How many holiday lets were there in August 2026?

40,837 with 167,170 bed places (ISTAC cube C00065A_000061). The release states 161,170 in its text.

Is the minus 14 percent correct?

For bed places yes, there it is 14.4 percent. For dwellings the calculation gives 13.3 percent.

Which island loses most?

In units Tenerife, with 2,825 fewer homes; in percentage terms La Palma and El Hierro, each down about 20 percent.

Are they becoming long-term rentals again?

Not established. No official survey exists; idealista reports asking rents 5.3 percent higher in August 2026.

40,837 holiday lets: 6,290 fewer in the Canary Islands

Q: Did fewer holidaymakers come as a result?

No. In August 2026 INE counted 7,216,680 hotel overnight stays in the Canaries, 2.5 percent more than a year earlier.

40,837 holiday lets: the Canaries lose 6,290 homes, but not a single tourist

In August 2026 the Canary Islands still had 40,837 holiday-let homes available on the booking platforms, 6,290 fewer than a year earlier. The Instituto Canario de Estadística (ISTAC) published the figure on 17 September 2026 in its experimental statistics. In the same month Spain's statistics office INE counted 7,216,680 hotel overnight stays in the islands, 2.5 percent more than a year before. Fewer holiday lets, no fewer holidaymakers – neither statistic offers a reason.

23 September 2026 · 6 min. · By Martin Kosinski · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief

What is counted – and why 14 percent does not add up

The figure 40,837 is not a register total. Each month ISTAC reads the listings of what its methodology calls the “principales plataformas digitales de intermediación“; which platforms those are, the methodology paper (version V.1, July 2024) does not say. Only whole dwellings are counted, not rooms, and a home is available only if it “se ha reservado, al menos una vez, durante el mes de referencia o el mes anterior“ – if it was booked at least once in the reference month or the one before. A home that stays listed but sits empty for two months drops out of the statistics without leaving the market.

The headline figure does not quite hold either: 47,127 homes in August 2025 and 40,837 in August 2026 give a fall of 13.3 percent, not 14. The 14 percent (14.4 exactly) fits the bed places, which went from 195,242 to 167,170; yet the release states 161,170 places in its text, which would make the fall 17.5 percent. A revision of the base year is ruled out: 47,127 appears unchanged in every version of the cube since version 1.17.

Island by island

The absolute figures are in the cube. In units Tenerife loses most: from 19,422 to 16,597 homes, down 2,825 or 14.5 percent – also the steepest percentage fall among the four large islands. Gran Canaria follows (9,723 to 8,488, down 12.7 percent), then Lanzarote (7,781 to 6,939, down 10.8 percent) and Fuerteventura (6,684 to 5,932, down 11.3 percent). In percentage terms the small islands are hit harder: La Palma falls from 2,146 to 1,715 and El Hierro from 522 to 417, both by about 20 percent, La Gomera from 844 to 745.

Fewer homes, the same guests

There is no sign of a collapse in demand. For August 2026 INE counted 7,216,680 hotel overnight stays in the Canaries, 2.5 percent more than a year earlier, with occupancy at 82.01 percent. Within the holiday lets the booking rate barely moved: 94.4 percent against 94.6. Revenue in the segment fell from 116.6 to 107.1 million euros, down 8.1 percent and so less steeply than supply (ISTAC).

Three sets of rules, one period – and no proof

Several legal changes fall into this period. Ley 6/2025 of 10 December 2025 (Canary gazette No. 246 of 12 December 2025) moved declaration and registration to the Cabildos in its articles 7 and 8 and has applied since 13 December 2025. On 19 and 21 May and on 1 June 2026 the Supreme Court voided articles 5, 8, 9 and 10 of Real Decreto 1312/2024. Ley 7/2026 of 31 July 2026 (gazette No. 163 of 14 August 2026) added new articles 11 and 12 to Ley 6/2025. None of that establishes a cause: the year-on-year change in the ISTAC series turned negative back in October 2025 (3.4 percent), before the Canary law took effect, reached minus 19.7 percent in June 2026 and has since eased to minus 13.3 percent. Against July 2026 the August stock was in fact 1,159 homes higher.

Do the homes return to the rental market?

There is no reliable answer. No authority has published how many of the vanished homes are let, sold or empty. The portal idealista puts asking rents in the Canaries in August 2026 at 15.4 euros per square metre, 5.3 percent more than a year earlier. The holiday-let association Ascav reads that as the regulation failing: “El propósito de la expulsión [...] reflejaba la intención de aliviar la situación de la vivienda residencial en las Islas. Cosa que no se ha cumplido“, its president Doris Borrego told the newspaper La Gaceta de Canarias on 16 September 2026. In the same paper the business alliance Excelcan reads the fall the other way round, as the regulation working; its vice-president José Carlos Francisco called the intervention “fundamental“. The seasonal-letting route has also narrowed: under article 11 of Ley 6/2025 a let of 31 days or less counts as touristic, and under article 12 the landlord must record in the contract why the tenant needs temporary accommodation. How many owners are letting long term instead, nobody knows.