A third-country founder who wants to live where their Luxembourg company is has three routes. The self-employed permit is decided on an economic test and issued for 3 years in the ordinary case. The investor permit starts at €500,000 committed to a Luxembourg business and runs 3 years.
The EU Blue Card covers a qualified salaried job paying at least €65,652 a year, first issued for 4 years. EU and EEA citizens need none of them: their move is a registration, not a permission.
One rule governs all three and is the most expensive thing on this page to get wrong: the residence authorisation must in principle be applied for on plain paper from the applicant's country of origin, addressed to the Directorate of Immigration or to a Luxembourg diplomatic or consular representation, and save in exceptional cases (for example a third-country national who already holds a Luxembourg residence permit) it must be filed and granted before entry into the territory — an application made on the territory is declared inadmissible.
Each amount, duration and fee below carries its own official source on the claim it supports: guichet.public.lu for the permit routes and the arrival sequence, Legilux for the Blue Card salary basis and the permit decision windows. All were read in August 2026.
The three routes, side by side
They differ in what they ask you to prove rather than in how they finish. The self-employed route asks whether the business is worth having here. The investor route asks for capital, then holds it in place and keeps checking. The Blue Card asks an employer to hire you above a salary floor.
| Route | What the file must show | First permit |
|---|---|---|
| Self-employed | qualifications, resources and an activity in the country's interest | 3 years |
| Investor | one of four defined investments, from €500,000 | 3 years |
| EU Blue Card | a qualified salaried job paying at least €65,652 a year | 4 years |
The Blue Card floor is a derived number rather than a round one: it is set by reference to the average gross annual salary fixed at 65,652 euros for the year 2024 by the ministerial regulation of 23 February 2026, published on Legilux.
The first card is issued for 4 years, or, where the employment contract runs for less than 4 years, the duration of the contract plus 3 months. Contract length sets card length, so check the term before you sign.
Those durations describe the ordinary case. A self-employed card issued to someone who already holds long-term resident status in another EU member state runs on a different term. The duration that governs you is the one printed on your own decision.
The four investor routes
"Investor" is not one threshold but four, each with its own floor, holding period and attached condition. They are alternatives: a file qualifies by satisfying one.
| Investment | Minimum | Attached condition |
|---|---|---|
| Into an existing Luxembourg company | €500,000 | held for 5 years, plus an employment commitment |
| Into a new company | €500,000 | 5 jobs created within 3 years |
| Into a management and investment structure | €3,000,000 | registered office and substance in Luxembourg |
| Deposited with a Luxembourg financial institution | €20,000,000 | held for 5 years |
Two of those conditions carry wording a table cannot hold. On the existing-company route the file carries a commitment to keep the level of employment equivalent to the level at the time of the investment for at least 5 years, which does not apply when acquiring a company in difficulty under a redundancy plan.
On the structure route, the management and investment structure may already exist or be created, but must have its registered office in Luxembourg and maintain appropriate substance there.
Whichever route, the decision also requires a favourable opinion from the Minister of the Economy or the Minister of Finance on the investment. An investor file is therefore two files, one immigration and one economic.
The card is then issued for 3 years and is renewable for the same 3-year period, provided the conditions for renewal are still met. Whether the conditions still hold is reviewed every 12 months, so a holding period is something you are checked against for its whole length. All four routes sit on the investor residence page.
The self-employed route, and the business permit underneath it
This route is decided on the business rather than the bank balance. Three tests run in parallel, and the self-employed page sets out all three. The economic one: the activity must serve the country's interests in terms of social or cultural interest, or in terms of economic benefit.
The competence one: proof of the qualifications required to carry out the planned activity and, where applicable, to be registered with the respective professional body. The resources one: proof of sufficient resources to carry out the desired activity in Luxembourg. Where the conditions still hold, the card is renewable for a further 3 years.
Underneath the residence file sits the business permit, and the dependency is spelled out: where the self-employed activity requires a business permit, the application must include the outline consent from the Ministry of the Economy. The permit itself carries a €50 chancellery fee, receipt is acknowledged within 15 days, and the absence of a ministerial reply before the end of the 3-month period counts as a tacit authorisation.
One sequencing rule governs the whole of it: the articles of association must be registered with the Trade and Companies Register before the permit is definitively granted. The permit file is covered in the business permit guide.
For a newcomer, the integrity section of that permit file is where the calendar disappears.
It calls for a declaration of non-bankruptcy, recent and unlimited in time and space, made before a notary in Luxembourgish, French, German or English — required of non-residents as well as of anyone resident in Luxembourg for less than 10 years; it must state that the applicant has not been involved in the bankruptcy of a business in their own name or in the bankruptcy of a company.
Criminal-record extracts are also required from every State of residence over the preceding 10 years, and foreign registries answer on their own timetables. Order them in the week you decide to move.
From decision to card: the arrival sequence
The order is fixed and each step gates the next. Arriving first and applying afterwards does not shortcut the sequence; it ends it.
- Residence authorisation: applied for from the country of origin and granted before entry, on the terms quoted above.
- Type D visa: applicants subject to a visa requirement must, once holding the residence authorisation, apply for a type D visa from their country of origin before travelling.
- Declaration of arrival: within 3 days of arriving, present yourself at the commune where you will live.
- Medical check: a medical check must be undergone as soon as possible after arrival.
- Residence permit: the titre de séjour is applied for in the first 3 months after arrival, against a fee of €80.
What the first card leads to
What comes after the first card depends on years of residence rather than on the route you entered by. Third-country nationals may apply for long-term resident status after 5 years of residence, and that status carries a permit valid for 5 years. That is a different footing from renewing a business-linked card every 3 years.
Naturalisation runs on a residence requirement of 5 years, and the last year of residence immediately preceding the naturalisation application must be uninterrupted. Further conditions sit on top of that period and are listed on the guichet page. The uninterrupted-residence condition in particular is one you can lose by accident, which is why the list is worth reading in year one rather than year five.
Common questions
Three follow-ups decide the sequencing.
Can I own a Luxembourg company without living in Luxembourg?
Yes. Ownership and residence are separate legal facts, and a non-resident can hold shares. Management is where they stop being separate. For the business permit, the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment.
For the company's tax residence, the director has to live within daily commuting distance of the office — there is no distance published in law, and the administration decides it case by case. Neither test is met by a director who visits.
Which comes first — the company or the permit?
Both orders exist. The hard dependency runs one way: the register entry has to be in place before the permit is definitively granted, as above. What matters more than the order is that the files agree. The residence file, the permit file and the bank file describe the same business and are read against each other.
Build one version of the numbers, the activity description and the funding story, and use it in all three. A discrepancy is not fatal, but it becomes a question you answer in writing, and that costs weeks.
What happens if the file is refused?
A refusal of a business permit is an administrative decision against which the usual means of appeal can be used, provided the legal deadlines are complied with. The immigration side runs its own procedure with its own deadlines, and they are stated on the decision itself. Read that document rather than the guidance pages: the appeal clock starts from notification.
Before you file
The order below is set by lead time rather than by importance: the slowest items are documents you cannot chase from Luxembourg, so they go first.
- Decide which route your facts fit, then read its guichet page end to end.
- Order the foreign criminal-record extracts and the notarised non-bankruptcy declaration first. They set your real start date.
- Write the business once and reuse it verbatim across the residence, permit and bank files.
- File the residence authorisation from your country of origin before travelling, then run the arrival sequence in order.
- Diarise the renewal date and, on an investor file, the 12-month condition review.
Immigration decisions are made by the Directorate of Immigration; this page maps the rules, the amounts and the sequence. A contested or previously refused case belongs with an immigration lawyer.