The question in the title is the one every foreign owner asks me first, and the honest answer is a little annoying: yes, but that is the wrong question. Short-term letting is legal in Brazil as a defined category, and has been for decades. What actually decides whether you can put your Rio apartment on Airbnb is not the country's law at all — it is your building's rules, and in 2026 those rules moved in a way that a lot of owners have not caught up with. This guide is the plain-English map of the whole picture: what the law permits, what your condominium can forbid, what the city is trying to add, and the specific things to check before you buy an apartment expecting to short-let it or before you list one you already own. It is written from what I actually deal with as a licensed Rio broker, and it is information, not legal advice — where a file needs a lawyer, I will say so, and at the end I will tell you exactly which questions belong to one.
00 · Read this first
Three things to set the frame before the detail. First, the distinction that runs through everything below: the activity of short-let is legal nationwide, but the permission to do it in a specific apartment is layered — the country allows it, your condominium can restrict it, and the city is writing rules that would sit on top. When people say "Airbnb is banned in Rio," they are almost always describing a single building's decision, not a city-wide law. There is no city-wide ban.
Second, the thing that changed in 2026 is at the condominium layer, and it changed in the direction of owners of other units, not in favour of the host. If you are buying with a short-let plan, the building's convention and its recent assembly votes are now the most important documents in the whole purchase — more important than the view. I will show you how to read them.
Third, this is a fast-moving area. A Rio municipal bill is in progress and not yet law; a binding Supreme-Court-of-lower-appeals precedent is being finalised as I write. I have dated every moving part and flagged what is settled versus what is still being fixed. Where I give a case number or a statute, it is so your lawyer can pull the primary source — treat the citations as a map to the originals, not as a substitute for advice on your specific building.
Before you buy an apartment to short-let it, or list one you own, read the building's convenção do condomínio and the minutes of its last two years of assemblies. That one hour of reading tells you whether your entire plan is possible — and it is the step foreign buyers skip most often.
01 · The legal category: locação por temporada
Brazil has a specific statutory home for short-term letting, and it is worth knowing the name because it is the thing that makes the activity lawful in the first place. The Tenancy Law — the Lei do Inquilinato, Lei nº 8.245 of 1991 — defines "locação para temporada" in its Article 48 as a rental intended for the tenant's temporary residence, for leisure, a course, medical treatment, works on their own property, or similar time-limited reasons, contracted for a term not exceeding ninety days, whether or not the property is furnished.
That ninety-day ceiling is the load-bearing number. A temporada contract is by definition ninety days or less. The moment a single stay is agreed for longer than ninety days, you are no longer in the temporada category, and the arrangement risks being treated as an ordinary residential lease — which in Brazil carries far stronger tenant protections and is much harder to end. For a short-stay operator this almost never bites, because the whole model is nights and weeks, not seasons. But it is why a "digital nomad wants to stay four months" enquiry is a different legal animal from a normal booking, and why your manager should paper the long ones carefully.
Two practical features of the temporada regime matter to owners. It can be furnished and priced accordingly; and it can require payment in advance and end automatically at the term without the eviction machinery a normal lease triggers. Those are features, not bugs — they are what make the category workable for hospitality-style use. The platform you list on (Airbnb, Booking, direct) does not change the legal category; a booking through Airbnb is simply a temporada let arranged through a website.
So at the national level, the answer is clean: the law expressly contemplates what you want to do. The friction is one layer down.
02 · The real gatekeeper: your condominium
This is where most short-let plans in Rio live or die, and it is where 2026 changed the default. To follow it you need the arc of two decisions from the Superior Tribunal de Justiça — the STJ, Brazil's high court for non-constitutional matters. Note that carefully: this is the STJ, not the Supreme Federal Court (the STF). You will see the ruling misattributed to "the Supreme Court" all over the internet; there is no decided STF merits ruling banning or blessing condominium short-lets, and citing one is an error.
2021 — the first landmark (REsp 1.819.075/RS)
In April 2021 the STJ's Fourth Panel decided REsp 1.819.075/RS. The court characterised recurring, high-turnover Airbnb-style use as an "atypical hospitality contract" — a contrato atípico de hospedagem — something distinct from both a normal residential lease and a hotel. Crucially, it held that a condominium whose convention establishes a purely residential purpose can restrict that kind of use. The decision did not ban Airbnb everywhere; it upheld a specific building's power to say no. But it planted the idea that would grow: high-churn short-let is not simply "living in your own apartment," and a residential building can treat it differently.
