relocoast
Main cathedral of the Palma de Mallorca city in Spain
Mallorca · Balearic Islands

Palma de Mallorca

5Winter liveability / 5To the sea 200 mTo the airport 15 min · PMIPer m² 3 753

Palma is the capital of Mallorca and of the Balearic Islands: four hundred and thirty-five thousand people, close to half the island's population. It sits at the head of a bay in the south-west, two hundred and fifty kilometres from the mainland. The old centre is small and dense, with the Gothic cathedral of La Seu above it, visible from the sea before the city itself.

Palma is the only place on the islands in our base with a railway station, which says a good deal. There is a university, hospitals, international schools and an airport a quarter of an hour away, and all of it runs in February exactly as in August. The north and east of the island empty out in winter. Palma does not. The other side is price: the square metre here is above Málaga's and Alicante's and well above the Canaries. A fifth of residents are foreign.

Worth a trip nearby
  • Alcúdia · 55 kmthe north of the island, Roman ruins and the town wall
  • Sóller · 30 kmthe orange valley and the old tram to the sea
  • Sa Calobra · 70 kmthe gorge and the mountain road in the Tramuntana
Resalesource
3 753€/m²
+8.5% price growth yoy
appraised value, Ministerio de Vivienda
New build
5 800€/m²
Rent, 2 bed
1400€/mo
Populationsource
443 196
Foreign residents 20.7%
Winter humidity
68%
Sunshine hours per year
2 800h
Rent, 1 bed
1000€/mo
International schools
7
Internet
550Mbps

Palma de Mallorca sits in Mallorca, Balearic Islands, right on the water. You can live here without a car: our rating is 5 out of 5, rare on the Spanish coast, and the town has its own train station. The airport is 15 minutes away, closer than for most places in the database. Summers are packed: tourist load hits 5 out of 5 at the peak against 2 in winter.

Hospital, terrain, getting around

Nearest hospitalsource
15min by car
Hospital Universitari Son Espases
Palma · 10.3 km · public
Terrainsource
flat
Centre at 20 m, 22 m of elevation change
under 25 m of elevation change within 700 m — pram, bicycle, bad knees all fine
Car-freeour rating
5/5
easy without a car
Stations: Palma · bus stops within 1.5 km: 175

Where from: the Ministry of Health hospital catalogue, road time · elevations from the Copernicus terrain model · OpenStreetMap · ratings for car-free and hospital minutes are ours.

Sea temperature

6 months above 20 °C
15
J
15
F
15
M
16
A
19
M
23
J
26
J
27
A
26
S
23
O
20
N
17
D

Tourist load

2
J
2
F
3
M
3
A
3
M
4
J
5
J
5
A
4
S
3
O
3
N
2
D

On the map

What tenants actually pay

sourced
Median
800€/mo
75th percentile
995€/mo
Flat size
85

This is the median rent on active leases — tax records for 2024, a sample of 31 529 leases. It includes long-standing contracts at unchanged rents, so it sits below what is asked today: our estimate of asking rent is 1 400 € for a two-bedroom.

The point of the 75th percentile: it is closer to what is being signed now than the median. The gap between them shows how much a new tenant overpays relative to long-standing ones.

Where from: SERPAVI, Ministerio de Vivienda · municipality: Palma

Rent by number of bedrooms

asking price, estimate
1 bedroom1 000/mo
2 bedrooms1 400/mo
3 bedrooms1 820/mo
Median of active leases, 2024800/mo

Asking prices are what long lets are advertised at today; the registry is what tenants pay on signed leases, including old ones. The gap between them is your negotiating argument.

Schools nearby

from registries
  • Agora Portals International SchoolPortals Nous, CalviàBritishIBSpanish bilingualEnglish, Spanish, CA · 0–18 · privateFirst school in the Balearic Islands with the full IB continuum (since 2011)
  • Queen's CollegePalma de MallorcaBritishEnglish · 3–18 · private
  • King Richard III CollegePortals Nous, CalviàBritishSpanish bilingualEnglish, Spanish · 3–18 · private
  • Bellver International CollegePalma de Mallorca (Marivent)BritishEnglish, Spanish · 5–18 · privateSpain's longest-established privately owned British school (since 1950)
  • Eurocampus Deutsche Schule MallorcaPalma de MallorcaGermanGerman, Spanish · 3–18 · private

Checked against registries and school sites: 2026-09-17. Fees are on each school's site: nobody publishes them centrally.

2

Renting without a Spanish contract

How realistic a long lease is without a nómina — on foreign income, savings or prepayment.

  • A community with its own services: agencies have dealt with foreigners before
  • Prices rising 8.5% a year — the landlord picks, and the first filter is a nómina
  • A big city: queues at viewings and a bank guarantee as the norm

This is our model, not a measurement: demanding a nómina is an individual landlord's practice and nobody publishes it. The rating is derived from the share of foreign residents, the presence of a community with services, price growth, seasonality of the stock and the size of the town.

Who lives here

INE 2025
Foreign residents on the padrón
20.7%
91,954 of 443,196 · Palma
  • Colombia13 306
  • Italy10 003
  • Morocco5 536
  • Germany4 749
  • Argentina4 593
  • China3 708
  • Romania3 454
  • Bulgaria3 279
Communities and services in their language
  • deGerman~15 000school, doctors or lawyers in the languageHistorically the island's largest foreign community: agents, doctors, lawyers in German
  • enEnglish~5 000school, doctors or lawyers in the language

Where from: INE, Censo Anual de Población · the register-based census counts padrón registrations by citizenship on 1 January, not everyone living here: seasonal owners and the unregistered are outside it, and naturalised residents count as Spanish.

Winter direct flights from PMI

January 2026/2715 min to the airport
  • Germany18
  • United Kingdom8
  • Italy4
  • other countries4
  • Switzerland3
  • Netherlands2
  • France2
  • Austria1
  • Belgium1
  • Sweden1
  • Denmark1
  • Czechia1
  • Poland1

Destinations served at least weekly in January; checked 2026-09-17.

Paperwork and practicalities

Appointment for the TIE· Illes Balearsfrom reports
2
In Ibiza in February 2026 the police station said it plainly: slots are released twice a month and there are not enough of them. One resident had been unable to book for two years. The Balearic immigration office is the worst staffed in Spain: 38 people against 75 posts, and none at all in Ibiza. Formentera residents have to travel to Ibiza. In Palma the wait is two to four weeks, summer is the hardest season, and new slots appear around eight in the morning.
1 — no slots for weeks, 5 — freely available. Checked 2026-09-17
Coworking within 3 km
Pulpo
Dog beaches within 8 km
not on the map
Vets within 5 km
21

From OpenStreetMap — an open map filled in by volunteers. Something missing there may still exist: read this as «we found this many», not «there are no more».

Month by month

Air, sea, how busy it gets and what stays open — for each month on its own.

Where to look next

Nearby on the same coast
Compare with Pollença
Cheaper with the same sea
Similar price, other coasts
Compare with Benalmádena
Verified: 2026-09-16 · where the data comes from