The context: national law, local implementation
Everything stems from French Act No. 2024-1039 of 19 November 2024, known as the 'Le Meur Law', which gave local authorities reinforced tools to regulate furnished tourist rentals. Among these tools, the most visible: the option, by reasoned decision, to lower the annual rental limit of a primary residence from 120 to 90 nights.
Nice was one of the first major tourist cities to activate this option. By a municipal council resolution of 23 May 2025, the city set the cap at 90 nights per calendar year. A few months later, on 5 December 2025, the Nice Côte d'Azur Metropolitan Authority adopted a completely new regulation governing change-of-use authorisations for second homes, applicable since 1 January 2026.
The combination of these two texts changes the game for every owner: those letting their primary residence and those operating a property dedicated to furnished tourist rental.
Nice is now among the most restrictive French cities for short-term rental, alongside Paris and certain coastal municipalities. Regulatory pressure is strong, but does not prohibit the activity — it structures it.
Primary residence: the cap drops to 90 nights
If you let your primary residence — the home you live in for more than eight months of the year — as furnished tourist accommodation during your absences, you are now limited to 90 nights per calendar year. This new limit took effect on 1 January 2026, under the municipal resolution of 23 May 2025.
In practical terms, Airbnb and other platforms apply this limit automatically: your listing's calendar locks as soon as the threshold is reached. No exemptions are allowed.
Non-compliance can lead to a civil fine of up to €15,000. As a reminder, the exemption from change-of-use authorisation is only valid for the letting of a primary residence and within the 90-night cap now in force in Nice.
How do I know if my property is my primary residence?
Under French tax law, your primary residence is the home you occupy for at least 8 months per year, except in specific cases (professional obligation, health reason, force majeure). It is also the home declared as primary residence on your tax return.
If you occupy your property for less than 8 months per year, it automatically becomes a secondary residence — and a completely different and much more constraining legal regime then applies in Nice from 2026.
The 90-night cap is a major change from the historical 120-night ceiling. If you had calibrated your activity on the old cap, you must rework your business model before continuing to let.
Second homes: the neighbourhood-quota regime
For second homes used as furnished tourist accommodation, the metropolitan regulation of 5 December 2025 introduced a completely new mechanism: a system of annual quotas, capped by geographic zone. Four districts of Nice have been identified as priorities and subject to these quotas, because they account for the bulk of the city's tourist supply.
The four zones concerned
The metropolitan regulation defines four specific zones in which the number of annual authorisations is capped:
- Zone 1 — Old Nice: 38 annual authorisations
- Zone 2 — Riquier, Port, Mont-Boron: 277 annual authorisations
- Zone 3 — City centre: 298 annual authorisations
- Zone 4 — West: 108 annual authorisations
In total, 671 annual authorisations are issued across all zones. This envelope is calibrated to remain below around 1.5% of each zone's primary-residence housing stock, with the aim of preserving housing actually inhabited by Nice residents.
Applications for authorisation are concentrated exclusively in the month of February each year. Beyond that period, no further application can be filed for the current year.
Another important novelty: the maximum duration of an authorisation is now 3 years, compared with the previous system that allowed successive annual renewals over 5 years.
The court proceedings: what is actually in force today
This is the point that has to be made particularly clear, because the situation is evolving. Several professional bodies — including the Union des Professionnels de la Location Meublée Côte d'Azur and the Union des Professionnels de la Location Touristique — have challenged the December 2025 metropolitan regulation in court. They filed both a substantive appeal seeking to annul the regulation and an emergency motion for immediate suspension.
By an order of 29 January 2026, the urgent-applications judge of the Nice administrative court partially suspended the regulation. The suspension only concerns the method of calculating the quota base (the regulation only used primary residences as the calculation basis). However, the very principle of quotas, along with the delimitation of the four zones, was not called into question by this ruling.
The City of Nice, through its mayor Christian Estrosi, immediately launched a cassation appeal before the Conseil d'État to challenge this partial suspension. The case is now in the hands of France's highest administrative court.
The immediate practical consequence: the Metropolitan Authority has suspended the filing phase for applications in the four quota zones, initially scheduled to run from 1 February to 31 August 2026, pending the Conseil d'État's decision. No new quota-subject application can therefore be filed or processed during this period.
At this stage, and as long as the Conseil d'État has not ruled, obtaining a change of use in a quota zone is simply impossible. If you are planning to invest in one of the four zones, factor this into your feasibility study.
Outside the quota zones: the general regime applies
Outside the four identified zones (Old Nice, Riquier-Port-Mont Boron, city centre, West), there is no numerical cap on authorisations. The general change-of-use regime continues to apply to second homes used as furnished tourist accommodation.
The classic obligations remain, however: city hall registration, obtaining a registration number, a maximum authorisation duration of 3 years, and compliance with technical criteria (notably the energy performance certificate, which has become a filtering criterion since the Le Meur Law).
The registration number remains mandatory
Regardless of your situation (primary or secondary residence, in or outside a quota zone), one point remains universal: you must declare your furnished tourist rental to the Nice city hall and obtain a registration number. This number must be displayed visibly on every one of your listings, regardless of the platform used.
The procedure is online, free of charge, via the municipal e-service. Without this number, your listing is automatically removed by the main platforms and you risk administrative penalties.