2026 — the ruling that reset the default (REsp 2.121.055)
On 7 May 2026 the STJ's Second Section — the panel that harmonises private-law questions across the court — decided REsp 2.121.055, reported by Justice Nancy Andrighi, by five votes to four. The holding, in plain terms: offering a unit for short stays on platforms like Airbnb in a building whose convention sets a residential purpose requires prior authorisation by at least two-thirds of the owners in assembly. The reasoning is that recurring professional short-let mischaracterises the strictly residential purpose of the building, so — where the convention establishes residential use — an explicit "no Airbnb" clause is not even necessary to block it. The court leaned on the Civil Code: the duty of an owner to use the unit consistently with the building's designation, and the two-thirds threshold for the assembly to decide.
Read that again, because it inverts what many hosts assume. The old mental model was "it's allowed unless the building bans it." The 2026 model, for a residential-designated building, is closer to "it's restricted unless two-thirds of all the owners vote to allow it." The burden flipped.
The May 2026 decision is powerfully persuasive but not yet formally binding on every lower court. The binding precedent is being finalised through a separate "repetitive appeals" procedure (Tema 1.443), and as of August 2026 that is still pending, with related cases suspended nationwide. Treat the two-thirds rule as the clear direction the law is settling into — and plan around it — but expect the binding version to be confirmed, and have your lawyer check its final terms before you rely on the precise mechanics.
What this means for you as an owner is concrete. If your building is purpose-built for short stays, or is a "residencial com serviços" (apart-hotel style) address, or has already passed an assembly resolution permitting short-let, you are on the safe side of the line. If it is an ordinary residential building that has never voted on the question, you are now in a grey zone that is trending toward "not without a two-thirds vote." And if the building has voted against short-let, that door is, increasingly, closed — no matter how good the apartment.
Where each kind of building stands
| The building | Short-let position (2026) |
|---|---|
| Purpose-built short-stay / apart-hotel ("residencial com serviços") | Generally allowed — it is the building's designed use |
| Residential building with an assembly resolution permitting short-let | Allowed — the two-thirds authorisation exists |
| Residential building, no assembly vote either way | Grey zone — trending toward "needs a two-thirds vote" |
| Residential building that voted against short-let | Effectively closed — do not plan around it |
The single most useful thing this section should leave you with: the answer to "can I Airbnb this apartment?" is not a Rio answer or a Brazil answer. It is a this specific building answer, and it is knowable in advance from two documents.
03 · How to read a building before you buy or list
Because the condominium is the gatekeeper, learning to read one quickly is the highest-value skill in this whole topic. There are exactly two documents that matter, and any seller, syndic or broker can produce them.
The convenção do condomínio
This is the building's constitution. The line to find is the destinação — the stated purpose. "Exclusivamente residencial" (exclusively residential) is the phrase that puts you squarely under the 2026 two-thirds regime. A convention that contemplates "residencial com serviços," hospedagem, or mixed use is a far friendlier starting point. Some conventions go further and address short-let or Airbnb directly, either permitting it under conditions or prohibiting it outright; if there is an explicit clause, it governs, and you read it literally.
The assembly minutes (atas)
The convention tells you the rules as written; the minutes tell you what the owners have actually decided. Read the last two years. You are looking for any vote on short-let, temporada, Airbnb or "uso comercial"; any change to the internal rules (regimento interno) touching guests, keys, access or turnover; and the general temperature of the building toward transient guests. A building that has debated and rejected short-let is telling you something a glossy listing photo never will. A building that quietly runs several short-let units with no complaints is also telling you something — though after 2026 that tolerance is less legally durable than it used to be.
If your reason for buying is short-let income, put the condominium's short-let position into your due diligence in writing — ask for the convention and the last two years of atas before you sign, and treat "exclusivamente residencial with no permissive vote" as a genuine dealbreaker, not a detail. This is exactly the kind of thing a broker who lives in the market catches and a booking app on another continent does not. It is the first thing we check for an owner, before we ever talk about photos or pricing — see the management page for how that intake works.
One more practical note: the syndic (síndico) matters. Even in a building where the rules permit short-let, a hostile syndic can make life tiring with access rules and enforcement of the regimento interno. It is worth a conversation. None of this is visible from the outside, which is precisely why the two documents and one conversation are worth more than any assumption.
