Amsterdam has stopped treating short-term letting as something to regulate and started treating it as something to license, and the difference shows in the paperwork.
A compliant listing needs a permit, a registration number and a filed report for every stay, and the city can check all three from its own systems without visiting the flat.
The change that matters for 2026 is no longer a rumour of tighter caps.
From 1 April 2026, three central neighbourhoods went from thirty nights a year to fifteen.
What You Need Before You List Your Home
Check first that the home qualifies at all, because two categories of address never do.
A home owned by a housing corporation cannot be let to tourists, and neither can a room in an onzelfstandige woonruimte such as a student room without its own facilities.
You must be registered at the address in the municipal population register, and so must anyone else you put on the permit.
Private tenants need the owner’s written permission, and a building with a VvE can block holiday letting in its own rules even where the city would grant a permit.
Decide which category you are in before you apply, because the permits are not interchangeable.
Letting the whole home while you are away is vakantieverhuur; letting a room while you sleep in the flat is a bed and breakfast.
The holiday rental permit costs €76 and comes back within five days by email.
The bed and breakfast permit costs €572,80, is limited to a fixed number per district, and runs to 1 July 2028 at the latest before you have to apply again.
The Core Rules That Decide Whether Hosting Is Legal
Thirty nights per calendar year and four guests at a time are the limits for a whole-home holiday let across most of the city.
In Grachtengordel-West, Grachtengordel-Zuid and Burgwallen-Nieuwe Zijde the night figure is fifteen from 1 April 2026.
A detail that catches new arrivals: the allowance belongs to the address, not to you.
Nights let by the previous occupants earlier in the same calendar year come off the total you have left.
Bed and breakfast runs on floor area instead of nights, and the numbers are precise.
You may use at most 40 percent of the home’s floor area and no more than 61 square metres, offer at most four sleeping places for four guests, must have fixed bedrooms, and must be in the house overnight while guests are there.
A bed and breakfast also has to keep a night register with each guest’s name, home town, arrival and departure dates and type of identity document.
A copy of the document is not required, which is the one piece of paperwork the rules do not ask for.
Notifications, Taxes, And Other Ongoing Host Duties
The registration number is the piece platforms enforce, because it goes into a field on the listing itself.
Advertising without one is a €1,500 fine for a private host and €3,000 for a commercial one, assessed on the advert rather than on any actual stay.
The per-stay report is the piece hosts forget, and it is filed at toeristischeverhuur.nl before the guests arrive with the arrival and departure dates.
You get a confirmation email with a report number, and the portal shows nights used against nights remaining, so it doubles as the count you would otherwise keep in a spreadsheet.
Tourist tax is 12.5 percent of the overnight price excluding VAT, collected from the guest and paid to the city.
If the platform remits it for you, the liability for the return still sits with you, so keep the booking dates, guest counts and payouts where you can find them a year later.
If the online form or DigiD fails when you are trying to report a stay, photograph the error with the date and time visible.
File as soon as the fault clears and attach the screenshot, which is the procedure the city itself sets out for outages.
Fines, Enforcement, And 2026 Rule Changes To Watch
The fine schedule is published line by line, so the risk can be priced rather than guessed at.
For a private host on a first offence: €1,500 for advertising without a registration number, €1,500 for letting without a permit, €1,500 for not reporting a stay, up to €5,000 for breaching permit conditions, €2,500 for up to five nights over the cap and €5,000 for five or more.
The commercial column is where hosting stops being a side income.
The same six offences cost €3,000, €3,000, €3,000, up to €10,000, €5,000 and €10,000, and withdrawing a home from the housing stock without permission is €18,000.
The 2026 change to act on is the fifteen-night cap in Grachtengordel-West, Grachtengordel-Zuid and Burgwallen-Nieuwe Zijde.
Hosts there who had already let fifteen nights or more between January and 1 April 2026 may not let again for the rest of the year, and existing bookings that no longer fit must be changed or cancelled under the platform’s own terms.
The permit’s expiry is the other date worth writing down.
Every holiday rental permit lapses on 1 April of the following calendar year regardless of when it was issued, so a renewal missed in spring quietly turns a legal listing into a €1,500 one.
Frequently Asked Questions
These are the questions where the wrong answer is expensive, so the figures below are the current 2026 ones.
Are short-term rentals like Airbnb legal in Amsterdam right now?
Yes, with a permit, a registration number in the advert and a report filed before every stay.
The home has to be your main residence, and it cannot belong to a housing corporation.
What permits or registrations do I need to rent out my place in Amsterdam?
A €76 holiday rental permit if you let the whole home while you are away, or a €572,80 bed and breakfast permit if you let a room while living there.
Both require a tourist rental registration number, which is separate from the permit and has to be visible in the listing.
What is the 75–55 rule in Amsterdam, and how does it affect hosting?
It is not a rule in Amsterdam’s holiday rental system, and no permit condition uses those figures.
The numbers that bind you are thirty nights a year, fifteen in three central neighbourhoods from 1 April 2026, and four guests at a time.
How many nights per year am I allowed to rent out my home in Amsterdam?
Thirty per calendar year for a whole-home holiday let, or fifteen in Grachtengordel-West, Grachtengordel-Zuid and Burgwallen-Nieuwe Zijde from 1 April 2026.
A bed and breakfast has no night cap, because it is limited by floor area and by the requirement that you sleep there.
Do I need to register or report Airbnb guest stays with the City of Amsterdam?
Every holiday rental stay has to be reported at toeristischeverhuur.nl before the guests arrive, with the arrival and departure dates.
Failing to report is a €1,500 fine on its own, even where the permit and the registration number are both in order.
Why are there so few Airbnbs available in Amsterdam compared with other cities?
Thirty nights a year, four guests, a main-residence test and a permit that expires each April between them make a full-time listing impossible to run legally.
Housing-corporation homes are excluded entirely, bed and breakfast permits are capped per district, and three central neighbourhoods now allow fifteen nights rather than thirty.
