Winnipeg Short-Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Winnipeg and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you're allowed to. Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, Canada, has run a genuine licensing system for short-term rentals since April 1, 2024, and unlike some larger North American cities, it never banned the whole-unit model outright. Get the city to issue you a licence, and you can rent out your entire house, condo or apartment.

That said, don't list anything before you read the catch. If you bought a non-primary property after February 23, 2023, you're out of luck: only a primary residence, or a non-primary property owned on or before that date, qualifies for a licence, and secondary suites don't qualify at all no matter when you bought the building. On top of that, 2026 brings a change most 2024-era write-ups never saw coming. Manitoba is reclassifying short-term rental properties for tax purposes, which raises the taxable share of a lot of hosts' assessments starting this year.

So here's what this guide actually walks through: who qualifies, what the licence costs in 2026, the documents you'll need, the three tax layers stacked on a Winnipeg booking, how hard the city enforces its own rules, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from the City of Winnipeg's or Manitoba's own pages, checked in July 2026, and I've flagged the handful of things I genuinely couldn't confirm rather than guessing at them. If you're weighing a Winnipeg property against a market with fewer restrictions, run both through BNBCalc before you commit to either one.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Winnipeg

Before you commit to anything, it helps to know exactly what you're getting into. Winnipeg defines a short-term rental in plain terms: a house, condo or apartment rented for payment for a continuous period of less than 30 nights, including a bed-and-breakfast run out of the owner's own home. That definition is the whole starting point, and everything else in this guide sits on top of it.

Zoning decides whether your specific property even qualifies, and it does so before ownership matters at all. An STR has to be a permitted use under the Winnipeg Zoning By-law No. 200/2006 or, downtown, the Downtown Winnipeg Zoning By-law No. 100/2004, and the city's Planning, Property & Development Department signs off on that as part of your application. One rule catches people out more than any other: secondary suites are not permitted to be used as short-term rentals, full stop. If your plan was to rent out a basement suite while you live upstairs, that plan fails zoning no matter how clean the rest of your application looks. No exceptions.

Ownership decides the rest, and it splits into two genuinely different paths. A primary residence is the easy one: any Winnipeg resident can license the home they actually live in, and there's no restriction on when they bought it. Rent the whole thing while you're away, or rent spare bedrooms while you're there, and either way the city treats it as straightforward. A non-primary residence works differently, and this is where most of the real gatekeeping happens: it only qualifies if you owned it on or before February 23, 2023, the exact date council approved the whole regulatory framework. Buy a Winnipeg investment property today, and a short-term rental licence for it simply isn't available to you, no matter how you structure the purchase.

A single applicant can hold up to four licences total: one for a primary residence, plus as many as three grandfathered non-primary properties. Owners and principal tenants have to be Winnipeg residents themselves, and while a corporation or partnership can own a grandfathered non-primary rental, it can't own a primary residence, since the bylaw defines that as belonging to an individual person. Renting instead of owning doesn't shut you out either: a tenant can operate a short-term rental with a signed letter of permission from the landlord, and a condo owner needs the same from the condo board before the city will even look at the application.

Clear all of that, and you're looking at an actual licensing process, not just a definition.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Winnipeg

A City of Winnipeg business licence has been required for every short-term rental since April 1, 2024, and operating without one, or while an application sits unapproved, counts as a violation on its own. Licences run for one year from the date you apply and have to be renewed annually, with no proration for a partial year, so applying in November costs exactly the same as applying in January.

Approval is not a rubber stamp. Once your application is complete, three separate reviews have to clear before the city issues a licence number: an on-site inspection by a City of Winnipeg licensing inspector, a zoning sign-off from Planning, Property & Development, and a check by the Winnipeg Police Service Records Review Board covering every operator named on the application. Only once all three clear can you legally advertise the property or accept a booking.