04 · What happens if you break the rule
Owners sometimes ask what the downside really is — whether "not allowed" has teeth. It does, and the teeth got sharper in 2026. If you run short-let in a building whose rules (or, now, whose residential designation plus the two-thirds default) prohibit it, the condominium can act against you. In practice that escalates from formal notification, to fines under the regimento interno, to a judicial action to stop the activity. Because the 2026 STJ position treats unauthorised recurring short-let as a breach of the building's residential purpose, a condominium that wants to enforce now has clearer footing than it did a few years ago.
The financial exposure is not only the fines. It is the collapse of the business case: an apartment you furnished and marketed for short-stay that is then ordered to stop is a stranded asset earning nothing while you pivot to a long lease or a sale. That is the real cost, and it is entirely avoidable by doing the reading in section 03 before you commit money. I have never seen an owner regret checking the convention. I have seen owners regret not checking it.
The flip side is worth stating plainly for reassurance: in a building that permits short-let — by design, or by a valid assembly authorisation — you are not living under a cloud. You are operating a lawful temporada let in a building whose owners have agreed to it, and the enforcement risk in this section simply does not apply to you. The entire point of the due diligence is to make sure you are in that second group.
05 · The city's rules — and the bill that isn't law
Above the building sits the municipality, and here the honest headline is: as of August 2026, the City of Rio de Janeiro has no enacted law specifically regulating short-let. What exists is a bill working its way through the Câmara Municipal (reported in the press as PL 2265/2026), which had not been passed at the time of writing. I mention it because owners keep reading about it and assuming it is already in force. It is not. Do not plan around the bill's contents as if they were current obligations.
It is still worth knowing what the bill would do if it passes, because it signals where the city is heading. As reported, it would create a simplified municipal registry for short-stay hosting, give each listing a registration number to display, and set fines (reported up to R$10,000) for operating without authorisation — and it would lean on the condominium's two-thirds authorisation as part of the framework. Notably, an earlier requirement for a business licence (alvará) was dropped, and the municipal service tax (ISS) was removed from the bill and left to the wider federal tax reform. If and when it becomes law, a good manager will handle the registration for you as a matter of course; until then, there is no municipal registration to obtain.
Cadastur — usually optional for an individual owner
Cadastur is the federal tourism registry (under Lei nº 11.771/2008). It is mandatory for lodging businesses — meios de hospedagem — and other listed tourism providers, which typically means companies running hotel-style operations. For an individual owner letting one or a few apartments by temporada, without hotel services, it is generally optional rather than required. The line gets crossed once an operation becomes a professional, multi-unit, service-bearing lodging business, and exactly where that line sits is a question for a lawyer or the Ministério do Turismo. If you are handing a single apartment to a manager, Cadastur is usually not something you personally need to register for.
ISS — on the service, not on the rent
One tax point belongs here because it is widely misunderstood. Pure rental income is not subject to the municipal service tax (ISS) — a lease is not a "service," and Brazil's Supreme Court has confirmed ISS cannot be levied on leasing (Súmula Vinculante 31). What ist ISS-able is a service: a manager's or agency's fee, and true hotel-style hospedagem with reception, daily cleaning and breakfast. Rio's general ISS rate is 5%, and where it applies it falls on the service fee, not on your rent. For a normal managed temporada let, this means the ISS conversation is about your manager's invoice, not about your rental income. (Watch item, not a current Rio obligation: some municipalities are moving to tax short-stay as hospedagem, and the federal tax reform phasing in from 2026 will eventually bring short-let into the new consumption-tax regime. Your manager and accountant will track it.)
06 · Can a foreigner even do this?
Yes — and this is the part that is genuinely simpler than most foreign owners fear. A non-resident foreigner can own and let an urban apartment in Rio with the same rights as a Brazilian. There is no residency requirement to own, no cap on the number or value of apartments, and no bar on renting them out. The restrictions you may have read about — the ones that require government consent — apply to rural land and to properties in the faixa de fronteira (the border strip), under Lei nº 5.709/1971. A city apartment in the South Zone is urban and nowhere near a border, so those rules simply do not touch it.
Two things you do need. The first is a CPF — the Brazilian taxpayer number — which anyone holding registrable property must have. You can obtain it from a Brazilian consulate abroad or through a representative in Brazil. The second, as a non-resident, is a Brazil-based representative (a procurador) holding a specific public power of attorney — a procuração pública that names the property and the acts it covers. Generic powers of attorney get rejected by notaries; the document has to be specific. With a proper procuração in place, the entire purchase, and the CPF, can be handled without you flying in. Most of our overseas owners buy this way.
