Tourist Rental Licences in Denia 2026: Where You Can Still Get One, and Where You Cannot

So you own a property in Denia, or you are about to buy one, and you want to rent it to tourists. In 2026 everything depends on where the property sits. New tourist licences in the town centre, the casco urbano, are frozen. In Les Marines, Les Rotes and el Montgo, a licence is still obtainable. That single distinction is the whole game.

My name is Juan Bertomeu, lawyer, ICALI number 4643, with offices in Denia on Calle Ramon y Cajal 5-E and in Moraira. My son Daniel is the tax adviser of the family. This corner of the law moved three separate times in the last eighteen months, so a lot of what owners believe today is simply no longer true. Here is what is real right now, in Denia specifically.

Where you can and cannot get a licence

Denia town hall suspended new tourist licences in the casco urbano back in September 2024. The full council then extended that freeze, with the extension in force since 12 September 2025, and in practice it now runs into September 2026 while the town hall finishes writing the permanent ordinance that will replace it.

So if your property is in the residential town centre, the honest answer is that you probably cannot get a new licence. Not this year.

But the suspension expressly leaves out three areas: Les Marines, Les Rotes and el Montgo. In those zones a new VUT licence is still on the table. That was not an oversight; those are the coastal strip and the hillside, where most foreign owners actually are.

If you are in an open zone, here is the route

The order matters, and people lose months getting it wrong. In the Valencian Community you start at the town hall, not at the regional government.

First you need the certificado de compatibilidad urbanistica from Denia town hall, confirming that tourist use is allowed at your exact address under the local plan. No certificate, no licence, so get it before you fall in love with a property. On what it costs, I would rather you check the current fee with the town hall than take a figure from me, because local fees drift.

With that in hand you file a declaracion responsable to register in the Registro de Turismo de la Comunitat Valenciana, electronically, using the property's own cadastral reference. When it goes through you get your regional VUT code, the one that starts VT and ends in A for Alicante. That code is your legal authorisation. It lasts five years and then you renew it. Not perpetual anymore, so mark the date somewhere you will actually see it.

The regional side tends to move fairly quickly once the paperwork is right; the town hall certificate is the slow step and can run to a couple of months. If you want the full picture of how the licence works across the whole region, and how we handle the registration end to end, that is in our tourist rental licence service on Expat Abogados. Here I stay with Denia.

The national registry: what changed

A national single registry, created at the end of 2024, was meant to give every owner an extra national number the platforms would demand from July 2025. Then in May 2026 the Supreme Court, in ruling 620/2026 of 19 May 2026, held that the State had reached into powers belonging to the autonomous regions and annulled it.

Now, be careful here, because the ruling is still bedding in and pending full publication. Do not tell yourself the national number simply no longer exists, full stop. The safe way to hold it: your valid reference for a Denia property is the regional Valencian VT code, and the national picture is still settling. The data-sharing system where Airbnb and Booking hand your booking information to the administration did survive, so there is no version of this where you quietly rent unregistered and nobody notices.

If your property is a flat, your neighbours have a say

Since April 2025 a new tourist rental in a building needs the express approval of the community of owners, and it is a double majority: three fifths of the owners who between them also hold three fifths of the participation quotas. Both at once. If the community votes no, you do not start.

It is not retroactive, so a property already operating legally before the change is generally protected. But if you are applying fresh and the property is a flat, somebody has to read the statutes and the recent minutes before you commit a single euro. There may already be a ban in place, or a vote pending.

The tax that comes with renting

If you are a non-resident renting your Denia property to tourists, you declare that income through Modelo 210. EU and EEA residents pay 19 percent and can deduct genuine expenses, prorated to the days the property was actually let. Outside the EU, so the UK, the US, Canada, the headline is 24 percent, traditionally on the gross with nothing deducted. That gap is real, and for British owners the deductibility question has been argued in the courts and is not as closed as it first looks.

And for every part of the year the property is not let, a non-resident still pays imputed income tax on the cadastral value. The property is never truly silent for tax. Daniel handles this side for our clients so it is done once, correctly.

Enforcement is real, and a stricter ordinance is coming

I get asked whether any of this is actually enforced. In Denia, plainly, yes. The regional authority has already struck hundreds of tourist dwellings in Denia off the register where owners did not fix problems they were notified about. And the sanctions for the worst infractions, such as letting a property room by room, reach into the hundreds of thousands of euros. You can also lose the activity entirely and be barred from re-registering. So if you hold a valid licence, protect it.

One last honest word. The freeze is a bridge to a permanent ordinance the town hall is drafting, which will cap tourist dwellings zone by zone in the centre and phase them out of much of the casco urbano. I will not give you percentages or a hard cut-off date, because it is still a proposal in public consultation, not settled law. But the direction of travel is clear: the centre is tightening, and the coastal and hillside zones are the realistic place to operate. Buy and plan with that in mind.

How we can help

If your case is straightforward, a clear open zone, a whole property, and you mainly want the registration and the Modelo 210 handled at a fixed price, our online tier does exactly that, fully remote. Same firm behind it.

If it is trickier, a property near the frozen centre, a flat where the community has to vote, a refusal you want to challenge, or a purchase where the licence question decides whether you buy at all, you want a person on it. That is the presencial work we do from the Denia office on Calle Ramon y Cajal. It can be us or any lawyer you trust, but get someone who reads the local plan before you commit.

If you are not sure which side of the line you are on, start with one fact: the exact zone of the property. That alone tells you most of it. Then reach out and we will look at yours properly.