Hiking Permits and Trail Fees in Madeira: The Complete Guide

If you have read older accounts of Madeira’s levada walks, there is a decent chance none of them mentioned money. That is because the system changed in 2021, and a surprising number of guides, blog posts, and even printed maps still reflect the island as it was before that date. Since 1 August 2021, every official PR-numbered trail on Madeira and Porto Santo has required a paid, pre-booked permit. It is not a donation box at the trailhead, not an optional extra for the cautious, and not something you can shrug off if you are only walking for an hour. This guide explains exactly how the system works, what it costs, how to book it, and which trails it covers, so you can plan a hiking trip without discovering the rule at the barrier.

Why This System Catches So Many Walkers Out

The permit requirement is recent enough, and specific enough to Madeira’s trail network, that it has not filtered into general knowledge the way, say, national park entry fees have elsewhere. Visitors researching a trip typically find plenty of detail on which levada to walk and how long it takes, and comparatively little on the fact that walking it legally now means booking ahead and paying a fee per person, per trail, per day. Locals who have walked these paths for decades sometimes still describe them from memory, before the rule existed. The result is that a meaningful number of people arrive at a trailhead with no booking, either unaware the system exists or assuming, reasonably enough, that it works like paying on the spot.

It does not work like that. The Madeira regional government introduced the permit system to manage numbers on trails that were becoming genuinely overcrowded, particularly the best-known routes near Funchal and in the central mountains, and to fund maintenance of a path network that is expensive to keep safe. Treat it as you would treat needing a ticket for a museum or a timed slot for an attraction: something to sort before you leave your accommodation, not something to negotiate at the gate.

How the Permit System Works

The mechanics are straightforward once you know them. Each official PR trail requires a separate booking. You choose the specific trail, the date you intend to walk it, and the number of people in your group, and you pay a fee per person for that trail on that day. If your itinerary includes two different PR trails on two different days, you make two separate bookings and pay twice. The permit is tied to the trail and the date, not to the person in general, so there is no single pass that covers everything you might want to walk during a week on the island.

Bookings are made through Simplifica, the Madeira regional government’s own digital services portal, at simplifica.madeira.gov.pt. This is the only official channel. You do not need to visit an office in person, and you do not need a third party to arrange it for you, though some organised hikes and jeep tours build the relevant permit into what they offer, which is worth checking if you are booking a guided walk rather than going independently.

Once your booking is confirmed, you are issued a confirmation that functions as your permit for that trail, on that date, for the number of people registered. Keep it accessible on your phone or print it before you leave your accommodation, since mobile signal is unreliable on much of the trail network, particularly in the mountains and inside the tunnels that several of the best-known levadas pass through.

Step-by-Step: Booking on Simplifica

The portal is in Portuguese by default but usable with a browser translation tool if needed, and the process itself is short:

1. Go to simplifica.madeira.gov.pt and locate the section for trail or PR path bookings.
2. Select the specific trail you intend to walk. Trails are listed by their PR number, so know which one you want before you start, rather than searching by the walk’s tourist name alone.
3. Choose your date. Booking a few days ahead is sensible for flexibility; for the most popular routes in high season, more advance notice reduces the risk of a fully booked slot.
4. Enter the number of people in your group. Each person needs to be included in the same booking or covered by their own.
5. Pay the fee online. Cards are accepted through the portal’s payment system.
6. Save or screenshot your confirmation. This is what you present at the trailhead checkpoint.

Do this the evening before at the latest for any trail you consider a priority, and earlier still for a trail tied to a specific event, such as a sunrise walk timed for first light. A confirmed permit removes one variable from a day that, in the mountains, already has enough of them in the form of weather and trail conditions.

Which Trails Require a Permit

The rule applies to the official PR (Pequena Rota) network across the archipelago: PR1 through PR25 on Madeira itself, and PR1 PS and PR2 PS on Porto Santo. This covers essentially every well-known levada walk and mountain path that appears in a typical visitor’s plans. A few of the most walked examples, with the sections of this site that cover each route in full:

Trail	PR number	Region	Full route guide
Vereda do Arieiro (Pico do Arieiro to Pico Ruivo)	PR1	Central mountains	PR1: Arieiro to Pico Ruivo
Achada do Teixeira to Pico Ruivo	PR1.2	Central mountains	Pico Ruivo, the short route
Ponta de São Lourenço	PR8	East	Ponta de São Lourenço
Vereda do Fanal	PR13	Paul da Serra / West	Fanal forest guide

Several other trails that visitors think of primarily by name rather than number sit within the same PR network and carry the identical fee: the 25 Fontes and Levada do Risco walk from the Rabaçal car park, the Levada do Caldeirão Verde from the Queimadas forest park, and the Levada dos Balcões from Ribeiro Frio.

Each has its own detailed route guide on this site rather than being described step by step here, since the point of this page is the system that governs all of them, not the walking notes for any single one. Start with our guide to levada walks explained or the round-up of the best levada walks to choose your route, then treat every one of them as requiring exactly the same booking process described above.

