Poland Plans Tougher Short-Term Rental Rules, Giving Buildings and Municipalities Power to Ban It

Poland's government is returning to tougher restrictions on short-term rentals. Housing communities and cooperatives are to be given the power to prohibit such activity in individual buildings, while municipalities will be able to create zones where tourist rentals are restricted or banned altogether. The measures could reshape the market, although analysts caution that removing an apartment from a booking platform does not automatically return it to long-term rental. On 2 September 2026, the Council of Ministers adopted an amendment to the draft law regulating short-term accommodation. The amendment restores provisions removed before the government approved the original bill in July: building-level bans and municipal restriction zones. Rentals below 30 days treated as hotel services The bill adopted by the government on 14 July and sent to parliament as Sejm print No. 2865 would classify rentals of less than 30 days to a single customer as hotel services. It also creates a Central Register of Tourist Accommodation Facilities, requires individual registration numbers in listings, introduces safety standards and provides for administrative fines of up to PLN 50,000. A housing community would be able to adopt a resolution prohibiting such services in a property. Voting would generally follow the ownership-share rules already used by housing communities. In a housing cooperative, more than 50% of all people entitled to vote would need to support the ban. Existing operators would not have to stop overnight. They would have six months to honour or cancel bookings and withdraw the property from the market. The control mechanism would also be strengthened. Residents of the same or an adjacent property, a housing community or a cooperative could request an inspection. If authorities find three breaches of safety or public-order rules within six months, the municipality would be required to remove the property from the register. Re-registration would only be possible after one year. Municipal councils, acting on a proposal from a mayor or city president, could also designate zones in which short-term rentals are restricted or prohibited. The restrictions could differ by area, type of property and period of the year, allowing cities to focus on districts under the greatest tourism pressure. Any proposed zone would have to undergo at least 21 days of public consultation, and restrictions could enter into force no earlier than six months after publication. The new powers for housing communities, cooperatives and local governments are planned to apply from 1 January 2028. Most other provisions would take effect 14 days after the law is promulgated. Platform data can exaggerate the housing effect The debate is complicated by the way short-term rental statistics are presented. Eurostat measures guest-nights rather than apartments. A family of four staying in one apartment for three nights produces 12 guest-nights in the statistics, even though there is only one property and one reservation. According to Eurostat data cited by Puls Biznesu, guests spent 44.39 million nights in Poland in 2025 in accommodation booked through Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia, up from 39.02 million a year earlier — an increase of around 14%. That demonstrates the scale of tourism activity but does not show how many homes have been removed from the long-term market. One apartment may also be listed on several platforms. Some offers are individual rooms in an owner-occupied home, while others are entire apartments used commercially throughout the year. Seasonal listings and properties offered only while the owner is away create further differences. EU rules will make individual properties easier to track Since 20 May 2026, EU Regulation 2024/1028 on collecting and sharing short-term rental data has applied. It does not impose a common European ban or a single limit on rental days. Instead, it provides a data infrastructure for countries that operate registration systems. Under such systems, one physical property receives a unique registration number that can be displayed and verified by platforms. Hosts provide information including the address, maximum number of guests, whether the listing covers an entire property or part of it and whether it is a primary or secondary residence. Platforms then report the number of nights and guests attributed to that unit, generally on a monthly basis. This makes it possible to distinguish between multiple listings for the same address and to assess how intensively a property is actually used for tourism. The pressure is local, not uniform across Poland The housing impact of short-term rental varies widely. In a seaside resort, an apartment may switch between holiday stays and off-season tenancy. In a historic city centre, a whole apartment rented to tourists for most of the year competes much more directly with local residents. In smaller towns, a platform may simply bring an otherwise empty property into use. Kraków illustrates the difference. As of August 2026, the city's eKON register contained more than 3,500 uncategorised accommodation facilities, including short-term apartments, guest rooms and hostels, offering more than 47,000 beds. These figures are useful for managing tourism but are not enough on their own to measure housing pressure. The most informative indicators are the share of entire short-term rental apartments in the local housing stock, the number of active days, concentration among professional operators, trends in long-term rents and supply, and the number of complaints and interventions. Will the rules return apartments to tenants? Some owners may switch to long-term rental if registration, compliance costs, building bans or local restrictions make tourist accommodation less profitable. That effect could be visible in central districts with a high concentration of tourist apartments. Others will register, comply with the rules and continue operating. Some may sell the apartment, keep it for private use, rent it outside large platforms or leave it vacant. For that reason, a fall in the number of listings should not be treated as equivalent to an identical increase in long-term housing supply. For investors, the regulatory direction means that a purchase based solely on today's nightly rate is becoming riskier. Financial models increasingly need to include lower occupancy, registration and compliance costs, the possibility of municipal zoning, a building-level ban and a fallback scenario based on ordinary long-term rent. Source: ManagerPlus; Polish government documents, Eurostat and RynekPierwotny.pl analysis.