What happens to your permit if the POT of Cali changes

Cali is building under a land-use plan that a court annulled two years ago and that remains in force only because the same court granted it a period of grace. That period has a date.

If you hold a permit in force, if you are about to file, or if you keep a planning certificate in a drawer believing it protects you, this applies to you. And the answer to the three situations is different in each case.

What happened to the POT

The Tribunal Administrativo del Valle del Cauca declared Acuerdo 0373 de 2014 (the long-term revision of the POT, the Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial or city land-use plan) void by Sentencia 129 of 25 April 2024.

The ground has nothing to do with the content of the plan: it is a defect of competence. The agreement was signed into law by an ad hoc mayor appointed by the regional public prosecutor’s office, when the power to appoint her belonged to the office of the President. An entire land-use plan fell over who signed it.

The Tribunal deferred the effects of its ruling by 30 months from the judgment becoming final, so that the city would not be left with no rules while it processed a new plan. That period ran from 9 July 2024 to 9 January 2027, until the earthquake lengthened it.

And then the earthquake moved the board

On 20 August 2026 it emerged that the city government had applied for six further months of deferral in order to build into the plan the seismic microzoning and the studies carried out after the earthquake of 10 August.

On 28 September 2026 the city government announced that the Tribunal Administrativo del Valle del Cauca, Sala Quinta de Decisión (the regional administrative court, sitting as its fifth chamber), had granted the application and extended the deadline to 9 July 2027. According to the city, the chamber accepted the earthquake as an extraordinary, unforeseeable and supervening event, without altering the declaration of nullity. The 2014 POT is still annulled; what changed is the date on which it stops applying.

Where the new POT stands

The law gives the Consejo Territorial de Planeación 30 working days to deliver its opinion, and the mayor 30 more to put the draft to the council. And there is an escape valve worth knowing about: if the council does not decide within 60 days of the draft being put to it, the mayor may adopt the POT by decree.

If you already hold a permit: you are protected, with a deadline

This is the good news and it is in the rules, not in anybody’s opinion. Decreto 1077 de 2015 says that the grant of a permit determines the acquisition of the rights to build and develop on the terms and conditions expressed in it. And it adds that the permit produces all its effects even if the property is sold.

In other words: your permit in force survives the change of POT. The District’s own legal directorate said as much when the annulment became known: consolidated legal situations remain in force.

But the shield is temporary, and here is the small print:

Translated: if your permit expires after the new POT comes in and you did not manage to build, you start again under the new rules. The right lived in the permit, not in the plot.

The only figure that keeps the old rules is revalidation: it is applied for within the two months following expiry, once only, evidencing on oath that the works are at least 50% advanced. It is resolved "on the basis of the planning rules that served as the basis for the issue of the permit being revalidated".

It is also worth not reading "acquired right" as a synonym for perpetual. The Consejo de Estado, the supreme administrative court, put it plainly: the rights born of a planning permit are neither absolute nor unalterable over time, and permits are subordinate to the public interest and to compliance with the POT.

If your application is under way: filing freezes the rules

This is the piece that decides what is worth doing over the coming months, and it has been written down expressly since 2010:

This is not a favourable reading: it is the rule. The POT of 2014 repeated it in its own transitional regime, and the draft of the new POT repeats it again in its article 661.

Everything therefore turns on one expression: "in legal and due form". The rule defines it without margin:

The complete file freezes the rules. The incomplete file freezes nothing. And the corrections the record of observations asks for afterwards do not break that freeze, which is what makes it worth filing complete even with things left to polish.

What freezes nothing

And here is the most expensive mistake made in this window. Plenty of people ask for a written ruling on the planning rules, or a land-use certificate, put it away, and believe their project is thereby tied to the rules as they stand today.

It is tied to nothing. The rule says so literally:

The same goes for demarcation lines (the official line where building may start) and for outline schemes. The draft of the new POT goes further and declares it expressly: land-use certificates issued under the earlier rules confer no right to carry on the specific use, and those instruments "in no case generate consolidated legal situations".

The earthquake decree that does not exist yet

Since the end of August it has been circulating that the national government would extend by twelve months the permits in force on 10 August 2026. The Minister of Housing announced it to the industry and said the decree was "awaiting signature".

As at 4 September 2026 that rule has not been published. The Ministry’s own register of legislation does not record it, and the Ministry’s bulletin of 2 September speaks in general terms of decrees to come, with no number and no mention of permits.

What has been issued is another thing: the declaration of a national disaster and the state of economic, social and ecological emergency. They open the way to the subject, but they extend no permit by themselves.

How to check the rules on your plot today

• —The land-use enquiry, at `usodelsuelo.cali.gov.co`. Free, immediate, no registration, by address or by cadastral number. It returns a PDF with the permitted activities.
• —The written ruling on the planning rules, from the planning department. Free, 15 working days, online with a log-in or in person at the CAM, the city government building.
• —The IDESC map viewer, which orients but does not certify: the tool’s own notice warns that official documents call for the agreement itself and its mapping.

And remember the previous section: none of the three freezes the rules for you. They serve to tell you what may be done, not to secure it.

What to do with this

1. 1If your project stands up under the POT of 2014 and is mature, file it complete. The applicable rules freeze on the day of filing, not on the day you get an answer.
2. 2Do not file incomplete to "secure a date". An incomplete file freezes nothing; it only consumes time and can end in the application being deemed withdrawn.
3. 3If you hold a permit in force, set its expiry date against the POT calendar. If it expires after the change and you are not going to finish building, the extension or the revalidation stop being paperwork and become strategy.
4. 4Do not rely on a planning certificate you have put away. It gives you no right whatever.
5. 5If the plot is in a hazard zone or on a hillside, expect the rules to change more than average. The city government has announced it will incorporate updated seismic microzoning; the actual content is not yet known.

All of the above is verified against rules, judgments and official statements as at 4 September 2026, and the extension of the deadline as at 3 October 2026. Three things remain open and can move the calendar: the opinion of the Consejo Territorial de Planeación, the filing before the council, and the national decree on permits. If you are about to take a decision that depends on any of them, confirm it first.