It is worth stressing what this list does not include. Madeira’s irrigation-channel network runs to more than 2,000 kilometres in total, and only a fraction of that is made up of the waymarked PR trails covered by the permit system. Minor service paths and unofficial sections of levada that are not part of the PR network fall outside this specific rule, but they are also generally less well maintained, less clearly signed, and not the routes most visitors have in mind when they picture a levada walk in Madeira. If a walk appears in a guidebook or features regularly in photographs, assume it is PR-numbered and permit-required until you have confirmed otherwise.

What Happens at the Checkpoint

On the trails where enforcement is most consistent, principally the busiest routes near Funchal and in the central mountains, rangers or staff check permits at or near the trailhead before you set off. You show your confirmation, on your phone or on paper, and it is checked against the date and the trail. Walkers who arrive without a booking are, in principle, turned back, and this is applied often enough that arriving unbooked is a real risk to a day’s plans, not a theoretical one.

Beyond the paperwork itself, this checkpoint is often the point at which trail closures are communicated. If heavy rain or a rockfall has closed a section further along, this is usually where you will find out, which is one more reason not to try to bypass the process: skipping the check means skipping the safety information tied to it.

Prices and What They Actually Cover

Item	Typical cost
Standard PR trail permit	Approx. €3 per person, per trail, per day
Multiple trails on one trip	Fee repeats for each trail and each date
Group bookings	Same per-person rate, booked together or separately

The fee is not large in absolute terms, but it adds up in a way many visitors do not anticipate. A week of varied hiking that takes in four or five different named routes means four or five separate bookings and four or five separate charges, which is worth factoring into a trip budget alongside car hire and food rather than treating as an afterthought. It is also worth being clear about what the fee does not include. It covers access to that trail on that date and nothing else. Transport to and from the trailhead, any obligatory shuttle at the start of a route such as the one required for the Rabaçal car park, and any guiding are entirely separate.

If you would rather not manage the booking process yourself, or want the transport and route-finding handled for you, a guided hike or jeep-based trip typically builds the relevant permit into the price, alongside transfers you would otherwise have to arrange independently. A sunrise jeep tour up to Pico do Arieiro is a common way to see the island’s best-known viewpoint at first light without driving the mountain road yourself in the dark, and a guided walk on the Fanal forest trail with transfer included removes both the booking and the transport question for PR13 in one step.

When Trails Close Regardless of Your Permit

A valid permit confirms your right to walk a trail on the date booked; it does not guarantee the trail is open. Madeira’s PR network closes regularly after heavy rain and rockfalls, particularly on routes cut into steep, wet terrain in the north and the central mountains, and a closure overrides a booking entirely. Check the current status with the IFCN, the forest and nature conservation authority responsible for the trails, before you travel to the trailhead, not after.

This is a separate check from the permit booking itself and easy to skip if you assume that having paid and booked means the walk is guaranteed to happen. See our notes on mountain weather and what to wear and on levada safety, tunnels, and vertigo for the conditions that most often close a route or make one unsuitable on a given day.

If a trail you have booked and paid for is closed on the day, plan for an alternative rather than assuming a refund will make the day work out. Building one or two flexible days into a longer hiking trip, of the kind laid out in our Madeira hiking week itinerary, absorbs a closure far better than a tightly scheduled single day per route.

Practical Tips for Booking and Walking

A handful of habits make the permit system straightforward rather than stressful:

• Book each trail as soon as you know your date. Popular routes, especially anything near Funchal or tied to a sunrise, can fill for a given day, and last-minute bookings narrow your options.
• Know the PR number before you search. The portal is organised by trail number rather than tourist-friendly names, so confirm the number for your intended route in advance.
• Save your confirmation offline. Mobile signal is patchy to absent on much of the trail network, including inside the unlit tunnels found on several central mountain routes, so a screenshot beats relying on a live connection at the checkpoint.
• Check trail status separately from booking. A permit and an open trail are two different things; confirm both before you drive out.
• Budget per trail, not per trip. If your plan covers several different PR routes, the fee is charged each time, so total it up rather than assuming a single payment covers the whole visit.
• Consider a guided option for logistically awkward routes. Trails that require a shuttle from a car park, like the walk from Rabaçal, or that are best done at a specific time of day, like a sunrise tour at Pico do Areeiro, are often simpler as a booked trip than as a fully independent outing, since transport, timing, and permit are handled together. A full-day guided route such as the hike from Ribeiro Frio to Portela works the same way.
• Do not assume every levada needs this permit. The rule is specific to the official PR network; it is simply that almost every walk worth doing falls inside it.

For walkers planning several days on foot rather than a single outing, it is worth reading the trail-specific guides for your shortlisted routes alongside this page, since each covers the walking notes, difficulty, and what to expect on the ground, while this page covers only the booking system that applies to all of them equally. A guided full day out such as the 25 Fontes and Rabaçal hike with flexible transfer is one way to see one of the island’s most photographed levadas without separately managing the shuttle, the booking, and the trailhead logistics on your own.

The one point worth carrying away above all others: the €3-per-person, per-trail, per-day fee on Madeira’s official PR trails is not a rumour, not an old rule that has since lapsed, and not something you can sort out casually on the day. Book it on simplifica.madeira.gov.pt before you set off, keep the confirmation to hand, and check the trail’s live status separately, and the permit system becomes a five-minute task rather than the reason a planned walk falls through.