The fee itself scales with what you're licensing, and the city raised most tiers heading into 2026. Here's the schedule the city's fees page lists, effective January 1, 2026 and still current as of July 2026:

Licence type	Annual fee (2026)
Primary residence	$280
Non-primary, 1 bedroom	$280
Non-primary, 2 bedrooms	$560
Non-primary, 3 bedrooms	$840
Non-primary, 4 bedrooms	$1,115
Non-primary, 5 bedrooms	$1,400
Non-primary, 6 bedrooms (maximum)	$1,680
Booking platform, 1 to 100 listings	$1,075
Booking platform, 101 to 500 listings	$2,700
Booking platform, more than 500 listings	$4,310

That non-primary scale isn't arbitrary. Terry Cormier, the city's licensing coordinator, told Global News the city simply took the primary residence fee and multiplied it by the number of rooms, which is why every tier lands on a clean multiple of $280. Worth knowing if you've been reading an older guide: the primary residence fee was $260 when licensing launched in 2024, so this has already gone up once, and the fees page notes the whole schedule is subject to annual inflationary increases going forward. Budget for more drift at your next renewal rather than assuming the number holds.

Holding the licence also means living inside a fairly detailed rulebook every day you operate, and none of the following pieces are optional:

• Cap every booking at 29 consecutive nights. Go to 30 or more and it isn't a short-term rental under the bylaw at all, and the city fines that mistake too.
• Limit occupancy to two adults per bedroom, with no separate cap on minors.
• If you're licensing a primary residence and staying in it, rent one fewer bedroom than the home actually has, with no cap on the number of nights per year. Leave the property empty during a booking instead, and the whole thing can go for up to 150 nights a year, not more.
• Book only through a licensed platform, and put your licence number on every listing.
• Post your name, licence number and a monitored contact number near the exterior door if you're not in residence, and stay genuinely reachable for the length of every stay.
• Keep working smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors and fire extinguishers in the main living area, tested after every stay and replaced at least every 10 years.
• Post an emergency exit plan and the city's human trafficking awareness poster inside the unit.
• Tell the city within 10 days of any change to your name, phone, email or mailing address.

None of that rulebook enforces itself until you're actually licensed, though, and getting licensed starts with the paperwork the city wants on your application.

Required Documents for Winnipeg Short-Term Rentals

Since a rejected application costs you time you didn't plan on losing, it's worth getting the paperwork right on the first pass. The Operator's Guide lists exactly what has to accompany your application through the city's short-term rental portal:

• Two pieces of government-issued identification, at least one with a photo.
• A Winnipeg Police Service Vulnerable Sector Check, completed within the last six months. Only Winnipeg residents over 18 can apply for one online; anyone else applies for the more limited criminal record check instead.
• A completed Winnipeg Police Service Record Review Form for every operator named on the licence.
• A letter of permission from the property owner, if you're a tenant rather than the owner.
• A letter of permission from the condo board, if the unit is a condominium.
• A floor plan or a safety plan, depending on what you're licensing. A primary residence needs a floor plan with rented bedrooms and every fire exit clearly labelled. A non-primary residence needs a fuller safety plan marking bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, every emergency exit, and the location of every smoke detector, carbon monoxide detector and fire extinguisher. Neither has to be professionally drawn or to scale.

Do check your documents against those categories before you submit, since a floor plan missing a labelled exit is exactly the kind of thing that stalls an application at the inspection stage rather than the paperwork stage, costing you weeks instead of minutes.

Assuming your application clears and you're able to start hosting, there's still tax waiting for you.

Winnipeg Short-Term Rental Taxes

Winnipeg stacks three separate layers on a single booking, two of them set well above the city and one entirely its own, so it's worth taking each in turn rather than lumping them together.

Tax	Rate	Collected by
Federal Goods and Services Tax (GST)	5%	Canada Revenue Agency
Manitoba Retail Sales Tax (RST)	7%	Manitoba Finance
Winnipeg Accommodation Tax	6%	City of Winnipeg

The GST is the federal 5% charge that applies to most goods and services across Canada, run by the Canada Revenue Agency rather than the province or the city. I wasn't able to load the CRA's own page on platform-based accommodation from where I did this research. So treat the exact registration mechanics, meaning whether Airbnb or you personally has to register once your rental income crosses the usual threshold, as something to confirm with the CRA or an accountant, not something this guide has verified firsthand.

