Official IFCN status

Madeira trail status: which trails are open, closed or restricted

All 42 classified trails, closed ones first

Closed first, then the part walkable ones, then everything IFCN currently lists as open. The detail column is IFCN's own wording, translated where IFCN publishes only Portuguese.

Source: IFCN, Percursos Pedestres Classificados (ESTADO table). Read the official page

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IFCN's own official status does not change often. A closure or restriction here can stay accurate for a long stretch, which is why the date below matters more than how frequently the page is rebuilt.

Sources: IFCN: Percursos Pedestres Recomendados Checked 7 Sept 2026.

How to check whether a Madeira trail is open today

IFCN is the only body that can open or close a classified Madeira trail, so every reliable answer starts with what IFCN published. These four checks take you from the official word to what you will actually find at the trailhead.

1. 1. Read the official IFCN status for the trail you have in mind. IFCN classifies each official trail as open, part walkable or closed. The table on this page carries that classification trail by trail, with the date the official status was last read successfully beside it. Read that date as the age of the reading, never as the day the page was built.
2. 2. Read the notice, not only the status word. Part walkable means the path is open but not end to end, and the notice names the section that is out. A restriction can also be a fixed walking direction or a compulsory booking rather than a barrier, so the wording decides your day more than the label does. The detail column keeps IFCN's own words.
3. 3. When two official pages disagree, believe the dated one. IFCN publishes trail status in more than one place, and the places do not always agree. The surface IFCN itself stamped most recently is the one that counts. A page carrying no date can tell you that something moved, but it can never settle what it moved to.
4. 4. Remember that open is not the same as walkable for you today. An official status says nothing about the wind on the ridge, the cloud sitting on a high traverse, or how full the trailhead is by mid morning. Wind, cloud and UV at trail altitude are a different question from the forecast for the coast, and that is what levadas.live tracks trail by trail.

Why IFCN closes a trail, and how a closure ends

A closure is almost never about the weather on the day. The usual causes are a rockfall or a landslide that has taken away part of the path, storm damage to a handrail, a footbridge or a tunnel, and the repair work that follows. Madeira's north facing valleys are steep, wet and unstable, so a single bad winter can put several routes out of service at once.

IFCN is the only body that can close a classified trail or reopen it, and it decides route by route, never for the island as a whole. A closure lasts as long as the repair does, normally months rather than days, and it can be lifted in stages: a trail often comes back part walkable first, then fully open, sometimes with a rule that stays behind, such as a fixed walking direction or a compulsory booking.

That is why a status copied from a printed guide, or from a blog post written last season, says nothing about today. The table above is the state IFCN itself published, with the date we last read it successfully.

When IFCN contradicts itself, and how we settle it

IFCN publishes trail status in more than one place and the places do not always agree. On 27 July 2026, PR1.3 Vereda da Encumeada read as part walkable in the status table, as open on the notices page, and as closed in the English FAQ, all at the same instant.

We settle it with the publisher's own date: the surface IFCN itself stamped most recently wins. The status table carries 24 July 2026 in its own page body. The notices page carries no date anywhere, so it can tell us something moved but it can never win the argument, and an undated page is never treated as fresh.

We deliberately ignore the HTTP Last-Modified header on those pages. That server answers with the time of the request, so every page looks brand new every time you ask. A rule fed by it would rank nothing at all, while looking like it worked.

Today the two feeds we ingest still disagree on: PR1.3. The table above shows the dated surface's answer.

What this page covers, and what it does not

42 of the 111 trails we track carry an official IFCN status. The other 69 are community, council and municipal routes. IFCN does not classify them, so it publishes no status for them and neither do we.

No official status is not the same as open. A route with no entry in the table has not been declared anything, and weather, landslides or works can still shut it on the day.

This table says open or closed. It does not say busy, and on a summer morning that is the difference between two very different walks. For that, see which Madeira trails get crowded, and when. It also says nothing about the hour you set off, which in July decides more than the trail does: when to start walking in Madeira's heat.

It says nothing about the days after today either, and that is the other half of choosing a date: the 10 and 14-day Madeira outlook.

A closed road is not a closed trail, and only IFCN can declare the second. For the roads an April ultra-trail shuts for a few hours, see which roads close for the MIUT ultra-trail.

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Questions

This page reports what IFCN published. It is not a safety clearance: conditions on the ground change faster than any official page, and an open trail can still be a bad idea today.