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New Spanish Energy Certificate Rules: What Changed for Sellers in 2026
If you're planning to sell a property in Mallorca this year or next, two regulatory changes to Spain's energy performance certificate system are worth knowing about before you get too far into the process. Neither one means you need to rush out and re-certify a property you've already listed, but both affect who can legally issue your Certificado de Eficiencia Energética (CEE) and what the paperwork will look like going forward.
What Hasn't Changed
Start with the basics, because a lot of confusion online conflates this year's changes with rules that don't take effect until 2030. The CEE remains mandatory for essentially every sale and every new rental contract in Spain, rating properties from A down to G. There is still no minimum rating required to sell or let a property today. A G-rated villa can be marketed and sold exactly as it could last year. Existing certificates also keep running on their normal validity period, generally ten years, and the arrival of new certificate formats does not force anyone to renew a certificate early.
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Change One: A National Register for Technicians
The first change is about who is allowed to sign a CEE. Real Decreto 659/2025 amended the existing certification law, Real Decreto 390/2021, to create a new Registro Administrativo Centralizado de Técnicos Competentes, a centralised national register of accredited energy assessors run by Spain's Ministry for Ecological Transition. Since 23 July 2026, only technicians listed on this register can legally issue or sign a Certificado de Eficiencia Energética. In practice this shouldn't disrupt sellers working with an established architect, aparejador or energy assessor, since most professionals already active in the market have gone through accreditation. It's simply a formal safeguard that closes a gap in oversight of who was signing these documents.
Change Two: A New Certificate Format, Delayed to September
The second change is more visible: an updated CEE model, updated efficiency labels, and a new electronic reporting format (XML) that assessors will use going forward. According to MITECO, Spain's Ministry for Ecological Transition, these updated documents were originally scheduled to take effect on 1 April 2026, but the ministry pushed the date back and confirmed the new versions now apply from 30 September 2026. Until that date, assessors continue working from the current forms and labels exactly as before.
For sellers, the practical effect is timing rather than substance. A certificate issued before 30 September 2026 will look like the certificates you've seen for years and remains perfectly valid for the sale. A certificate issued after that date will use the new label design and the new electronic report structure. Either version satisfies the legal requirement to have a CEE in place at the point of sale.
The Bigger Picture: What's Still Coming
It's worth being clear about what these 2026 changes are not. They are not the minimum energy rating requirement that will start applying from 1 January 2030, when residential properties will need at least an E rating to be sold or rented, tightening to a D rating from 2033. Those thresholds stem from the EU's Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and remain several years out. Separately, Spain's ministry has also run a public consultation on a broader revision of the certification procedure to fully transpose the EU's 2024 buildings directive, but that process was still working through comments as of early 2026 and hadn't resulted in a finalised rule at the time of writing.
What This Means for Your Sale
If you're preparing to list a property in the southwest of the island, the sensible approach hasn't really changed: get your CEE from a registered, accredited technician, keep the paperwork with your other sale documents, and don't worry about re-certifying early. If your current certificate is still within its validity window, it remains fully usable regardless of which side of the September changeover your sale falls on. The one thing worth checking, particularly if you haven't used your usual assessor in a while, is that whoever signs your certificate after July 2026 is listed on the new national register, simply as a matter of due diligence.
