Turismo de Andalucía): a tourist home (vivienda de uso turístico) is registered by filing a sworn statement (declaración responsable) and receives a code in the form VUT/province/number (for example VUT/MA/12345; older ones start with VFT/), under Decree 31/2024. That is the number to show in your adverts and documents.

A common mistake: the CTC-… reference you get when you file the sworn statement is not your registration number; the real one comes in the decision (resolución).

If you live abroad, you will usually deal with the regional register online with a Spanish digital certificate or through a gestor acting for you, and you will need your NIE (foreigner's tax identification number). Remember too that your building's owners' association can restrict holiday lets by a 3/5 majority (we explain it here), and that, separately from any register, you must still report your guests to the police system SES.Hospedajes (step by step).

What about platforms taking listings down?

While the NRUA was in force, the Ministry of Housing could order platforms to remove listings without a valid number within 48 hours. That power was tied to the Land Registry number and has fallen with it. Regional rules have not: regions can fine adverts that lack their tourism registration number, and the EU Regulation requires platforms to display the number wherever a registration procedure exists, regional ones included. Each platform also sets its own rules, so keep an eye on notices in your host dashboard.

What we recommend

1. Check that each property has a valid regional tourism registration number and that it appears in all your adverts.
2. If you already had an NRUA, keep it on file; you do not need to renew it or file the February return unless new rules are passed.
3. Watch the BOE: the Ministry may legislate again on coordination with regional registers, and Royal Decree-law 29/2026 is awaiting ratification by the Congress's Standing Committee.
4. Keep the rest up to date: guest reporting, tourist tax where it exists, income tax (form 210 if you are non-resident) and invoices where they apply (VeriFactu for holiday lets).

How Apartop helps

In Apartop you store each apartment's Andalusian Tourism Register number with its type (VUT, tourist apartments, rural house, VTAR…), and Apartop puts it on the apartment's documents (see the feature). It spots when you have entered the CTC sworn-statement reference instead of the registration number, and recognises formats from other regions. If you have a Single Register number you can store it too, but Apartop never requires it. If you add a property from its listing, Apartop reads the numbers shown there.

Online check-in also prepares the guest report for SES.Hospedajes: free to download, with automatic submission on Pro (online check-in). Apartop is free for up to 2 apartments (pricing); you can start for free here.

Sources

Official sources accessed 11 October 2026.

• Royal Decree 1312/2024, consolidated text with the annulments (BOE, updated 18 July 2026)
• Supreme Court ruling of 19 May 2026, appeal 1/143/2025 (BOE no. 139, 8 June 2026)
• Supreme Court ruling 629/2026 of 21 May, appeal 1/54/2025 (BOE no. 155, 26 June 2026)
• Supreme Court ruling of 1 June 2026, appeal 1/144/2025 (BOE no. 174, 18 July 2026)
• Order VAU/1560/2025 of 22 December, annual information form (BOE)
• EU Regulation 2024/1028, applicable from 20 May 2026 (BOE)
• Royal Decree-law 29/2026 of 6 October: art. 3 (Title V of the Urban Leases Act) and art. 20 (BOE, 7 October 2026)
• Royal Decree 806/2026, dissolving Parliament and calling elections (BOE, 6 October 2026)
• La Moncloa: Ministry of Housing campaign on the single register, June 2025