Tourist tax: little change, but worth knowing
The tourist tax remains an unavoidable obligation for any furnished tourist rental in Nice. For star-rated furnished rentals (classification by the prefecture or via an accredited body), the tax is set at a flat amount per night and per adult, generally between €0.75 and €4.95 depending on the rating.
For non-classified furnished rentals, the tax is calculated as a percentage of the nightly rate — 5% of the pre-tax price per person, with a proportional cap. This method is significantly harder to manage and strongly encourages owners to obtain official classification, which also brings significant LMNP tax advantages (see below).
If you let through Airbnb, the platform automatically collects and remits the tourist tax to the Metropolitan Authority. On other platforms (Booking, Vrbo, specialist platforms), collection and remittance may remain your responsibility depending on your account settings.
2026 taxation: the evolution of the LMNP regime
The LMNP (Non-Professional Furnished Lessor) status has also undergone significant changes in 2025 and 2026, independent of municipal decisions but with a cumulative economic impact.
Micro-BIC: reduced allowance for non-classified rentals
Since 1 January 2025, the micro-BIC regime for non-classified furnished rentals has been significantly tightened: the flat-rate allowance has fallen from 50% to 30%, and the eligible turnover ceiling has dropped from €77,700 to €15,000. Above this ceiling, the property automatically switches to the actual-expenses regime.
Star-rated furnished rentals keep a more favourable regime: a 50% micro-BIC allowance and a €77,700 ceiling. This is one of the reasons why we systematically recommend our clients to pursue official classification, which pays for itself well within a few years.
Actual-expenses regime: still the most powerful
The actual-expenses LMNP regime remains by far the most advantageous option for the majority of Nice owners. It allows the deduction of all real expenses (loan interest, taxes, service charges, management, cleaning, insurance and so on) and, crucially, the depreciation of the property over 20 to 30 years and of the furniture over 5 to 10 years.
In practice, many LMNP owners on the actual-expenses regime in Nice pay zero tax on their rental income during the first years of activity, thanks to the depreciation mechanism that wipes out the taxable result.
Capital gains on resale: depreciation now reintegrated
A major structural change took effect in 2025: depreciation taken under the actual-expenses regime is now reintegrated into the calculation of capital gains on resale. In concrete terms, if you have depreciated €60,000 over 10 years, that €60,000 is added back to your taxable capital gain at the time of sale.
This reform mechanically reduces the net benefit of the actual-expenses LMNP regime for owners planning a medium-term resale. It does not make the regime unfavourable, but it changes the long-term arithmetic: the longer the holding period, the more attractive the depreciation benefit remains net of tax.
Social contributions: no change for LMNP
The CSG increase voted in 2026 (overall rate raised to 10.6%) does not apply to property rental income. LMNP income remains subject to social contributions at the overall rate of 17.2%.
Co-ownership: a topic not to neglect
Before even starting, you must check your building's co-ownership rules. The Le Meur Law significantly strengthened the ability of co-ownerships to prohibit furnished tourist rental: a general meeting can now vote such a ban with a two-thirds majority, where unanimity was previously required.
The Constitutional Council validated this new rule in March 2026, putting an end to the last challenges on this point. If your co-ownership has voted or is preparing to vote such a ban, you must cease your activity, on pain of proceedings being launched by the building manager.
As a precaution: systematically inform your building manager of your activity, take out tailored professional insurance (reinforced public liability) and look after your relationship with your neighbours. Disgruntled neighbours are, in practice, the leading source of reports to the city hall.
Enforcement and penalties: the operational reality
The enforcement resources of the Nice Côte d'Azur Metropolitan Authority have been considerably reinforced since 2024. A dedicated unit constantly tracks listings without a registration number, breaches of the 90-night limit, second-home rentals without a valid authorisation and failures to collect the tourist tax.
Penalties are graduated: administrative warning, civil fine of up to €15,000 for exceeding the primary-residence cap, administrative fine of up to €50,000 for letting a second home without a change of use, daily penalty payments and criminal prosecution in cases of repeat offending or proven fraud.
The platforms cooperate actively with the Metropolitan Authority: automatic removal of non-compliant listings, transmission of anonymised statistical data and automatic enforcement of calendar limits.
2026 compliance checklist: a recap
Here, in order, are the essential steps to operate a compliant Airbnb in Nice in 2026:
- 1. Precisely identify the status of the property: primary residence (you occupy it for more than 8 months per year) or secondary residence.
- 2. If a secondary residence: check whether the address falls within one of the four quota zones. If so, factor in the current suspension of filings and wait for the Conseil d'État ruling.
- 3. Check the co-ownership rules and inform the building manager.
- 4. Apply for the registration number with the Nice city hall (free online service).
- 5. Choose and declare your LMNP tax regime (the actual-expenses regime is almost always recommended).
- 6. Where possible, start the star-rating classification process to benefit from the tax advantages and the flat-rate tourist tax.
- 7. Where applicable, file the change-of-use application in February (subject to filings being reopened in the quota zones).
Support from a concierge service
Regulatory complexity in Nice is now one of the main reasons owners choose to delegate management to a local professional concierge. At La Joyeuse Conciergerie, we systematically support our clients through the entire administrative journey: city hall registration, obtaining the registration number, monitoring regulatory changes, managing tourist-tax collection and remittance, and introductions to LMNP-specialist accountants.
To understand how this support fits into our complete service, see our short-term rental management service in Nice or our premium Airbnb concierge in Nice.
