Argentina's Supreme Court Suspends the Decree That Scrapped the Foreign Rural Land Cap

Argentina's Supreme Court on 9 October 2026 issued an interim precautionary measure suspending the effects of Article 154 of Decree of Necessity and Urgency 70/2023, the provision that repealed Law 26,737 and erased the 15 percent ceiling on foreign ownership of Argentine rural land. The suspension holds until the federal court in San Carlos de Bariloche rules on the standing of the plaintiffs and on their injunction request, and the court set no deadline for that.

What it means for a foreign buyer

If you are buying farmland, vineyard, forestry or estancia land in Argentina, the quota arithmetic is back between you and a signature, with no end date attached. A purchase can again fail because of who else already owns land in that department rather than because of anything about your own transaction. Before you agree a price you now need three things you did not need on 8 October: the foreign-held share of the department you are buying in, the share held by buyers of your own nationality within that allowance, and your own cumulative hectares in the core zone. A holding being assembled above 1,000 hectares in the zona núcleo is exposed again, and land containing or bordering a river, lake or glacier is off the table entirely while the suspension stands.

Two definitions decide whether this applies to you, and both are broader than buyers expect. You are foreign if you lack ten years of permanent residence in Argentina, so a long-settled resident may sit outside the regime while a recent arrival does not. A company is foreign when more than 51 percent of its capital or voting rights are in foreign hands, so an Argentine-incorporated vehicle does not solve the problem by itself. The hardest position is a deal signed between 29 September and 9 October, the ten days when the repeal stood with nothing blocking it: The Rio Times reports genuine uncertainty over how those transactions are treated, and that is a question for your escribano now rather than at closing.

Treat the opening that existed two weeks ago as closed until a court says otherwise.

What changed

Law 26,737, enacted in December 2011, set three limits on foreign ownership of rural land. Foreign-held rural land could not exceed 15 percent of the national territory, with the same ceiling applied at provincial and municipal level. Within that allowance, owners of any single nationality could not hold more than 30 percent. And no single foreign owner could hold more than 1,000 hectares in the zona núcleo, or an equivalent area elsewhere depending on location and soil productivity. The statute also barred foreigners from owning plots that contain or border rivers, lakes or glaciers, and kept border security zones under separate authorisation.

Article 154 of DNU 70/2023, the omnibus deregulation decree issued in December 2023, repealed the statute outright. On 29 September 2026 the Supreme Court annulled the 2024 appellate judgment that had declared Article 154 unconstitutional, deciding that case on the claimant's standing alone and leaving the repeal operative. Ten days later the same court suspended Article 154 in a different proceeding. Neither ruling tested the caps on the merits.

The mechanism

The 9 October measure is a medida cautelar interina, an interim precautionary order, not a judgment. The court framed it as securing effective judicial protection and avoiding irreparable harm while the question of who may bring the case is settled. It was signed by Justices Horacio Rosatti and Ricardo Lorenzetti together with conjueces Diego Barroetaveña and Juan Ignacio Pérez Curci, substitute judges brought in because the three sitting members did not reach the unanimity the court needed. Vice President Carlos Rosenkrantz dissented in part, arguing the court lacked competence to issue any interim measure and that the file should have gone back to Bariloche with none attached, which in practice would have left the repeal in force.

The plaintiffs are the Asociación Civil Árbol de Pie, the Lafkenche and Lof FVTA Anecon indigenous communities, and Río Negro legislator María Magdalena Odarda, who filed a collective amparo in the Bariloche federal court in late December 2023. Their claim rests on environmental protection under Articles 41 and 43 of the Constitution, which is why the court held that its 29 September decision against the Centro de Ex Combatientes Islas Malvinas La Plata did not dispose of their case. The majority stated plainly that the resolution does not define the constitutionality of the repeal.

Context

Argentina has never restricted foreign ownership of urban residential property, and foreign buyers of apartments in Buenos Aires or houses in Mendoza complete on the same terms as Argentines, using a CDI tax identifier before a notary. The Rural Lands Law was always a separate regime aimed at agricultural land, created in 2011 during a regional wave of concern about foreign farmland acquisition. Decree-Law 15,385/44 separately requires prior state authorisation for a foreign purchase in a border security zone, assessed case by case on national defence grounds rather than against a hectare ceiling, so frontier land stays a permissioned purchase on its own track regardless of how this case ends.

The practical read is that Argentine rural land has no stable rule at present, only a sequence of orders. The 29 September ruling that left the cap repealed is the decision this one reverses, and Bektu's guide to what foreigners may own in Argentina sets out the framework the caps sit inside. Holding costs are unchanged either way: provincial and federal taxes on rural land apply as before, alongside the currency mechanics covered in Argentina property taxes and the blue dollar.