When your permit runs out, and how long you have to extend it
Put in the date it became final and the type of permit, and out comes the expiry date and the last working day to file for an extension. Which is the part that matters: it is 30 working days, not calendar days, and anyone counting calendar days files late.
How long your permit lasts
New build, site development and rural plot development.
Enter that date to see when the permit expires.
Where it comes from
The periods
Decreto 1783 de 2021, art. 27. Site development, rural plot development and new build, 36 months. Building work other than new build, 24. All three in a single decision, 48. Plot subdivision, 12 and not extendable. Those that can be extended allow one extension, of twelve months.
The extension
It is applied for at the latest 30 working days before expiry (working, not calendar) with the full paperwork and a sworn statement that work has already started.
Revalidation
Decreto 1077 de 2015, art. 2.2.6.1.2.4.3, as worded by Decreto 1783 de 2021. Once the permit has expired, it can be revalidated once only, within the two months following expiry, with a sworn statement that at least half of the load-bearing structure has been built. It is decided on the basis of the planning rules the original permit was issued under.
The working days
Colombian public holidays are computed here rather than listed, with the same module the site’s booking system uses, checked against official calendars. A hand-written list of holidays goes stale in silence; a computation does not.
The most repeated mistake on this subject
Almost everything on the web says 24 months for everything. Correcting that to «36 for everything» is a fresh mistake, and it is made precisely by those correcting the first one: the 36 months only cover new build. A permit for an extension or for strengthening lasts 24.
What this tool does not claim
A tool that answers what its source does not say is worse than no tool at all. This is what is deliberately left unanswered here, and why.
- It does not cover reconstruction or boundary enclosure. Article 27 sets no period of its own for them in what was checked, and rather than guess, it does not answer.
- It does not account for the extraordinary extensions. The second one, under Decreto 74 de 2025, ran out on 30 June 2026, and anything presenting it as current is out of date. If a new one is issued, this tool will not know about it until it is updated.
- It asks for the date the permit became final, not the date it was issued or filed, because the clock runs from the decision becoming final. If you are not sure which that is, it is stated in the decision itself and is worth checking before trusting the result.
- It does not say whether your project qualifies for an extension. An extension requires a sworn statement that work has started, and only you know that, not a form.
- On revalidation it only carries the condition for building permits, half of the load-bearing structure. The one for site development and rural plot development (parcelación) was not checked, and no revalidation is offered for plot subdivision, since there is no work to revalidate.
I have a plot and I want to build on it.
We check what the planning rules allow on your plot, what can be built and what it costs, before drawing anything. Then we develop the full project through to the drawings and the permit application with the curaduría (the licensed private office that issues building permits in Cali and other large Colombian municipalities; in smaller ones, the municipal planning office).