Yes. No nationality test applies to share ownership, so a founder from any country can incorporate and hold the shares of a Sàrl or an SA.
Two other things are not automatic: the business permit that lets the company trade, which carries a €50 stamp duty and a 3-month decision window, and the right to live here, which is a separate immigration file that must in principle be granted before you enter the country. Owning, running and living are three rulebooks, and they interlock at one point that reorders the whole timeline.
Each rule and figure below carries its own official source on the claim it supports: the business-permit and residence conditions from guichet.lu and the consolidated Law of 2 September 2011, the deferred capital-payment rules from the Law of 18 May 2026, and the non-resident declaration from the ministry's own permit form.
Owning: there is no nationality test
Share ownership is the easy layer. A Luxembourg company needs its registered office at an address in Luxembourg, but nothing requires a shareholder to sit at it, and no share register asks for an EU passport. The one restriction that looks like a nationality rule is really a legal-form rule: the Sàrl-S admits only natural persons — a company can never be a shareholder. That is about legal personality, not citizenship.
The genuine friction here is banking: a founder who is not yet resident often cannot open a Luxembourg account before the company exists, which used to make the capital payment the first hard blocker. That changed with the Law of 18 May 2026 amending the amended Law of 10 August 1915 on commercial companies, which introduced deferred paying-up of the minimum share capital of limited liability companies.
Cash may now be paid up within 12 months of incorporation rather than on the day of signature, and for a SARL-S the deferred paying-up option covers the entire share capital subscribed at incorporation. Read the carve-out, because shares issued on incorporation in consideration for contributions in kind must still be fully paid up at incorporation — only cash contributions can be deferred.
Running it: who holds the business permit
Commercial activity needs a business permit, and it attaches to a person — the manager — not to the company. The Ministry of the Economy tests five things: professional integrity, professional qualification in line with the planned activity, establishment in Luxembourg, effective and permanent management of the business by the permit holder, and compliance with tax and business obligations. Nationality is not on that list. Two of them bite hardest on a founder who intends to stay abroad.
The first is presence: the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment. The second is the link to the business, which means being owner of the business where the activity is carried on in a personal name, or entered in the Trade and Companies Register as the company's mandataire where it is a company.
Tax law applies a parallel idea to the company's place of effective management, where 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.
Integrity reaches beyond the named manager. It must be proved by the manager of the business in whose name the permit will be issued; and, where the business is operated as a company, also the person holding the majority of the shares and anyone who can exert a significant influence on the management or administration of the business.
A founder who keeps the majority and appoints someone else as manager is therefore still inside the integrity check: that changes who is present, not whose record is read.
The documents that take longest to obtain
The official permit form is explicit about this group: permit holders non-resident or resident under 10 years need a notarised non-bankruptcy declaration (under 6 months) plus criminal-record extracts from every state of residence of the last 10 years. Both are issued by foreign authorities on their timetable, not yours, so they belong at the top of the sequence.
One clock runs in your favour. The Ministry acknowledges receipt within 15 days and decides within 3 months, and the absence of a ministerial reply before the end of the 3-month period counts as a tacit authorisation. Where a foreign professional qualification has to be recognised, that window can be extended by 1 month.
Living here: the file that starts in your country of origin
A company creates no residence right.
The rule that reorders most plans is where the file must be opened, and guichet states it plainly: 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.
The next step turns on your nationality: 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. Only then does the in-country half begin, opening with a step that is easy to miss — a medical check must be undergone as soon as possible after arrival.
| Step | Where it happens | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Residence authorisation | Country of origin | In principle before entry; filed on the territory, inadmissible |
| Type D visa | Country of origin | Where a visa requirement applies to your nationality |
| Declaration of arrival | Your commune | Within 3 days of arrival |
| Residence permit | Directorate of Immigration | Within 3 months of entry; €80 |
The two founder tracks, and the four investor amounts
Founders file under one of two headings. The self-employed track sets an economic-interest test: the activity must serve the country's interests in terms of social or cultural interest, or in terms of economic benefit.
It also requires proof of the qualifications required to carry out the planned activity and, where applicable, to be registered with the respective professional body, plus proof of sufficient resources to carry out the desired activity in Luxembourg — a condition written qualitatively, with no euro amount attached to it. The permit runs 3 years and renews for a further 3.
The investor track is not one rule but four, legally distinct:
| Route | Minimum investment | Core condition |
|---|---|---|
| Existing Luxembourg company | €500,000 | Held for 5 years, with an employment commitment |
| New company | €500,000 | 5 jobs created within 3 years |
| Management and investment structure | €3,000,000 | Registered office and substance in Luxembourg |
| Deposit with a Luxembourg financial institution | €20,000,000 | Held for 5 years |
On the first route the employment condition is 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 third, the management and investment structure may already exist or be created, but must have its registered office in Luxembourg and maintain appropriate substance there.
Every route needs a favourable opinion from the Minister of the Economy or the Minister of Finance on the investment. The permit runs 3 years and is renewable for the same 3-year period, provided the conditions for renewal are still met, with compliance reviewed every 12 months.
Where the permit file and the residence file interlock
This is the dependency that decides your timeline, and it runs in a circle. On the immigration side, where the self-employed activity requires a business permit, the application must include the outline consent from the Ministry of the Economy — so the residence file cannot be completed until the economy ministry has looked at the business.
On the company side, the articles of association must be registered with the Trade and Companies Register before the permit is definitively granted — so the permit cannot be finalised until the company is registered. Each authority waits on a piece the other produces. The outline consent is the hinge: economy ministry first in outline, company registered second, permit definitive third, immigration file completed on the back of it.
The loop closes again at renewal, and this is where a paper-only structure fails. Renewals test whether the conditions still hold, and for a founder they are the company's own filing record: the guichet self-employed page lists proof of the balance sheet filed with the RCS, the corporate tax return filed and the VAT declarations filed.
Annual accounts are due at the RCS within 7 months of the financial year end, which makes the compliance calendar the evidence base of the residence file rather than mere bookkeeping hygiene. A late filing is a permit problem, not only a penalty.
Common questions
Three questions follow directly from the sequence above.
How long does the whole thing take?
Two clocks matter and only one is published. The business permit ends in a decision, or in a tacit authorisation, within 3 months. The immigration side publishes no processing time for the authorisation to stay, and that file must complete before you travel — which makes the foreign documents the critical path.
Can I own the company but run it from abroad?
Owning it, yes. Holding the business permit while living elsewhere runs into the presence condition, since the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment. Appointing a manager who genuinely runs the business here is the mechanism that answers it.
Does owning a company lead to permanent residence or citizenship?
Not by itself. Long-term resident status becomes available after 5 years of legal residence, and the resulting permit is valid for 5 years. Naturalisation asks for 5 years of residence, and the last year of residence immediately preceding the naturalisation application must be uninterrupted. The company is what supports the residence; it is not a shortcut around it.