Mediterranean oak woodlands (“montados” or “dehesas”) are highly diverse socio-ecosystems that require sustainable practices to maintain their structure, biodiversity, and provision of ecosystem services. Sustainable forest practices can be ensured through forest certification. Forest certification is a voluntary conservation framework promoting sustainable management standards through ecological and socio-economic criteria. One of the mandatory requirements is the establishment of conservation zones (CZ), defined as low-intervention areas aimed at conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services. CZs in oak woodlands have been shown to promote greater habitat complexity, shrub cover and diversity, and oak regeneration compared to non-CZs. However, their effects on water partitioning remain poorly understood. In this study, we evaluated the effects of CZs on water infiltration and related soil properties across conservation zones with different ages of implementation. Our results show that water infiltrability in certified conservation areas was, on average, an order of magnitude higher than in non-CZs (256 -207 mm h^-1 in CZ vs 29-25 mm h^-1 in NP and PP), with ten years of grazing exclusion being enough to recover soil infiltration capacity. In grazed areas, soil compaction and available water (water holding capacity) were the main factors limiting infiltration. Overall, our findings suggest that conservation areas established under forest certification may contribute to reducing runoff and improving water infiltration in oak woodlands.