Deutsch
Français
Italiano
Nederlands
Spanish
Norway approves three municipalities for overnight tax
Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet approved the first three municipal plans for the overnight accommodation tax on 28 October 2026. The municipalities are Tromsø, Vågan and Stranda. A municipality with an approved plan can charge the fee from no earlier than 1 January 2027. Tromsø points to growth in Arctic tourism, Stranda to Geiranger and Vågan to Lofoten, and each case rests on the same argument: visitor pressure on roads, nature and local services.
What the Act puts in place
The besøksbidragslov was passed by the Storting in June 2025 and entered into force on 1 July 2026. It lets a municipality with heavy visitor pressure charge three percent of the price of the stay, excluding VAT. The charge covers the whole municipality and applies to a room, apartment, cabin or house let to a guest who occupies it between midnight and six in the morning for under 30 consecutive days. That reaches hotels, hotel ships, hostels, holiday lets and private letting outside commercial activity. A municipal council can also limit the charge to specific months of the year. The Act additionally opens for a cruise fee and for a scheme in Longyearbyen, both of which still need regulations of their own before they apply.
Who carries the duty
The party that sells the stay calculates the fee, collects it from the guest and pays it to the municipality where the overnight takes place. The Act sets a second rule beside that one. Where a provider who is not registered in the VAT register has another party broker the stay and collect the payment, the intermediary answers to the municipality. Businesses registered in the VAT register report and pay on the same schedule as their VAT return. Everyone else pays once a year, by 10 March of the following year. A municipality can ask for the records behind a calculation, and the notice period is at least four weeks. It can also impose a running daily penalty, capped at five times the statutory fee, on a provider who ignores those duties.
What still has to happen before January
Plan approval is the first of two steps. The municipal forskrift still has to be adopted before a single krone is charged, and the department is still processing applications from Lyngen, Karlsøy, Vega, Bodø and the six Lofoten municipalities that filed one joint plan. Vågan appears twice in the record, once as an approved plan and once inside the Lofoten application.
A platform selling stays in these three markets needs the municipality flag, the rate and the exemption rules in place before the first night of 2027, and the same data for every municipality that follows. Trippz monitors the local forskrifter as they are published and pushes the update to every jurisdiction it covers. Details on the Trippz for platforms page. Background in the Norway tourist tax guide.
Sources: Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet, three notices of 28 October 2026:
