Short answer. No. Article 1643 sets a hard ceiling: no lease for more than ninety-nine years shall be valid. You may agree a definite or indefinite term and any lawful rent, but a lease purporting to run beyond ninety-nine years is invalid to the extent it exceeds that maximum.
What the law says
In the lease of things, one of the parties binds himself to give to another the enjoyment or use of a thing for a price certain, and for a period which may be definite or indefinite.
Civil Code, Article 1643 — Lease of Things, and the Ninety-Nine-Year Ceiling. Read the full provision →
What the law says
However, no lease for more than ninety-nine years shall be valid.
Civil Code, Article 1643 — Lease of Things, and the Ninety-Nine-Year Ceiling. Read the full provision →
What a lease of things is
The article first defines the contract. In the lease of things, one of the parties binds himself to give to another the enjoyment or use of a thing for a price certain, and for a period which may be definite or indefinite. Three elements stand out: the lessor gives the use or enjoyment of a thing (not its ownership), there is a price certain — the rent — and there is a period. That period is flexible: it may be fixed to a definite term, or left indefinite. So the parties have wide latitude over how long the lease runs and what the rent is. The freedom is real, but it is not unlimited.
The ninety-nine-year ceiling
The limit is stated in the very next sentence. However, no lease for more than ninety-nine years shall be valid. Ninety-nine years is the absolute maximum a lease of things may run. A lease that purports to grant use for a longer term — a hundred and fifty years, or in perpetuity — is not valid as to the excess; the law will not enforce a lease beyond the ninety-nine-year mark. This is a ceiling the parties cannot contract around, however willing both may be. It applies to the lease of things generally, so a term reaching past ninety-nine years cannot be saved by the parties' mutual desire to bind themselves for longer.
Why the law caps lease duration
The cap exists to prevent a lease from becoming, in effect, a permanent alienation dressed up as a temporary one. A lease running for centuries, or forever, would strip the owner and his successors of the property in all but name while leaving bare title an empty shell, tying up land across generations and defeating the policy against perpetual encumbrances. Ninety-nine years is already extraordinarily long — well beyond a human lifetime — so the ceiling does not cramp any genuine leasing arrangement. It simply stops the lease from being used as a device to lock property away indefinitely, keeping a lease a lease rather than a disguised, endless transfer of the thing.
What this means in practice
So in drafting or signing a long lease, treat ninety-nine years as the outer boundary and keep the term within it. A clause purporting to exceed that — or a renewal structure designed to stretch a single arrangement past ninety-nine years — risks being invalid as to the excess. If you need a very long horizon, ninety-nine years is what the law allows, and arrangements beyond it should be reconsidered rather than assumed enforceable. Note too that separate matters, such as leases involving certain kinds of land or lessees, can carry their own additional limits, so the ninety-nine-year rule is the general ceiling, not necessarily the only constraint on how long a particular lease may run.