Manitoba's RST sits at 7% and applies to lodging booked for under a month. Since December 2021, RST Bulletin 064 has required online accommodation platforms to register as vendors and collect and remit RST on the bookings they process, including any booking or cleaning fee bundled into the price, so a listing sold entirely through a platform generally arrives with that piece already handled. Stay a full month or more in one place, and the RST exemption for long-term lodging kicks in instead.

The Accommodation Tax is Winnipeg's own, set at 6% of the full booking price plus cleaning fees, charged before GST and RST are added on top. The rate moved from 5% to 6% the same day licensing took effect. A source still quoting 5% is out of date. Unlike RST, this one doesn't reliably arrive pre-collected: the Operator's Guide names only Vrbo as remitting the tax directly to the city, so if your bookings run through Airbnb, filing the quarterly return is still on you.

Filing runs quarterly, due 20 days after each quarter ends: April 20, July 20, October 20 and January 20. Miss the deadline and the penalty starts at 2.5% per month from the 21st day onward, and the city can revoke or refuse to renew your licence over unpaid tax on top of that fine. Make sure you file every quarter, too, even the ones with zero bookings, since a blank return is still required.

One more cost belongs in this conversation even though nobody collects it per booking: a provincial reclassification of how short-term rental properties get taxed, and it's landing on assessment rolls this very year. That's a Manitoba-wide change rather than a Winnipeg one, so it deserves its own explanation.

Manitoba Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That reclassification is worth understanding on its own terms, because Manitoba has no dedicated short-term rental statute the way some provinces do. Its role above Winnipeg is narrower than a city framework. It sets the RST and GST already covered, it runs the property assessment system Winnipeg's own bylaws sit on top of, and in 2024 it changed how a short-term rental property gets classed for tax purposes.

Bulletin #2024-27 from Manitoba's Department of Municipal and Northern Relations reclassifies short-term rental properties used for transient accommodation of 90 days or fewer a year. They move out of the Residential class, taxed at 45% of market value assessment, and into the "Other" class, taxed at 65%. That's roughly a 44% jump in the taxable base for an affected property, before the municipal mill rate even enters the math. The policy exempts only owner-occupied bed-and-breakfasts with four rooms or fewer, property inspections for it began in spring 2025, and the updated status is what's actually showing up on 2026 assessment rolls right now.

Keep in mind that this increase applies whether or not you've noticed it on your own bill yet, so it's worth checking your roll number against the new classification rather than budgeting off last year's property tax.

Outside Winnipeg, Manitoba doesn't mandate short-term rental licensing at all, so whether a given municipality regulates it, and how, is a local decision from council to council. Winnipeg's bylaw is the most developed system in the province by a wide margin, which is also part of why a genuine province-wide licensing framework doesn't exist yet beyond taxation.

None of that reclassification changes how hard the city actually checks whether you're following its own rules day to day, and that's worth asking about directly.

Does Winnipeg Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Yes, and it checks at more than one point rather than only after a complaint lands. Enforcement starts before you're even licensed: the Police Records Review Board and the on-site inspection both happen at the application stage, not afterward, and the city backs all of it with a specific, published penalty schedule rather than case-by-case discretion.

The Operator's Guide lays out fixed dollar penalties by offence:

Offence	Penalty
Operating without a licence	$1,000
Failing to report an information change within 10 days	$500
Primary residence rented more than 150 nights without the operator in residence	$1,000
Failing to post name, licence number and a monitored contact number	$500
Renting for a continuous period of 30 days or more	$500
Renting to more than one party for the same period	$1,000
No emergency exit plan posted	$1,000
Continuing to operate after expiry, suspension or revocation	$1,000
Failing to maintain three years of records	$500
Failing to maintain fire safety equipment	$1,000
Missing carbon monoxide detectors or fire extinguishers	$1,000
Listing outside a licensed platform	$1,000
Advertising without a licence number	$1,000

