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In brief: Hungary's biggest construction shake-up in a decade took effect in January 2026, rewriting roughly a hundred points of the building code (the new TÉKA, replacing OTÉK). Some changes are wins for developers — loggias no longer count toward floor-area limits, and retrofit insulation no longer counts as an extension. But three shifts move the ground under contractors: the designer now holds a real veto over occupancy permits, the ÉTDR planning portal has gone public, and BIM is becoming mandatory for state tenders. The common thread is documentation: in 2026, project closure and payment hinge on whether you can prove, version by version, who did what and when.
We're living through the largest transformation in construction regulation in a decade. The government decree announced at the very end of 2025 — which amended fourteen spatial-planning and construction laws at once — took effect in mid-January and rewrote roughly a hundred points of the Spatial Planning and Building Requirements Framework, the TÉKA. It replaced the former OTÉK. Some of the changes are relaxations; others fundamentally rearrange how much room to maneuver each party has within a project. The short summary: in 2026 the designer's position has strengthened, the contractor's has narrowed, and the public's has widened.
Under the TÉKA amendment, loggias and external spaces enclosed by walls on two sides and connected to a room have been removed entirely from the gross floor-area calculation. In practice, this means a developer can increase a property's use value and appeal without exceeding the building-coverage limits of the local building code. The same plot yields more sellable quality without pushing against the coverage ceiling.
The other relaxation is similarly practical: retrofit thermal insulation of existing buildings no longer counts as an extension, so it can be carried out lawfully even where the building-coverage threshold would otherwise be exceeded. This speeds up the energy modernization of condominiums and opens a renovation market that, in many places, used to stall on regulation.
If you're a developer or client, the above is good news: more sellable value, faster-paying renovations. But the changes that follow mean something quite different from the general contractor's side. The same reform brings profit to one party and risk to another, and that's exactly what makes it matter which side you're on.
Although the developer welcomes the extra sellable area, the burden of delivery and the risk of the designer's veto rest on the contractor's shoulders. In the occupancy procedure, the designer now holds an actual right of veto. If the contractor deviates from the plans in anything affecting external appearance (in materials, in the placement of doors and windows, or even just in coloring), the authority cannot issue the occupancy permit without the architect-designer's statement of approval.
In practice this is far sharper than it sounds. Until now, a deviation from plan was typically resolved afterward, through consultation. From now on, though, closing the project — that is, the arrival of the money — depends on whether the designer signs off. If they withhold consent without solid grounds, the client can turn to the Regional Chamber of Architects, but that takes time, and the remedy also treats the designer's side as its starting point. The balance of power has clearly tipped toward the designer.
The practical consequence is not the order "let's not deviate from the plan," since in reality there will always be deviations. Rather, it's that every deviation must be routed back to the designer in documented, timely fashion, and their approval obtained, before you reach occupancy.
A stricter rule doesn't in itself make the designer faster. If someone is being obstinate, or simply doesn't open the email for three weeks, the project will stall regardless — no system changes that. What a contractor can do, however, is prove at any time that they sent the modification for approval on time. This doesn't eliminate the delay, but it decides who bears its consequences. If the entire correspondence, with every version and timestamp, is searchable in one place, it's plain in black and white who put what on the table and when, and the delay doesn't become the contractor's loss through lack of documentation. In construction, that's worth at least as much as speed.
Anyone handling all this through emails and phone calls will, at the end of the project, run into the fact that occupancy is stalled over a modification sent six months earlier but never confirmed — and will be left trying to prove, after the fact, that it wasn't their fault.
At the end of June, client rights in construction-authority procedures were restored, undoing the earlier narrowing of who counted as a party. At the same time, the ÉTDR's public interface went live, with a new design and search. The consequence that matters most to investors: in procedures started after 28 July, public plan sheets — including site plans, street facades, and visual renderings — become viewable by anyone.
This means stronger public scrutiny and a stronger push toward thorough preparation. What used to stay within the office walls now goes out before the public, before a single spade has broken ground. Publishing an outdated or inaccurate version is therefore no longer an internal error, but a publicly visible one.
The biggest stake isn't brought by the TÉKA itself, but by the digital transition arriving alongside it. Decree 31/2024 (ÉKM) is gradually making BIM-based design and delivery mandatory in state investments: after building construction, railway construction is next from 1 July 2026 for projects reaching the EU threshold value, with water engineering and utility construction following over the next two years.
In practice, this means that anyone wanting to bid on a state tender must build a common data environment (CDE): a platform where every plan, model, and document of the project lives in one place, with version control and transparency. The decree treats this not as a recommendation but as a condition of participation. Anyone working in files and email will simply be left out of the next round of state work.
There's also a less visible but important institutional change: from 2026, construction quality control has been centralized, with the KTI taking over the former ÉMI's tasks and the state's BIM responsibilities. The authority side has thus itself moved toward more unified, more digital operation — and it expects the same of investors.
The common thread behind all three changes is the same: more mandatory documents, more retrievable versions, more traceability. The designer's position strengthened because the regulation made their approval the gateway to occupancy. The public matters because errors no longer stay in-house. BIM became the entry ticket because a state tender is no longer reachable without it. None is dramatic on its own, but together they've made plan fidelity and documentation the condition of a successful project closure.
Anyone who still keeps the approval chain and version control in email, shared folders, and their head is, in 2026, not simply taking on inconvenience but risking the project's closure — and with it, payment. Compliance ultimately comes down to how disciplined a company is in handling its own documents, not to the wording of the decree.
Fluenta One provides exactly this provability. The software treats contracts, plans, and their associated approvals as live, versioned objects: every modification creates a new version, the previous one is retained, and every trace of approval is recorded with a timestamp in an unalterable log kept for several years. Before occupancy, then, there's no need to comb through six months of correspondence; the documentation, authenticated with sources and timestamps, comes from a single place. In the system, communication doesn't scatter across email inboxes either: every message stays tied to the plan, modification, or approval point it concerns, so it's clear afterward who sent what and when, and what they replied to. If a modification is left without approval, it shows up in time — it isn't discovered on the day of occupancy. The common data environment required for state tenders demands this same versioned, auditable document handling, so compliance and daily operation run from the same system. The software fits alongside existing BIM and ERP tools rather than replacing them.
Document interpretation matters here in its own right: the software turns scanned, old, or mixed-format plans and approvals into structured, searchable data, so material from earlier projects doesn't sit in a dead archive but can be called up at any time.
The essence of the reform in a single sentence: in 2026, what a company can't prove, it can't close or invoice either. For those who keep their approvals and versions in order, occupancy is administration; for those whose records are scattered, it's a risk.
In a short demo, we'll look at how all this would come together on your own projects. Request a demo →
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