New Construction Act Amendment Signed into Law

Where the law stands today and why you cannot afford to wait

The legislative process has concluded, and debating whether the amendment will come no longer makes sense. The Senate rejected it in August 2026, the Chamber of Deputies overrode its veto on September 9 by a vote of 104 to 53, and the President signed the bill on September 17. From a company's perspective, this changes the assignment for project preparation: this is not a proposal that might still fall apart, but rules for which the authorities themselves are already preparing.

However, one thing is still missing. As of October 5, 2026, the law had not been published in the Collection of Laws and does not have its number — in the register of regulations, the last change to the Building Act is still from June 2026. Until the number is added, it is impossible to quote with certainty the final wording of individual provisions or the dates tied to the day of publication.

This is not an obstacle for planning, only a limitation on precision. The core of the amendment did not change during the deliberations, so it is clear what will be authorized by a single decision and who will decide on it. The only uncertainty remains which specific provisions will take effect on the first day of the month following publication. The project schedule is therefore built on the dates of January 1, 2027, and January 1, 2028, not on the day of publication.

The announced constitutional complaint against the amendment must also be taken into account. By itself, it has no effect on effectiveness, and until the Constitutional Court decides otherwise, the law applies as approved under Czech legislation. For investment decisions, this means that the new regime can be relied upon, but a strategy that stands and falls with a single disputed instrument is risky, regardless of how the dispute turns out.

The practical consequence for a company is simple: from autumn 2026, it must prepare for two legal regimes simultaneously. Projects to be permitted this year or early next year are being prepared under today's rules. Projects with a view to 2028 are prepared directly under the new model, as changing documentation and negotiating with the municipality take more than a year and cannot be caught up retrospectively.

Two decisive dates: January 2027 and January 2028

The amendment does not come into effect all at once, and that is the biggest practical difference compared to how it was reported in the summer. Most changes are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2027. Some provisions are tied to the first day of the month following publication, so we will only know their date once published in the Collection of Laws. And the group of provisions that affects ordinary commercial buildings the most is not due until January 1, 2028.

The difference between those two years is organizational. The Territorial Development Office, i.e., the new central authority for spatial planning and building regulations, is to be established by January 2027 and take over the agenda for the largest construction projects. The Regional Territorial Development Offices, under which ordinary construction projects are to fall, are not scheduled to launch until January 2028. How such a merged procedure works step-by-step is analyzed in our article One stamp for large development projects.

For the owner of a hall, workshop, or business premises, this means one thing: in 2027, neither the authority nor the number of stamps will change for you. Municipal and regional building authorities will continue to operate throughout 2027, but they will conduct proceedings under the new rules. The promised single permit from a single authority will only begin to apply to these buildings from January 2028, a full year later than how the reform was presented.

The timeline is thus divided into three periods with different tasks. Until the end of 2026, today's rules run unchanged. 2027 is a year of two systems, where the largest projects go under the new central authority and everything else remains where it was. And only from 2028 will what was described in the media as the main benefit of the entire reform manifest itself.

This division is the main source of misunderstanding in the market. Communication around the amendment spoke of a single stamp and the end of fragmented permitting without distinguishing for whom and from when. A company that, based on these reports, postponed an investment decision by a year in anticipation of faster permitting will delay the project unnecessarily — for its building, neither the authority nor the number of stamps will change in 2027; only the institutional part of the reform is postponed.

What changes in the proceedings and where the existing rules end

The core of the amendment is that a single authority should decide on the permit in a single proceeding and issue a single decision. Part of the agenda currently carried out by affected bodies in the form of binding opinions is transferred directly to the building authority. The authority itself is to assess a defined scope of public interests, so there should be significantly fewer places where a project can get stuck than today. At the same time, the responsibility for the compliance of the documentation with regulations shifts to the designer.

This is also related to the repeal of the Act on the Unified Environmental Statement. Its agenda is not being moved into a single new process: most environmental interests are assessed directly in the permitting proceedings by the building authority, and only selected actions are integrated into the EIA opinion where environmental impact assessment is carried out. Anyone who underestimates this part will not just delay a partial opinion, but the entire permit.

The second area concerns appeals, and here it is necessary to make a distinction. In building proceedings, it already applies today that the appellate authority itself modifies the contested decision and cannot cancel it and return it to the first instance. This is therefore not a novelty of the amendment, but a rule already effective under the current wording of the Building Act. The amendment builds on it, so the pressure on the quality of documentation in the first instance will continue to grow.

The general Code of Administrative Procedure allows returning the matter for new consideration; however, the Building Act is a special regulation in relation to it, and therefore it is not used in building proceedings. Whether the changes affect you depends on the phase of the proceedings and whether the project falls under reserved structures — which is why the Czech legal team at ARROWS law firm assesses both variables for each project individually, not globally by type of construction.

The third area of changes concerns when a permit becomes final. A permit issued as the first action in the proceedings becomes legally binding upon delivery to the builder, and no appeal against it is admissible. In addition, a fiction of permit is newly to apply in accelerated proceedings if the authority does not decide within the deadline; however, the builder must request confirmation from the authority, so it is not automatic.

Accelerated proceedings are not open to everyone. Today's conditions are strict: the municipality must have a spatial plan, it must not be a project assessed for environmental impacts, and the builder must provide the consent of all parties to the proceedings. The amendment shifts these boundaries, but the exact wording cannot yet be verified in valid law because the act has not been published.

