Madrid rents rose 17.9% in the year to April 2026 on Idealista data, the sharpest annual increase among Spanish provincial capitals, with the index putting the city at 21.30 euro per square metre per month. 1 It is the freshest read on the trajectory since the rental price-freeze prórroga (extension) fell in Congress, defeated by a Partido Popular (PP), Vox and Junts majority . Spain's 7-billion-euro housing plan, approved on 22 April, was supply-side only , so the defeat of the freeze left no legislative cap on the climb. The figure quantifies the consequence of that legislative arc: a building plan that adds homes slowly and no demand-side brake on rents in the interim.
11JUL
Madrid rents climb 17.9% in a year
2 min read
10:19UTC
Madrid rents rose 17.9% in the year to April on Idealista data, the freshest read on the trajectory since the rent-freeze extension was defeated in Congress on 28 April.
SocietyDeveloping
Key takeaway
Madrid rents rose 17.9% in a year, the month Congress killed the rent freeze that could have capped them.
Deep Analysis
In plain English
Madrid is the Spanish capital and one of Europe's most popular cities for tourists, nomads and long-term residents. According to Idealista (Spain's largest property portal), rents in Madrid rose 17.9% in the year to April 2026, reaching 21.30 euro per square metre per month. A typical 60 square metre flat in a central area now costs around 1,278 euro per month. The Spanish parliament voted on 28 April 2026 to reject a law that would have frozen rents at their current levels for two more years. The parties that defeated that law were Partido Popular (centre-right), Vox (hard-right) and Junts (Catalan independentists). Without that freeze, there is no national legal limit on how much landlords can raise rents. Spain's government has approved a large housing construction plan, but new buildings take years to complete and will not reduce rents in the short term.
Causes and effects
This Event
Madrid rents climb 17.9% in a year
The sharpest annual rent rise among Spanish provincial capitals arrives in the same month Congress removed the only legislative mechanism that could have capped it.
Led to
Spain commits EUR 7bn to housing plan
Madrid's 17.9% rent rise to April 2026 is the quantified trajectory following the defeat of the rent freeze prórroga covered in ID:2891 and ID:2892.
Occurred 22 Apr 2026
Read story →Spain's Congress sinks the rent-freeze extension
The defeat of the rental price-freeze prórroga on 28 April left no legislative mechanism to cap the 17.9% Madrid rent trajectory.
Occurred 28 Apr 2026
Read story →Spain housing fails owners and renters
Madrid rents rising 17.9% YoY to April 2026 set the rental-pressure context into which the Q1 foreclosure spike and Valencia STR cap landed.
Occurred 25 May 2026
Read story →Spain cuts short-lets, court voids tool
Madrid rents rising 17.9% year-on-year demonstrate the underlying housing pressure that the STR supply contraction is designed to relieve.
Occurred 1 Nov 2025
Read story →Spain rent decree stalls on party split
June's +7.6% Madrid rent figure updates the +17.9% year-to-April baseline.
Occurred 7 Jul 2026
Read story →Different Perspectives
Mobile nomad cohort
Long-stay remote workers face a diverging map this fortnight: Korea widens its door, Greece and Spain narrow theirs by locality and contract type, and Portugal's citizenship timeline still hinges on a regulation not yet published. None of the four moves resolves the temporada loophole nomads have used to sidestep rent caps.
Portugal government / AIMA
Assistant secretary of state Rui Armindo Freitas said on 1 July that AIMA has cut its inherited caseload of roughly one million to 30,000 complex cases, with no visa-type breakdown or new deadline given. The nationality regulation implementing Lei Organica 1/2026 remains unpublished ahead of its mid-August drafting deadline.
Thessaloniki municipality
The 1st Municipal Community froze new AMAD registrations from 1 July to 31 December and will strike off registered flats on sale, gift or inheritance, backed by fines up to EUR 40,000 on repeat offences. The ordinance needed no national vote and took effect within days.
South Korea government
Justice Minister Jung Sung-ho made the F-1-D workation visa permanent on 30 June 2026, extending the maximum stay from two to three years and cutting the income floor for under-35s who settle outside Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi. The redesign channels remote workers into depopulating provinces rather than the capital region.
Podemos / Spanish left
Secretary-general Ione Belarra said on 8 July that Podemos will not back the housing decree if it grants landlords IRPF deductions for cutting rents, the exact concession Junts wants for its seven-seat majority vote. That veto pushed Spain's decree from a July target to an end-August window with no guaranteed majority.
Non-EU nomad community (Georgia reset-base users)
Nomads who reset their Schengen clock via Georgia now watch a narrowing window: ordinary access holds only until the Commission's pre-March-2027 review, and the MIA's 2,000 GEL fine ladder has run since 1 May with no published enforcement data. Many are shifting toward Bulgaria's EUR 27,533-a-year permit instead.