Which Madeira levadas and trails need booking, and what does SIMplifica cost?

The standard SIMplifica fee is EUR 4.50 per person per trail. PR1 (Pico do Areeiro to Pico Ruivo) is EUR 10.50 for the full one-way route, or EUR 4.50 for the shorter Pedra Rija section, and the full PR1 ticket already covers PR1.1, PR1.2 and PR1.3 at no extra fee. Children aged 12 or under pay nothing, but they still need their own registration and a booked slot. If you hike two or more trails, SIMplifica automatically applies a cheaper daily (EUR 9.00), 3-day (EUR 22.50) or 7-day (EUR 52.50) combined tariff. PR1 is never folded into one of those combined tariffs.

Most of Madeira's trails are free to walk with no booking. Only the 33 regulated PR trails listed above need a paid SIMplifica reservation; every other route, including most levadas and coastal paths, is free.

A refund is issued only if IFCN officially closes the trail. If you simply miss your slot, change your plans, or the weather turns, the fee is not refunded. Check the live trail status before your date so you do not lose the booking.

Yes. PR1 (Pico do Areeiro to Pico Ruivo) and PR9 (Caldeirão Verde) are both regulated and need a SIMplifica booking. PR1 is EUR 10.50 for the full one-way route or EUR 4.50 for the Pedra Rija section, and the full PR1 ticket also covers PR1.1, PR1.2 and PR1.3; PR9 is the standard EUR 4.50. The full list of trails that need booking is above.

Each regulated trail has a daily cap, so popular routes sell out in summer. If your date is full, try a different time slot, an earlier or later day (the booking window is about six days), or pick one of the many free trails instead. Levadas shows live availability and which nearby trails are open.

No. Of the 42 officially classified IFCN trails across Madeira and Porto Santo, only 33 need a paid SIMplifica reservation. The other classified trails, plus every community and municipal route, are free to walk with no booking.

The fee is not refunded if the weather turns, so a slot booked on a poor day is money lost. Levadas reads the live conditions for your reserved trail: the 0 to 100 score, the weather along the whole path, and the best time window, so you know before you set off whether it is the day worth walking, or whether to shift your plan while the six-day booking window still allows it.

No. Reservations are made only on IFCN's official Simplifica portal. Levadas is an independent conditions tool: it shows live availability and which day and slot are worth reserving, then you book on the portal. It never charges you and is not affiliated with IFCN.

Residents of Madeira go free, on a resident card obtained through the SIMplifica portal plus a citizen card. Children aged 12 and under are free whether they live here or not. So are people with a disability of 60 percent or more, and one legal guardian walking with them, on documentary proof. Everyone exempt still has to register and hold a booked slot: the slot is a headcount before it is a payment.

IFCN allows roughly 15 minutes either side of your slot, and a little more if you are walking several trails in sequence. The point of the slot is to spread walkers through the day, so the tolerance stops there. Each slot also splits its places between visitors, residents and tour operators, and those pools do not lend to each other, which is why a trail can be full for you and open for someone else.

You have 10 working days from the booking date, and after that IFCN will not process it. A refund or a reschedule is granted only when IFCN or the authorities officially closed or restricted the trail on your date. Ask IFCN directly, not the SIMplifica call centre, which handles the portal and not the money. For a refund send the tickets, the invoice, your IBAN and SWIFT/BIC, the account holder name and the address; refunds are paid by bank transfer only. For a reschedule send the tickets, the invoice and the new date and slot you want. A reschedule stays on the same trail unless the closure is a long one.

EUR 10.50 covers the whole of PR1 plus PR1.1 (Vereda da Ilha) and PR1.2 (Vereda do Pico Ruivo) with no second ticket, and PR1.3 (Vereda da Encumeada) once it reopens. PR1 runs both ways only between Pico do Areeiro and the Pedra Rija viewpoint. Past Pedra Rija it is one way toward Pico Ruivo, so you come off the mountain by PR1.1 or PR1.2 and IFCN does not take you back to your car: arrange that before you book. The cheaper EUR 4.50 ticket buys the Pedra Rija section and the walk back, nothing more, and an old Pedra Rija ticket is not converted into a full one.

Request a shuttle back to your car

Two reasons, and between them they cover every case. Either the trail is closed, so nothing is on sale, and the live status on each trail page tells you which. Or IFCN does not manage it and only sells slots for the trails it manages: PR3, PR3.1 and PR4 belong to Funchal council and PR23 to the Caniço parish, so those four are open, free, and need no booking at all.