Which projects go under the new authority and which remain with the municipality

Deciding who will permit your project comes down to a single question: whether it belongs among reserved structures. Today, reserved structures include strategic infrastructure and other projects listed in the annex to the Building Act, and they are permitted by the Transport and Energy Building Authority. The amendment adds multi-unit residential buildings with a total floor area of 10,000 m² or more with a predominant residential function to the same category.

Classification as a reserved structure is not just a matter of the authority's jurisdiction. Such a project is by law in the public interest, which is reflected in balancing it against other protected interests in the proceedings. However, this alone is not sufficient for expropriation: expropriation is only possible for a purpose specified by a special act (Section 3, Paragraph 1 of the Act on Expropriation), and no such purpose is specified for multi-unit residential buildings.

For everything else, i.e., for the vast majority of commercial construction, jurisdiction does not change in 2027. A production hall, warehouse, office building, shop, or reconstruction of business premises do not belong among reserved structures and continue to be permitted by the building authority the company deals with today. The change only comes with the Regional Offices for Spatial Development in 2028, and until then, the negotiating reality remains unchanged.

For projects approaching the 10,000 m² threshold from below or above, it is worth calculating the total floor area before the study is completed — adjusting the volume can be a strategic decision in both directions. We cover the regime of reserved structures in detail in the article Building permits for large development projects.

The threshold is not calculated based on how the project is marketed, but on the floor area and predominant function. A mixed-use project with a commercial ground floor and apartments above is assessed according to what predominates, and the result can change even with a relatively small adjustment to the area ratio. It is with these buildings that it most often happens that the classification is discovered only during the proceedings.

What waiting to submit the application will and will not bring to the project

The most common mistake we encounter regarding the amendment is the idea that an application submitted just before the effective date will run entirely under the old regime. The transitional provision of the approved wording says the opposite: proceedings and procedures initiated and not completed before the effective date shall be completed under the wording effective from the date the amendment takes effect, unless provided otherwise. Ongoing proceedings will therefore transition to the new rules.

Exceptions to this rule exist and are essential for preparation. What you have already processed generally remains valid: binding opinions, consents, and statements of affected bodies issued before the creation of the new authorities are to retain their effects. Regarding construction requirements, meeting the existing rules in initiated proceedings should suffice if it is more advantageous for the builder. We analyze the scenarios in the article In-progress development project after the amendment.

Practically, this means that postponing the submission of the application because of the amendment makes no sense. For an ordinary commercial building, waiting for a merged permit would mean a delay of more than a year, as the Regional Offices for Spatial Development do not launch until 2028. And you do not have to wait for the new procedural rules at all, as they will also apply to proceedings that are already running.

The decision is therefore not about when to submit, but about what to have ready at the moment of submission. Which exceptions from the transitional provisions will apply to your project is determined by the preparation phase and which opinions you already hold — the Czech legal team at ARROWS law firm therefore calculate this for each project individually, and the result commonly differs for two similar buildings.

For companies that build repeatedly, it pays to decide once and then simply apply it. The standard for larger investors is an internal rule that specifies which documents must be ready before submitting the application, and a list of opinions whose validity is continuously monitored. Individual projects are then not decided anew, and no discrepancies arise between what preparation does and what financing does.

Conversely, a warning sign is a schedule that relies on the date of publication in the Collection of Laws, or a plan built on the assumption that the amendment will not affect the ongoing proceedings. In both cases, the company is planning contrary to the text of the law and will only find out when the authority begins to require something other than what the project anticipated.

Risks of transitioning to the new building administration

The risks of the transitional period do not fall evenly. They affect a company building a hall differently than a developer of a large residential project, and they also differ in when they manifest. The following overview summarizes what is most often underestimated in practice.

Summary: what management needs to decide

The amendment is signed, but it will enter your project in two waves, not one. In January 2027, a new central authority is created for the largest projects; in January 2028, the world of ordinary commercial construction will finally change. In the meantime, there is a year during which the existing authorities will already decide under the new rules, but within the old institutional structure.

For the owner and management of the company, this results in three decisions. The first is classification: will our project fall under reserved structures or not? The second is readiness: what must be completed at the moment of submission, as ongoing proceedings will transition to the new rules. The third is contractual: who will bear the risk if the new system does not start operating within the statutory deadlines?

Postponing these decisions has a cost that can be quantified. A project that only learns about its classification from the authority's request loses months in the most expensive phase of preparation. A company that signs contracts with suppliers without addressing the transitional period bears the risk alone, even though it did not cause it and cannot influence it.

The timing can be decided before the law is published. Both options can be calculated today, and only the date confirmed by the Collection of Laws will be added. On the other hand, waiting for the new system of authorities to prove itself in practice does not benefit postponement — that answer will come in the course of 2027 at the earliest, which is too late for decisions being made now.

The Prague-based legal team at ARROWS law firm prepares and reviews contract and project documentation, conducts negotiations with authorities and local governments, and prepares expert opinions on project classification and application timing. For companies that build repeatedly, we set up the procedure once, and it is used for all projects.

Write to us at consultation@arws.cz with the basic parameters of your project and its preparation phase. We will let you know which regime the project will fall under, what submission date we recommend, and what needs to be added to the documentation and contracts. You can find more about our practice on the development and building law page.