That same representative is central to the rental side, because — as the next section explains — they are legally the one who receives the rent and files the tax. So the procurador is not a purchase-only convenience; for a non-resident who intends to let, it is a permanent part of the structure. The good news is that it is a solved problem: it is standard, and a competent manager or lawyer sets it up as a matter of routine.
07 · The tax and money you can't get wrong
This guide is about legality, not tax, so I will keep this to the two or three points that are really about staying on the right side of the rules — and point you to the deep guides for the rest. The frame to hold is that clean compliance here is cheap and simple; it is only dirty compliance that gets expensive, usually years later when you try to take money out of the country.
On rental income, a non-resident owner's Brazilian rent is generally taxed at a flat 15% withheld at source — rising to 25% only if you are tax-resident in a listed low-tax jurisdiction, which the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal and most of Europe are not. It is your Brazilian representative who is legally responsible for withholding and filing it, month by month, and because it is final at source you file no Brazilian annual return for that income. A narrow set of documented costs can be deducted first; which ones is a question for a contador. (The rate is confirmed by PwC; the mechanics come from specialist tax firms — treat it as information, not advice, and have an accountant confirm your specific position.)
On getting the money in and out, there is a persistent myth worth killing: a foreign individual buying an apartment in their own name does not register the purchase in the Central Bank's foreign-direct-investment system (RDE-IED) — that regime is for investing in Brazilian companies. What actually matters is that you bring your purchase funds in through a Central Bank-authorised institution on a proper foreign-exchange contract. That banked record is the thing that later lets rental income and, eventually, sale proceeds convert and leave the country cleanly. Get it right at the start and repatriation is routine; get it wrong and unwinding it is a project.
The full tax inventory — purchase, ownership, rental, sale and back home — is in the foreign-owner tax guide. The money-flow version — how a non-resident actually gets paid, the DARF, the representative, repatriation — is in getting paid and staying compliant. Both are information, not advice; both end with the same recommendation to hire a competent Rio contador in your first month.
08 · The pre-purchase and pre-listing checklist
Here is the whole guide compressed into the sequence I would actually run, whether you are buying an apartment to short-let it or deciding whether to list one you already own.
| Step | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Read the convenção — find the destinação | "Exclusivamente residencial" puts you under the 2026 two-thirds regime |
| Read the last two years of assembly atas | Tells you whether short-let has been voted on, allowed or rejected |
| Check for an explicit short-let / Airbnb clause | If it exists, it governs — read it literally |
| Gauge the syndic and the building's temperature | Even where permitted, enforcement culture affects daily life |
| Confirm CPF + a specific procuração pública | Required to own as a non-resident and to file the rental tax |
| Bring purchase funds in on a proper FX contract | The banked record enables clean repatriation later |
| Line up a contador before the first booking | Monthly 15% withholding is small but must be filed on time |
| Note the city bill as a watch item, not a rule | No municipal registration exists until it passes |
If every row on that list checks out, your plan is not just legal in the abstract — it is legal for your specific apartment, which is the only kind of legal that pays. If a row fails, you have learned it before spending money rather than after, which is the entire value of doing it in this order.
09 · The bottom line
So: is Airbnb legal in Rio de Janeiro? The activity is legal — locação por temporada is a recognised category, foreigners can own and let freely, and there is no city-wide ban. But "legal in Rio" is not the same as "legal in your building," and after the STJ's 2026 ruling the building is the part that decides. In an exclusively residential condominium, the direction the law is settling into is that short-let needs two-thirds owner approval; in a purpose-built or already-authorised building, you are clear. The difference between a great short-let investment and a stranded apartment is almost always one hour of reading the convention and the atas before you commit.
The rest is solved-problem territory. A CPF and a specific power of attorney let you own and operate from abroad. A flat 15% withholding, filed monthly by your representative, is the whole of the Brazilian income-tax story for most non-residents. A clean foreign-exchange record at purchase makes the money flow both ways without friction. None of it is exotic; all of it is routine for people who do it every week. The mistakes are the ones this guide is built to prevent: buying into the wrong building, listing against the rules, or bringing money in through the wrong channel.
If you want the reading done for you, that is literally the first thing we do for an owner — pull the convention and the atas, read the building, and tell you honestly whether short-let is on the table before anyone talks about furniture or nightly rates. If it is, we can run the whole thing; if it is not, we will say so and talk about a long lease or a sale instead. Send me the building and I will tell you where it stands. Start the conversation here.