Two different desks, and sending your question to the wrong one costs days. Anything about the portal itself, an error message or a card that will not go through, goes to the SIMplifica Contact Center, open on working days from 09:00 to 18:00 on +351 800 29 90 90 or on WhatsApp at +351 926 155 465. Anything about a refund or a reschedule after IFCN closed your trail goes to IFCN instead, by email to helpdesk.ifcn@madeira.gov.pt, and you have 10 working days from the booking date to ask.

No. IFCN states that a guide is not mandatory on any classified PR trail in Madeira, and that the decision rests with the hiker. A guide can add a lot, on reading the terrain and on the natural and cultural detail you would otherwise walk past, but no booking, no fee and no trail requires one.

It becomes a contraordenação, an administrative offence under Madeira's own trail law (Decreto Legislativo Regional n.º 24/2022/M, art. 13), separate from the SIMplifica fee itself. The fine runs from €50 to €250 for an individual, or €150 to €500 for a company, and covers entering, walking or staying on the trail without paying the fee, or refusing to show proof of payment when asked. Officers can also seize equipment used in the offence. Booking on SIMplifica first is cheaper and takes minutes.

Almost certainly not. The booking window is short, about the next six days, so a date further out has not opened yet rather than gone. Come back when your date falls inside the window and it will appear. If your date is already inside the window and you still see nothing, that is the other problem: either the places have gone or the trail is not on sale, and the live status on each trail page says which.

No. IFCN sells slots through that portal and nowhere else, so there is no second channel to fall back on. What you do have is time: the booking window is about six days wide, so unless you are walking tomorrow, try again later the same day. Do not walk the trail unbooked as a workaround, because that is an administrative offence under Madeira's own trail law and it carries a fine. If it is still failing as your date closes in, the contact answer on this page names the desk that handles portal faults. We have not found a published status page or a maintenance schedule for the portal, so nobody can tell you in advance how long an outage lasts.

No trailhead we know of has a ticket desk, and IFCN takes reservations only through the portal, so paying at the start of the walk is not an option. Booking on the way is, since the portal works from a phone, but leaving it that late is a gamble: the places may be gone by then, and setting off without one is an offence rather than an oversight.

Not on your own, going by what is published. IFCN describes a reschedule for one case only, where it closed or restricted the trail on your date, and that request has its own deadline, covered in the refund answer on this page. For a date you simply chose wrong, we found nothing on the portal or in IFCN's published rules that lets you change it, and the fee is not refunded for a change of plan. Treat the date you confirm as the date you walk.

SIMplifica is the Madeira government's official online booking portal, run by IFCN, for reserving a paid time slot on the 33 regulated trails that require one. It only handles bookings and fees; it is not a permit system, and free trails need no visit to it at all.

No. Camping is only permitted in IFCN-licensed forest zones, each requiring its own booked licence through the SIMplifica portal. Camping outside these designated areas is not a licensed activity.

IFCN licenses camping in 17 named forest zones: Bica da Cana, Boca das Voltas, Caramujo (São Vicente), Carreiras (Santa Cruz), Casa do Sardinha (Ponta de São Lourenço), Chão das Feiteiras (Machico), Chão dos Louros (São Vicente), Estanquinhos-Fontes Ruivas, Fanal (Porto Moniz), Fonte do Bispo (Calheta), Pico das Pedras (Santana), Pico Ruivo, Poiso (Santa Cruz), Ribeira do Alecrim, Terreiros (Santa Cruz), Cruzinhas (Calheta) and Cruzes de Baixo. Each has its own booking slot on the SIMplifica portal.

Camping is licensed through SIMplifica at EUR 5.00 per tent per night. Residents of Madeira with an active resident card go free, but registration is still required even when exempt: for carrying-capacity and safety reasons, IFCN requires every camper to hold the authorisation document.

No. You must hold the SIMplifica authorisation document before you camp, and show it to Polícia Florestal (forest police) on request. Camping without one is not licensed.

IFCN requires a minimum 5 metre spacing between tents (unless campers share a household), mandatory pack-out of all litter regardless of type, and no fires outside designated spots. Open fires are banned across every natural area because of wildfire risk.

We hold no official figure for this. Neither IFCN's camping page nor the SIMplifica service page publishes a penalty amount for camping outside the licensed system, and this is a different question from the fine for walking a regulated trail without paying, which sits under a separate statute. If you need the current rule, IFCN's own camping page and Polícia Florestal are the authorities to ask.