Unpaid accommodation tax carries its own separate consequence on top of any fine: the city can revoke your licence or refuse to renew it, which is a heavier hit than a one-time penalty since it ends your ability to operate at all. And the city has real money behind checking up on all of this now. Winnipeg accepted a $767,499 grant from the federal government's Short-Term Rental Enforcement Fund, running from June 2025 through March 2027, earmarked specifically to boost enforcement of the rules it began licensing in 2024. That's federal money layered on top of city bylaw officers, and it points toward enforcement getting more resourced through 2027, not less.

I'll be upfront about what I couldn't confirm here. Some outlets have reported specific compliance-rate figures and illegal-listing counts for Winnipeg, but those particular pages wouldn't load for me during this research pass, so I'm not repeating a number I couldn't verify myself. What's solidly documented is the direction: more inspection capacity, a real penalty schedule, and a licence the city can genuinely pull.

Given all of that, if you still want to host here, the order you tackle these steps in actually matters.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Winnipeg

1. Confirm your ownership path first. Check whether you're licensing a primary residence or a non-primary one, and if it's non-primary, confirm you owned it on or before February 23, 2023. There's no route around that date.
2. Rule out a secondary suite and check zoning. An STR has to be a permitted use under the applicable zoning by-law, and a secondary suite doesn't qualify no matter what else checks out.
3. Line up your permissions. Get a signed letter from your landlord if you're a tenant, or from the condo board if the unit is a condo.
4. Get your police paperwork moving. Apply for a Vulnerable Sector Check and complete the Record Review Form for every operator on the application.
5. Build your floor plan or safety plan, and install the required smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors and fire extinguishers before you apply, not after.
6. Apply through the city's short-term rental portal and pay the fee, sized to your licence type and bedroom count.
7. Wait for all three approvals: the on-site inspection, the zoning sign-off, and the Police Records Review Board decision. Your licence number only arrives once every one of them clears.
8. Post everything the bylaw requires: your name, licence number and contact info at the exterior door, the emergency exit plan inside, and the human trafficking poster.
9. List only through a licensed booking platform, and put your licence number on the listing itself.
10. Set up your tax handling before your first guest. Confirm whether your platform remits the Accommodation Tax for you, and register for RST and GST as needed.
11. Diarize your renewal date and your assessment status. Licences run one year from the date of application, and the 2026 property reclassification is worth checking against your own roll number too.

Who to Contact in Winnipeg about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step trips you up along the way, a short list of offices covers nearly everything.

Licensing, applications and general questions

Licensing & Bylaw Enforcement runs the whole short-term rental program and is the first call for anything about your application, your licence or the rules attached to it.

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 204-986-2234
• Address: Main Floor, 395 Main Street, Winnipeg, MB R3B 3N8
• Apply or renew: through the short-term rental accommodations page

Police record checks

The Winnipeg Police Service handles the Vulnerable Sector Check and Record Review Form every operator needs.

• Non-emergency line: 204-986-6222
• Records Compilation Unit (authenticity questions on a completed check): 204 986-7456
• Email: [email protected]
• Address: Winnipeg Police Headquarters, 245 Smith Street, Winnipeg, MB R3C 1K1
• Apply online: through the Winnipeg Police Service's online record checks system

Provincial sales tax

RST and GST both sit with different governments than the city, so route those questions to Manitoba Finance rather than Licensing & Bylaw Enforcement.

• Phone: 204-945-5603, toll-free 1-800-782-0318
• Email: [email protected]
• Address: 101-401 York Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3C 0P8

Property assessment and general city inquiries

Questions about the 2026 property reclassification, or anything that doesn't fit neatly into the categories above, go through 311.

