Can you build a villa on Bali land that is registered as a rice field?

Almost every attractive plot in the Canggu, Pererenan and Kedungu belt is farmland on the certificate. Buyers are told the designation can be changed, and until recently that was a question about which office to visit. Since December 2025 it is a question the offices are not allowed to answer.

Instruksi Gubernur Bali 5/2025 forbids every regent and mayor in Bali to issue permits converting agricultural land to non-agricultural sectors, and it names LP2B (Lahan Pertanian Pangan Berkelanjutan, sustainable food-farming land) and LBS (Luas Baku Sawah, the baseline rice-field area) among the land it protects.^{Source: 1}Pemerintah Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 08/09/2026Confidence: Verified The provincial government published the instruction on 3 December 2025. Its wording admits no exception: “Lahan sawah dan LP2B tidak boleh berubah fungsi atas alasan apa pun” — rice-field land and LP2B may not change function for any reason at all.

Who is bound by it

Every regent and mayor in the province. The instruction is addressed to all bupati and wali kota in Bali rather than to a single district.^{Source: 1}Pemerintah Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 08/09/2026Confidence: Verified A plot in a regency with a reputation for flexibility sits inside the same prohibition as a plot in Badung. This is the part that agency material written in 2024 and early 2025 does not account for, because when it was written the answer genuinely did vary by office.

How long it lasts

Until the province replaces it with something permanent. The instruction states that it holds until the provincial government issues a Peraturan Daerah on the control of agricultural land conversion.^{Source: 1}Pemerintah Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 08/09/2026Confidence: Verified That regulation now exists. Peraturan Daerah Provinsi Bali 4/2026 governs the control of conversion of productive land and prohibits nominee landholding, and the sanctions listed on the province’s spatial planning portal are a written warning, suspension of the activity, closure of the site and revocation of the permit.^{Source: 2}Sistem Informasi Wilayah dan Tata Ruang Bali, Pemerintah Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 08/09/2026Confidence: Verified Those sanctions are named in words. Neither a fine nor a prison term appears on the page we read.

What we will not tell you

What the Perda says clause by clause. We searched the legal-documentation portal of the Bali provincial government on 8 September 2026 and did not find the text of Perda 4/2026 published there.^{Source: 3}Pemerintah Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 08/09/2026Confidence: Verified The national legal database refused our requests altogether, so we cannot report what it holds either. Press summaries attach prison terms and rupiah fines to this Perda. We are not reprinting them, because the figures we have seen belong to national statutes, and we have not read the provincial text that would confirm or contradict that.

We also cannot tell you whether one particular plot is registered as LP2B. Those maps are held at regency level, the procedure for asking differs between regencies, and we have tested none of them. A written answer from the regency’s spatial planning office is worth having. An agent’s assurance is not the same document.

What the prohibition does not settle

The instruction stops a permit. It does not price the land. A plot marketed at a building price with sawah on its certificate is being sold on a permission that no regent or mayor in Bali may currently issue. Ask the seller which rule they expect to change, by when, and on what basis. The nominee half of Perda 4/2026, the prohibition on holding land through a borrowed name, reaches a different set of buyers and deserves its own answer, which is not this one.