Airbnb rules in Nice in 2026: quotas, 90 days, change of use

Letting short-term in Nice rests on four obligations: register the property with the city and display its registration number on every listing, stay under 90 rental days a year if it is your main home, obtain a change-of-use authorisation if it is a second home, and check that your building's co-ownership rules allow it. None of the four is optional, and ignoring them is expensive: up to €50,000 per property.

This is the reference guide, the one that holds from one year to the next. A fifth constraint has applied since 2026 in four districts of the city — a quota on authorisations, currently caught up in litigation — but because it moves with each court decision, we track it in a separate news article kept up to date.

Updated 22 August 2026.

What changed, and when

Three texts have stacked up in eighteen months, which is why most owners find the subject confusing.

• The law of 19 November 2024, known as the loi Le Meur, extended mandatory registration to every furnished tourist rental — main homes included — and raised the penalties sharply.
• The Nice city council decision of 23 May 2025 lowered the cap on renting a main home from 120 to 90 days a year.
• The change-of-use regulation adopted on 5 December 2025 introduced quotas on authorisations in four districts, in force since 1 January 2026.

In other words: what you knew about short-term rentals in Nice in 2024 is probably out of date. That is especially true of the day cap, which many owners still believe to be 120.

1. Registration and the registration number

This is the gateway, and it applies to everyone: main home or second home, studio or four-bedroom flat, one night a year or three hundred. The property must be declared to the City of Nice tourist-tax department, which issues a registration number that must appear on all your listings, on Airbnb as well as Booking.

Do not confuse two different numbers: the one from city registration, required to publish a listing, and the one from the change-of-use authorisation, which only concerns second homes. Platforms ask for the first; the city checks both. An owner who is compliant on change of use but has no registration number on the listing is still in breach — and it is the most common failure, because it looks administrative while being publicly visible on the advert.

Registration comes with tourist tax collection. On Airbnb and Booking the platforms collect and remit it for you; on direct bookings, collecting and declaring it is your responsibility.

We set out the procedure step by step in our guide to registering a furnished tourist rental in Nice.

2. Main home: the 90-day cap

French tourism law sets a national cap of 120 days a year for renting out a main home. The November 2024 law lets municipalities lower it to 90. Nice did so on 23 May 2025.

First, what counts as a main home. It is a property you occupy at least eight months a year, barring professional obligations, health reasons or force majeure. It is not a statement of intent: if checked, it has to be demonstrated — tax notice, energy bills, insurance at that address.

Second, how the days are counted. The 90 days are assessed cumulatively over the calendar year, not stay by stay. Thirty three-night weekends put you exactly at the limit; two full months in summer leave almost nothing for the rest of the year. That is a decision to make in January, not to discover in September.

Platforms usually block the calendar once the cap is reached, but the responsibility remains yours. The classic trap is dual listing: a property advertised on Airbnb and Booking at the same time can pass 90 cumulative nights without either platform seeing it. Keeping the count is on you.

The city can also ask at any time for your count of nights let during the year. Failing to provide it is penalised in the same way as exceeding the cap.

3. Second home: the change-of-use authorisation

If the property is not your main home, renting it as a furnished tourist rental means changing its use: from housing, it becomes tourist accommodation. In Nice this requires prior authorisation, applied for online at changementdusage.fr/nice.

The detail many owners discover too late: a temporary authorisation runs for three years and is non-renewable, non-divisible and non-transferable to another property. It is attached to that flat and to you. It is not sold on with the apartment, and it does not follow an owner who moves the activity two streets away.

That changes the reasoning. An authorisation is not an acquired right: it is a three-year window, at the end of which the property needs a next chapter — long-term letting, personal use, resale, or a new regime if the rules have moved on by then.

An alternative route exists: compensation, which means converting an equivalent surface currently used for something else back into housing. In practice it is reserved for larger operations. There are also mixed-use applications, for situations that fall neither squarely under a main home nor under a classic second home.

Finally, depending on the exact address, a quota regime may apply and completely change the timetable. That is the subject of our article on quota districts and the state of the litigation.