• Phone: 311 within Winnipeg, or 1-877-311-4974 from outside it

Whichever office actually picks up, it's worth knowing how hosts on the ground already talk about all of this before you dive in yourself.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Winnipeg on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Since enforcement is getting better funded, it's worth knowing how hosts on the ground are actually reacting to it. I want to be upfront about the limits of what I found here. Winnipeg is a smaller market than most of the US metros this kind of guide usually covers, and I wasn't able to locate a dedicated BiggerPockets thread on Winnipeg's rules that resolved to a page I could read. Reddit sits outside what this research can responsibly cite, too, given the platform's own restrictions on commercial use of its data. So what follows is a read of the publicly documented reaction rather than a forum survey, and you should weigh it accordingly.

The clearest theme, echoed across the local legal commentary I did read, is that the February 23, 2023 ownership cutoff is the wall investors keep running into. Anyone who bought after that date with an Airbnb business plan in mind has no legal path to a non-primary licence, full stop, and that's a harder problem than any fee increase or new tax layer. Condo owners face a related friction point, too: the condo board's letter of permission gives the board real veto power over whether a unit can be licensed at all, which puts the decision in the hands of neighbours rather than city hall.

On the operator side, the city's own posture reads as more collaborative than adversarial. Cormier's comments to Global News, that the department is still open to discussions with operators and platforms about future adjustments, suggest a program that's still being tuned rather than one locked in stone. That fits with the fee schedule already moving once, from $260 to $280 on the primary tier, and the accommodation tax already moving once, from 5% to 6%, both since the 2024 launch. Assuming that pattern holds, don't be surprised if the numbers move again before your next renewal.

Whichever side of that February 2023 line you land on, run the actual numbers before you commit any capital. BNBCalc will show you what a specific Winnipeg address can realistically earn once you net out the licence fee, the three tax layers, and this year's property reclassification. The Winnipeg market page breaks that revenue picture down by neighbourhood, which is worth a look whether you already own a primary residence or you're still deciding on a grandfathered non-primary property.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Winnipeg in 2026?

Yes, provided you hold a City of Winnipeg short-term rental licence. Any Winnipeg resident can license a primary residence with no restriction on when they bought it. A non-primary property only qualifies if it was owned on or before February 23, 2023, and secondary suites are never eligible regardless of ownership date. Operating without a valid licence is a bylaw violation carrying a $1,000 penalty, and the property can't legally take bookings until the city has issued a licence number.

How much does a Winnipeg short-term rental licence cost in 2026?

A primary residence licence costs $280 a year. Non-primary licences scale by bedroom count, from $280 for one bedroom up to $1,680 for six, the maximum the city allows. Booking platforms pay their own licence fee too, tiered from $1,075 to $4,310 depending on how many Winnipeg listings they carry. These are the rates effective January 1, 2026, already an increase over the 2024 launch price, and the city has said the whole schedule is subject to further annual inflationary increases.

Do you have to collect tax on a Winnipeg short-term rental?

Yes, three layers. The federal GST runs 5%, Manitoba's RST runs 7%, and Winnipeg's own Accommodation Tax runs 6% of the booking price plus cleaning fees. RST is generally collected by the booking platform on your behalf. The Accommodation Tax often isn't: Vrbo remits it directly to the city, but bookings through Airbnb or most other platforms leave the quarterly filing and payment to you, due 20 days after each quarter ends.

Can you buy a property today and license it as a non-primary short-term rental in Winnipeg?

No. Winnipeg's bylaw only allows a non-primary short-term rental licence for a property owned on or before February 23, 2023, the date council approved the regulatory framework. A property bought after that date can only be licensed if it becomes your actual primary residence. There's no appeal, exception or fee that reopens that door for a newly purchased investment property, no matter how it's structured or who owns it.

What changed for Winnipeg short-term rental taxes in 2026?

Two things. The city's Accommodation Tax had already risen from 5% to 6% back in April 2024, so any source still quoting 5% is out of date. More significantly, Manitoba began reclassifying short-term rental properties used 90 days or fewer a year from the Residential property class, taxed at 45% of assessed value, into the Other class, taxed at 65%. That change appears on 2026 assessment rolls and raises the taxable base on an affected property by roughly 44%, on top of the existing tax layers.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.