Forest landscape restoration (FLR) aims to restore landscape functionality for the benefit of people, climate and biodiversity. Increasingly, land tenure and rights are being considered as important enabling factors in FLR. This study analyses tenure considerations in Madagascar’s legal texts and FLR policies, outline their inconsistencies and potential limits in achieving FLR aims, and advance policy recommendations. We found that the current legal texts and framework present several inconsistencies that might impede the effectiveness of FLR in delivering positive environmental and social outcomes. Our analyses demonstrate that most of the target areas for reforestation prescribed by national guidelines are not physically demarcated on the ground and are frequently occupied by local people. This implies that reforestation on degraded lands and its upscaling urgently requires the identification and delimitation of these target lands, and greater involvement of local communities. There are incentives for private individuals or groups to plant trees in return for formalizing their land rights on these target areas, but procedures are very complex, and this has delivered little. To increase the positive impacts on local livelihoods and local uptake, we recommend reducing the complexity of devolving ownership rights of these reforested lands to the local community. A review of forest areas legally vested in the forest regime of the state and decentralized local authorities is also required to promote local participation and reduce potential land conflicts. Regarding natural forests, uncertainties around their legal status and the rights of communities make their restoration very complex. We recommend that the law that is currently being drafted to define the tenure status of these lands explicitly takes into account the plurality and complexity of their management and considers the rights of local communities more explicitly to secure their cooperation. In addition, the sustainability of FLR activities in the long term relies on delivering tangible economic benefits to local communities besides access rights, especially where ecological restoration of native species is prioritized. Currently, these benefits are mostly anticipated from payments for ecosystem services schemes which have not so far materialized. The FLR national strategy and draft law concerning the restoration of agroforestry areas such as pastures do not currently make any provision for the recognition of the Fokonolona (the village community) or customary practices. This may seriously undermine local communities’ rights and risk encouraging land grabbing by more powerful entities. Inconsistencies in legal texts can undermine the effectiveness of the forest restoration in terms of hectares restored, it can also result in poor outcomes for local people. Finally, a greater synergy and coherence of public policies and legal texts across the land management, mining, agricultural and environmental sectors is required to increase the effectiveness of FLR in delivering positive social and environmental outcomes.