4. Co-ownership rules, the pillar everyone forgets

City authorisation is not authorisation from your co-owners. Many co-ownership rules in Nice, particularly in older buildings in the centre and in Vieux-Nice, contain a residential-use clause that restricts or prohibits short-term letting.

Two wordings circulate and they do not have the same effect. An exclusive residential-use clause reserves the building for housing and closes the door on tourist activity. A simple clause tolerates certain professional activities, which leaves room for interpretation — room that gets argued, and therefore contested.

Read your rules before listing anything, and have them reviewed if in doubt. A rental that is perfectly compliant in the city's eyes but contrary to the co-ownership rules can still be challenged — and it is usually the neighbours who challenge it, a few months into operation and a noisy weekend or two.

5. What you actually risk

The November 2024 law raised most of the amounts. The penalties as they stand:

• Up to €10,000 civil fine for failing to declare or register the property.
• Up to €20,000 administrative fine for a false declaration or use of a false registration number.
• Up to €15,000 civil fine for exceeding the day cap, or for failing to send the city your count of nights let.
• Up to €50,000 per property, imposed by the judicial court, for converting a home into a tourist rental without change-of-use authorisation.

These are not theoretical figures. Tourist municipalities now cross-check their own records against the data platforms are required to hand over: the number of nights let at a given address is no longer something only the owner knows.

The steps, in order

1. Establish the status of the property: main home or second home. Everything follows from that.
2. Check your co-ownership rules before starting anything else.
3. Register the property with the city and obtain your registration number.
4. For a second home, prepare the change-of-use application on changementdusage.fr/nice, after checking which regime applies at your address.
5. Add the registration number to every listing, on every platform.
6. Keep a count of nights let from the very first booking, across all platforms.

Buying to let short-term?

Two factors now belong in the calculation before buying to let short-term in Nice, and neither existed two years ago.

First, the address. Two identical flats three hundred metres apart can fall under different regimes depending on the district they sit in. Administrative boundaries do not match the neighbourhoods as people name them: an address everyone calls "city centre" does not necessarily fall in the district you would assume. That check belongs before the offer, not after.

Second, the horizon. A temporary authorisation runs for three years and cannot be renewed. A financing plan built on ten years of short-term income no longer holds as it stands: you need a view on what the property becomes afterwards, and confirmation that the deal still works in that scenario.

None of this rules out buying to let in Nice — the city remains one of the strongest short-term markets in France. It moves the analysis: yield alone no longer decides, it is yield and regulatory feasibility at that precise address. Our neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood view sets out demand profiles and observed income for each district.

Frequently asked questions

Can I rent my flat in Nice without a change of use?

Yes, if it is your main home and you stay under 90 rental days a year. City registration and the registration number remain mandatory in all cases.

Is the cap 90 or 120 days in Nice?

90 days. The national cap is 120, but Nice lowered it to 90 by city council decision on 23 May 2025.

Does an authorisation granted today last indefinitely?

No. A temporary change-of-use authorisation runs for three years, is non-renewable, and cannot be transferred to another property or sold on with the flat.

What if I rent a room in my own home?

Letting part of your main home still requires registration and a registration number, and the 90-day cap applies to letting the property as a furnished tourist rental. If you stay on site during the stays, a different regime may apply: check with the city for your specific setup.

What if I let long-term instead?

Long-term letting, furnished or unfurnished, is affected neither by change-of-use rules nor by the day cap. The economics are entirely different, though: our estimator gives short-term income by neighbourhood.

Getting support

Nice's rules are not an obstacle so much as a filter: they push improvised rentals out and professionalise the market. For a compliant owner they are a protection — the activity is durable, the income is declared cleanly, the property keeps its value.

At Yellow, an Airbnb and Booking management company in Nice, we track these changes for the owners we work with: we handle registration, city declarations and periodic filings, and we tell you what your address actually allows before you commit.

Sources: law no. 2024-1039 of 19 November 2024; Nice city council decision no. 1.6 of 23 May 2025; City of Nice change-of-use regulation of 5 December 2025; Métropole Nice Côte d'Azur pages on change-of-use authorisations. This article is informational and does not replace guidance from the City of Nice.