Reference translation. The legal and commercial terms are based on Chilean legislation as published by the Library of the National Congress of Chile and were checked against UNTERM, the United Nations terminology database, which includes ECLAC’s terminology, where it records the term, and against the legislation of the United States for English and of Brazil for Portuguese. These terms may vary from country to country: information in languages other than Spanish is provided for reference only and should be verified by specialized translators in each country. If the versions differ, the Spanish text prevails.

Non-extendable deadlines and lapse in the constitution of concessions

In the constitution of a mining concession, most deadlines are non-extendable (plazos fatales): a step taken after the deadline is defective, and the judge, on noticing it, must declare the lapse (caducidad) of the rights arising from the pedimento or manifestación. This guide explains how these deadlines work, which are the main ones and what happens when they expire. The steps of each procedure are described in Pedimento and manifestación and in Survey (mensura).

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What a non-extendable deadline is

Mining Code deadlines established with the words “en” (in) or “dentro de” (within) are non-extendable (Mining Code, art. 237). The judge may correct procedural errors on their own motion, except for steps that are defective because they were taken after a non-extendable deadline had expired (art. 34). If, at any time before the constitutive judgment, the judge notices that a requirement or step subject to a non-extendable deadline was not met on time, the judge must declare the lapse of the rights under the pedimento or manifestación and order its registry entries to be canceled (art. 86). If the judge notices it when examining the request for judgment or the survey request, the judge rejects the request outright (arts. 56 and 60).

How they are counted

Each deadline runs from the date specified by law: the filing, the ruling ordering a step, the publication or service. In contentious matters, the Mining Code suspends deadlines counted in days for judicial steps during holidays (art. 236). Outside that case, the general rule is the Civil Code, which counts holidays (art. 50). Since the constitution procedure combines non-contentious stages and contentious incidents, check the nature of each deadline and, if in doubt, act before the last día hábil. A deadline expires at midnight on its last day (Civil Code, arts. 48 and 49).

Schedule publications with a margin. The publications ordered by the Code are made in the Official Mining Bulletin (Boletín Oficial de Minería), which is published on the first día hábil of each month and the first días hábiles of each week (art. 238). The Code does not provide for a publication deadline to be extended if there is no issue on its last day, and holidays are counted in these deadlines (Civil Code, art. 50). The prudent course is for the publication to appear in an issue within the deadline, taking into account the submission and cut-off days of the relevant regional or provincial officer in charge of the Bulletin. Holidays do not suspend the deadline, but they reduce the available issues and submission days, so they require earlier submission.

The extract of the constitutive judgment may be published only on the first día hábil of a month (art. 90). This publication is different from the request to record the judgment, which must be made within one hundred twenty days (art. 89).

Main deadlines

Ratification: If someone filed a pedimento or manifestación in another person’s name without being their attorney-in-fact, the interested party must ratify it before the court clerk within thirty days of filing; the deadline is non-extendable (arts. 39 and 237).
Defects in the filing: Eight days from the ruling that identifies them; if they are not cured, the pedimento or manifestación is treated as not having been made (art. 49).
Application fee: Thirty days from filing (art. 51).
Recording and publication: Thirty days from the ruling ordering them (art. 52).
Request for judgment: Ninety days from the ruling that ordered the pedimento to be recorded and published (art. 55); thirty days, from the court ruling giving notice of SERNAGEOMIN’s observations, to comply with them or object to them (art. 57).
Survey request: From day 91 to day 120, inclusive, from the filing of the manifestación (art. 59; Regulations, art. 23); its publication, within thirty days from the ruling ordering it (art. 60).
Opposition to the survey: Thirty days from publication of the survey request (art. 61).
Survey record and plan: Ten months from the filing of the manifestación, with the exception in art. 78 for anyone who is or has been a party to opposition proceedings based on art. 61. If SERNAGEOMIN raises objections, eight days to contest them or sixty days to cure them, from the court ruling giving notice of them; the latter may be extended once by up to sixty more days (art. 82).
Recording of the judgment: Must be requested within one hundred twenty days from the first-instance judgment or, where applicable, from the order to comply with the second-instance judgment, after its extract has been published (arts. 89 and 90).
Extension of an exploration concession: Supporting documents filed with SERNAGEOMIN within the first six months of the concession’s last year; the ruling granting the extension is published in extract form and noted in the margin of the registry entry within thirty days (art. 112).

The deadlines for requesting the survey and for submitting the survey record and plan have applied since January 1, 2024; manifestaciones pending on that date follow the previous rules, as explained in Pedimento and manifestación.

Who can point out a lapse and when it is cured

Until the judgment is issued, any person may point out to the judge that a lapse has occurred. If the judge nonetheless grants the concession, it is constituted only if the Court of Appeals confirms the judgment on referral (consulta); if the Court reverses it, it declares the lapse (art. 86).

Once the constitutive judgment is issued, any procedural defects and lapses incurred during the proceedings are cured (art. 86). The cure does not extend to the nullity actions under Article 95; those under its Nos. 1 to 7 are time-barred four years after publication of the judgment extract (art. 96).

Lapses after the judgment

Recording not requested on time: the judgment ceases to have effect and the concession lapses (arts. 89 and 160; Law No. 18,097, art. 18(b)). Because this occurs after the judgment, it is not covered by the cure under Article 86.
Unpaid annual fee with no bidders: the ruling declaring the ground open (terreno franco) makes the concession lapse (Law No. 18,097, art. 18(a)). See Annual mining fee.
Exploitation within an exploration concession: an exploration concession lapses if its holder establishes exploitation within it or agrees with another party for the latter to carry it out (arts. 115 and 161).

How PMD helps you

Monitoring of favorite concessions sends deadline alerts: for example, when the deadline to request the judgment is approaching or ends, when the period to request the survey begins and ends, when the end of the survey deadline or of the deadline to record the exploration judgment is approaching, and before an extension expires. Alerts are calculated from the available records and remind you to check in the court case whether the step was taken. The concession record shows the timeline of each application and lets you consult the court case file.

On the map, the “Calculated deadline expired · review” status groups concessions and applications that SERNAGEOMIN still lists, but whose validity, as calculated by PMD from the available records, may have ended, or that PMD has classified this way after reviewing their records. It is an operational classification for reviewing the case file: it does not mean that the concession or application is invalid or has lapsed, which only the judge can declare. The calculations may omit steps that do not appear in public sources.

Main legal framework: Law No. 18,097, the Organic Constitutional Law on Mining Concessions; the Mining Code, Law No. 18,248, as amended by Laws No. 21,420 and No. 21,649; its Regulations, Supreme Decree No. 1 of 1986; and the Civil Code, according to the text published by the Library of the National Congress of Chile. Review: October 23, 2026.