Madeira's tourist tax: 2 euros a night, the seven night cap and who is exempt

Your hotel confirmation says one number and the bill at check-out says another. The difference is usually the municipal tourist tax, which ten of Madeira's eleven councils now charge on top of the room rate, and which most booking platforms do not collect for you. The sums are small, capped at 14 euros a person, but the rules have a couple of edges that catch people out when they book a fortnight or split a trip between two towns.

Two euros per person per night, up to a maximum of seven consecutive nights. That caps the tax at 14 euros per guest per stay, however long the stay runs. A couple staying ten nights in Funchal pays 28 euros in total, not 40.

The rate is the same everywhere on the island that charges it. There is no cheaper municipality and no more expensive one, so the tax is not a reason to move your base from Funchal to Machico or from Calheta to Santana. Funchal's figure comes from Regulamento n.º 764/2024, published in the Diário da República on 18 July 2024, and the councils that followed copied the structure.

It applies to every paid overnight stay in a tourist development or a registered local accommodation unit, whatever the booking channel. A hotel, an aparthotel, a guesthouse and a one bedroom flat on a platform are all treated the same way. Funchal's own guidance makes the point that the tax is due regardless of when the reservation was made, so a stay booked and paid for in 2023 for a 2026 arrival still attracts it.

The tax is not subject to VAT, and it is municipal revenue rather than income for your host. The property keeps 2.5 per cent of what it collects as a handling fee for doing the paperwork.

The cap is on consecutive nights. Break the stay and the count starts again.

Funchal's guidance works the example: a guest sleeps three nights, interrupts the stay, then returns for seven more. Ten nights are taxed, not seven. That is a real planning point if you are thinking of a few nights in Funchal, a few on Porto Santo, then back to Funchal for the flight home. Each leg is a fresh stay in a fresh municipality, and each one has its own seven night ceiling. A two centre trip can comfortably cost more in tax than a straight fortnight in one hotel.

The same logic applies in reverse, and in your favour. If you are staying more than a week in one place, everything from the eighth night on is free of the tax.

Three groups are exempt, and the documents matter because your host has to keep proof on file for four years.

Children aged 12 and under do not pay. The tax falls on guests older than 12, so a 13 year old pays the adult rate. Age is shown with a citizen card or passport. There is a tidy rule for a birthday mid-trip: the tax starts the day the child turns 13, and only for the nights still inside the first seven. If a child turns 13 on 23 October and the family is booked from 20 to 27 October, four nights are charged. If the same child turns 13 on 23 October during a stay running from 1 to 31 October, nothing is charged at all, because the seven taxable nights were already used up while the child was still exempt.

People with a certified incapacity of 60 per cent or more are exempt, on production of a copy of the Portuguese multi-purpose medical incapacity certificate.

Residents of the Autonomous Region of Madeira are exempt, on production of a document proving their tax address, obtainable from the Portal das Finanças or the SIMplifica portal. This is the clause that matters if you have moved to the island and are booking a weekend in another municipality.

Two more cases fall outside the tax. A stay given to you free of charge is not taxed, because the tax only attaches to paid nights. And using a hotel's spa, restaurant, bar or pool without sleeping there is not taxed either. A room invoiced for a few daytime hours, on the other hand, is.

At the property, in almost every case.

The law puts the job of calculating and collecting the tax on whoever runs the accommodation, and each council runs its own declaration portal: Funchal has taxaturistica.funchal.pt, Machico has tmt.cm-machico.pt, Porto Santo has taxaturistica.cm-portosanto.pt, and Câmara de Lobos, Ribeira Brava and Ponta do Sol each have their own. There is no single regional system for the big booking sites to plug into, and the tax rarely appears in the total you pay online. Expect to settle it at the property and to get a receipt for it.

Funchal's rules say the tax is charged before or during the stay. If you want one receipt for a family or a group rather than one per person, ask: a single invoice is allowed when guests request it.

Where you stay is worth more thought than the two euros. The hills behind Funchal buy you quiet and a view down over the bay for the same tax as a room on the seafront, and if that is the trade you want, Madeira with Views is a good place to start looking.

Ten of Madeira's eleven municipalities charge the tax, all at two euros with the seven night cap. They arrived at it one by one rather than together:

• Santana was first among the councils that adopted the common two euro rate, under Regulamento n.º 554/2024 of 16 May, collecting from June 2024
• Funchal began on 1 October 2024, the same day as Calheta, whose regulation was published as Aviso n.º 15180/2024/2 in the Diário da República of 23 July 2024
• Câmara de Lobos, Ponta do Sol, Ribeira Brava and Machico all came in across the second half of 2024
• Santa Cruz has charged longest of all, under a regulation published in January 2017, and still calls it the EcoTaxa; it is two euros there too, declared through ecotaxa.cm-santacruz.pt
• Porto Santo started on 1 February 2025
• São Vicente was the last to start, on 13 May 2026, under Aviso n.º 10962/2026/2 published the day before

Porto Moniz is the exception. Its council said in March 2026 that it would begin charging and expected around half a million euros a year from it, but no start date had been published when this was written, and the municipality's own schedule of taxes still shows the tourist rate at zero. If you are booking the far northwest, treat it as a tax that may well have arrived by the time you travel, and ask your host.

Funchal extended the tax to cruise passengers on 1 January 2025. It is two euros a head for passengers who come ashore, collected through an agreement with APRAM, the Madeira ports authority, which bills the shipping lines rather than you. In practice it reaches you inside the cruise fare or as a line on your onboard account, not at a kiosk on the quay.

Children are exempt, and so is anyone whose final destination is Funchal, on the sensible grounds that they will pay the overnight tax at their hotel instead. The council budgeted around 1.2 million euros from the maritime side in 2025, against roughly 600,000 disembarking passengers.

Funchal collected about 14 million euros from the tax in 2025 and expects a similar figure for 2026. In January 2026 the council said it would reopen the regulation, and its president described a higher rate as a possibility under consideration rather than a decision taken. Any change has to go through public consultation, the municipal council and the municipal assembly, a process the council put at six to nine months.

So two euros is the 2026 figure, and the one to budget for a 2027 trip is probably the same. Check your confirmation and ask your host if the number on the bill does not match the arithmetic here.

Is Madeira's tourist tax included when I book on a platform? Usually not. Each municipality runs its own collection portal and the property is responsible for charging you, so in most cases you pay the tax at the accommodation rather than online.

How much is it for a family of four with two young children? Two adults at two euros a night for seven nights is 28 euros. Children aged 12 and under pay nothing, so that is the whole bill no matter how long you stay.

Does splitting my trip between Funchal and Porto Santo cost more tax? Yes. The seven night cap applies to consecutive nights in one stay, so each leg counts separately and each has its own ceiling of seven taxed nights.

Can I avoid it by staying outside Funchal? Not really. Ten of the eleven councils charge the same two euros, and the one that does not, Porto Moniz, has said it intends to start.

• Funchal municipal tourist tax, official FAQ and the tax portal
• Funchal and APRAM agreement on the maritime arrival tax
• São Vicente tourist tax
• Calheta regulation, Aviso n.º 15180/2024/2 and the Calheta FAQ
• Machico tourist tax portal and Porto Santo tourist tax portal
• Santa Cruz EcoTaxa portal and Santana regulation, Regulamento n.º 554/2024
• Porto Moniz municipal taxes and rates
• Funchal council on reviewing the regulation, January 2026