The Bono Alquiler Joven and the aid that replaced it

The short answer

The Bono Alquiler Joven was the aid of the 2022-2025 State Plan. Since 24 April 2026 what is granted is the rent aid for young people's emancipation of the State Housing Plan 2026-2030¹.

Four figures change: the income ceiling rises from three to five times the IPREM and stops counting the whole household, the maximum rent goes from 600 € to 1,000 €, and the amount rises from 250 € to 300 € but gains a new cap of 60 % of the rent².

What can be said for certain about the Bono, and what cannot

It is worth separating the checkable from the repeated. Royal Decree 42/2022 has not been expressly repealed: its record at the Official State Gazette still says it is not, and that its force has not been exhausted⁵. That does not settle the question, though, because the new plan's repealing provision is a blanket clause repealing «any provisions of equal or lower rank that conflict with this royal decree», and a blanket repeal leaves no annotation at all in a consolidated text¹.

What is on the record is this. The preamble of Royal Decree 326/2026 speaks of the Bono in the past tense, as part of «a necessary transitional phase», and puts its total endowment at 800 million euros for aid «of 250 euros a month for two years for people under 35»¹. The new plan creates its own rent aid for young people, and its articles 118 and 136 make the plan's two rent aids incompatible with each other and with any other public aid for the same purpose⁴. And the Bono depended each year on a specific budget line: its article 5.1 funded it «with the appropriations entered in the General State Budget for each year»⁵.

None of that means the Bono is dead, and this page does not say so. It means the aid granted today is the one in the new plan, and that if a particular region still has a Bono call open, that is a regional fact to check on its portal.

The four figures that changed

The income ceiling and the base it is measured on changed in the same subparagraph. Article 6.1.d) of the earlier decree required annual income at or below three times the IPREM «including that of the people whose habitual and permanent residence is the rented or transferred home, whether or not they appear as parties to the contract»⁵. Article 133.1.d) of the new plan says simply «that the beneficiary has annual income at or below five times the IPREM»². Those are two independent widenings: the multiple, and who gets counted.

Why five times the IPREM is 42,000 € and not 36,000 €

A multiple of the IPREM does not on its own say how much money it is, because the indicator has two annual figures. The ninetieth additional provision of Law 31/2022 sets the annual IPREM at 7,200 € over twelve payments, and at 8,400 € «where the relevant rules refer to the statutory minimum wage»⁶.

The plan resolves it expressly. Article 8.2.b) orders that the resulting income figure «shall be converted into a number of times the Public Multiple-Effect Income Indicator (IPREM), referred to 14 payments, in force during the period to which the assessed income relates»³. From that come the 42,000 € of the general threshold, the 46,200 € of the 5.5 band and the 50,400 € of the six band. And from it comes the measure of the change: the Bono's three times the IPREM were 25,200 €, so the ceiling has widened by 16,800 € a year without the IPREM itself rising a single euro since 1 January 2023.

The two things that got worse

Almost every part of the comparison favours the new aid. Two do not.

The 60 % cap inverts the result on low rents. Article 11 of the Bono gave 250 € «limited to the monthly amount of the rent», that is up to 100 % of what was paid⁵. Article 137 gives «aid of at most 300 euros, limited to 60 % of the monthly rent or price»². The two are exactly equal when 60 % of the rent is worth 250 €, that is at a rent of 416.67 € a month. Below that figure the Bono paid more:

And in small towns the rent ceiling fell. Article 133.1.e) adds that «if the tenancy is located in municipalities or settlements of 10,000 inhabitants or fewer, the foregoing rents or prices shall be 500 and 250 euros a month respectively»². Article 8 of the Bono drew no distinction by size of municipality: its 600 € applied anywhere in Spain⁵. A rural rent of 550 € qualified under the Bono and does not qualify under the 2026 aid, unless the region has raised the ceiling under article 135, which requires a prior agreement with the Ministry of Housing².

The same plan has another rent aid, and they are incompatible

Articles 115 to 120 regulate a general rent aid with no age limit⁴. It shares with the youth aid the multiple of five times the IPREM and the same rent ceilings of 1,000 € and 600 €, and differs in three things that decide which one to apply for:

The difference in base decides the most. Article 116.1.c) requires that «the total sum of the annual income of the people whose habitual and permanent residence» is the home stays under the threshold; article 133.1.d) looks only at the applicant⁴. In room lets the two coincide, because article 116.1.c) itself clarifies in its final paragraph that there «only that of the individual tenant shall be taken into account»⁴.

The cap works differently too. Article 119 grants «aid of at most 250 euros, which may be increased up to a limit of 40 % of the rent» depending on the number of dependants or a disability of 33 % or more, so that increase is not automatic and its exact amount is set by each call⁴. Article 137, by contrast, applies its 60 % with no condition at all.

And the 5.5 and six times bands exist in both, but different things trigger them: the general aid names large families, single-parent families and victims of terrorism; the youth aid names the children of victims of gender violence⁴.

A worked example with real numbers

Someone aged 30, with 24,000 € of their own annual income, renting a flat for 850 € a month in a city of more than 10,000 inhabitants.

Their income is below the 42,000 € general threshold and their rent below 1,000 €, so they qualify. Sixty per cent of 850 € is 510 €, above the maximum, so they draw the full 300 €: 3,600 € a year and 7,200 € over the two years the award lasts, before any extension under article 134².

Under the Bono Alquiler Joven that same person would not have qualified at all, and not on income: 24,000 € fitted inside its 25,200 € threshold if they lived alone. What shut them out was the rent, because 850 € exceeded the 600 € of article 8⁵.

If instead they rented a room for 300 €, the sum inverts: the 2026 aid would give them 180 € (60 % of 300) where the Bono gave them 250 €.

What to do with this

The requirements and amounts on this page are set by the State and are the same across the common territory. What the State does not set is when you can apply: article 138 obliges the autonomous regions and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla to hold calls «continuously and permanently», but each call has its own deadline, scoring and paperwork¹.

Check first whether your figures fit, in the youth rent aid calculator, which applies articles 133 and 137 and also compares the plan's two aids. If the income threshold is close for you, the IPREM calculator explains where the 8,400 € comes from and which other entitlements rest on the same indicator. And if what worries you is how far your rent can rise once you are in, that is decided by a different rule: the rent index calculator explains it.