Hiking in Madeira in 2026: Fees, Reservations and What's Changed

I’ve been running a tour company here since 2012, and I’ve never seen the rules change this fast. This post is everything I’d tell a friend planning a 2026 hiking trip: what you pay, how you book, what’s open, and what I think of it all.

The fees: how we got here

The hiking fee itself isn’t new. Back in late 2024 Madeira introduced a fee on the major levadas and PR trails (€3 per person per day when it launched), payable online through the government portal, with residents exempt. The idea: more and more people on the trails, and money for maintenance.

For 2026 the system grew teeth. The big-name hikes now have their own per-hike tickets: the Peak to Peak, for example, is about €10.50 for the full route, with a smaller ticket (~€4.50) if you only go as far as the Stairway to Heaven viewpoint. [JEFF: confirm current prices and which hikes have per-hike tickets vs the day fee; these are the numbers I gave on camera in March–May 2026, flagged as “if I’m not mistaken”.]

For what it’s worth: I don’t think the prices are ridiculous. I’ve paid more in other parts of the world to walk much less. What I keep saying, on camera, to the IFCN, to anyone who’ll listen, is that if we’re charging people to hike in 2026, the money needs to visibly go back into the trails.

The reservation system: day + time slot

This was announced in late 2025: from January 2026, for the popular hikes you don’t just pay: you reserve your spot for a specific day and a specific time slot. Booking opened in the weeks after the announcement. [JEFF: confirm when booking actually went live; I said “expect around February 2026” on the November livestream.]

How it works in practice:

• You book on the government site, Simplifica. [JEFF: confirm the current booking site name/URL. Everyone I know finds it hard to use, me included.]
• The slots are narrow: roughly hour-by-hour windows when I looked at it. Personally I’d have made them three-hour windows, but nobody asked me.
• Book at least 24 hours ahead. Don’t try to book on the morning of the hike.
• They do enforce it. At the PR1 gate the staff can’t even take payment from someone without a pre-booked ticket. No booking, no entry.
• Residents are free. They just book a slot like everyone else. I still think frequent users like trail runners and the locals who quietly clear the paths deserve an easier pass, but free-for-locals is the right start.
• If weather forces a change, officially you email the IFCN (the forest service) to move your ticket to another day. It’s messy. [JEFF: current refund/change procedure worth re-checking before publish.]

The point of all this is crowd control, and honestly, Madeira needs it. Capping numbers on Pico do Arieiro on a full day is a good idea. How they police every trail, we’ll see. Expectation management, as we say here.

How to check which hikes are open

This matters more than the fees. The 2024 mountain fires closed the whole high section between the peaks for about a year and a half, and trails reopen in stages:

• Always check the official list of open trails before planning a route: search for the officially open hikes on the Visit Madeira / government pages, and check it for every hike, every time. [JEFF: link the exact official page here.]
• Don’t trust the GPS over your eyes. If a trail looks bad or closed, turn back, even if the app says that’s the way.
• If you have an accident on an officially closed trail, or during a red or orange weather alert, you’ll be rescued, but you can be billed for the rescue. On an open trail with your fee paid, rescue is covered.
• The fee does not include insurance. If you’re hiking independently, get travel insurance. (Book with a licensed company and you’re covered under Portuguese law, and do check the company actually has a licence; there are a lot of new operators about.)
• The emergency number is 112. Not 911. 112.

As of mid-2026: the Peak to Peak (PR1) reopened on 1 May, one-way from Pico do Arieiro to Pico Ruivo. Several other high-mountain trails were still closed or partial when I last checked, with more hoped to reopen. That’s exactly why you check the list.

Why we stopped selling the PR1 peak-to-peak hike

People keep asking, so here it is. We sold guided peak-to-peak hikes for years. I’ve done that trail at least a hundred times since 2014. In 2026 we pulled it, and PR8 too. [JEFF: confirm PR8’s status in the current lineup.]

The reason is the ticket system. As a small company we couldn’t reliably get tickets: I’d try to book for next week and the first availability was four, five, six weeks out. Meanwhile bigger operators were buying out blocks of tickets, sometimes not even using them. I can’t run a business on tickets I might not have, and I won’t sell a guest a promise I can’t keep. I spent two months full of anxiety, checking every night whether my bookings would still exist in the morning. So I stopped.

I’ll say the uncomfortable part too: between the €10 entry, the crowds, and the little visible maintenance (there were cement bags sitting untouched on that trail for almost two months after reopening), I’ve started calling PR1 the new tourist trap. It hurts to say, because I love that place. It’s my backyard. But we’re a company that runs away from crowds, and that’s not where the crowds are thin. [JEFF: happy with this level of candour in print? It’s what you said in the June video.]

What we offer instead (and what I’d actually do)

We rebuilt our hiking around two products: the Private Hike and the Surprise Hike. Your own guide, no ticket lottery, and trails where we saw two other people in two and a half hours of walking. That’s not a figure of speech, I counted. Madeira has beautiful non-PR levadas and old caminhos reais that need no reservation at all. For the multi-day version, our Big Walk crosses the island hike by hike.

A few honest planning notes for 2026, whatever you book:

• The four most popular hikes (25 Fontes, the Peak to Peak, Caldeirão Verde and Ponta de São Lourenço) are busiest from about 9:30am to 3pm. Start earlier or later.
• Parking is scarce at nearly every trailhead now. For one-way hikes, arrange transport: a taxi connection, an Uber/Bolt, a transfer, or a tour. You either pay with money, with time, or with your legs, so pick the one you value least on vacation.
• Fitness: go slow. If you go slow, you can go forever. If you’re properly out of shape, don’t start with the mountain hikes, and don’t hike alone.
• A “levada walk” is a hike, not a stroll. Good shoes, water, sunscreen, layers, even on the easy ones. Some have real drop-offs.
• If you want an alternative with peak-to-peak drama, Pico Grande (from the Boca da Corrida side [JEFF: confirm trailhead name; auto-captions garbled it]) is stunning, about 10km and 5 hours round trip, but honestly tougher and more vertigo-y than the Peak to Peak itself. It’s part of a PR, so the booking rules apply there too. Bring a pole for the descent.

If all of that sounds like homework, that’s the other thing that changed in 2026. The rules got complicated enough that a guide stopped being a luxury. We handle the permits, the transport, the plan B when the weather turns, and you just walk.