Travelers booking short-term rentals for a European city break should now expect to see a registration number on the listing: since May 20, 2026, an EU regulation requires hosts in participating member states to register their properties and display that number, with online platforms verifying it before a booking goes live, according to the European Commission.
The rule, adopted by the European Parliament and Council on 11 April 2024 as Regulation (EU) 2024/1028, gives member states a common framework for collecting and sharing short-term rental data rather than a single EU-wide registry. Hosts complete an online registration procedure set up by national authorities and receive a unique registration number tied to the property. Platforms are then required to display and check that number on listings, run random checks to flag unlawful offerings, and report monthly booking data, guest stays and nights booked, to public authorities through a Single Digital Entry Point, according to the European Commission.
Participation is opt-in for member states: a country is not obliged to set up a registration system, but if it does, or if it asks platforms for booking data, it must use this EU framework rather than a separate national scheme. That means the rule took effect everywhere on the May 2026 date, but how far it has actually reached varies by city and country as national registries come online at different speeds.
Airbnb, in a public statement responding to the rollout, said it is prepared to comply with the regulation and has already built registration schemes with authorities in Spain, Italy, and France, which it plans to extend to other member states as national deadlines arrive. The company said not all member states are equally ready with their own systems and asked the Commission and national governments for harmonized technical standards and clear timelines. Airbnb's City Portal, used by more than 450 European local authorities to monitor listings, is part of that compliance infrastructure, the company said.
For a city-break planner, the practical change is at the booking stage: a listing without a visible registration number, or with one that looks expired, is now the first thing to check before paying, particularly in cities that have already stood up local systems, where an unregistered listing risks being delisted or found unlawful mid-stay. The volume involved is substantial: guests booked 951.6 million nights in short-term rentals through online platforms across the EU in 2025, and Airbnb alone reported welcoming more than 114 million EU guests that year, contributing an estimated 53.2 billion euros to GDP, as of the dates cited by the Commission and Airbnb respectively.