A Luxembourg company needs its registered office at an address in Luxembourg, and the domicile of any commercial company is at the company's principal establishment. Four arrangements meet that test: a lease in the company's name, a coworking membership with a real workstation, your own Luxembourg home where the lease allows professional use, or domiciliation with a licensed agent. A PO box, a mail-forwarding virtual address or an address abroad fails on every route. Domiciliation is legal and regulated, but only for a company whose activity needs no premises of its own.
No company yet? Preparing the articles and the RCS registration starts with this check: which route fits the activity, and whether the contract behind the address will hold.
See what company formation includes, from €899What does the address have to prove?
Three institutions read it. The register records it, and the ministry tests what stands behind it where a permit applies. The bank checks it against the rest of the onboarding file.
The register's own test is short: a company's registered office must be capable of being clearly determined. Official mail from the tax office, the CCSS, the register and the ministry lands there.
The business permit rests on five conditions: 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. The law of 2 September 2011 fills in the establishment condition.
The business needs an appropriate physical installation, adapted to the nature and the scale of the activities carried on. The test is proportionality, not square metres: a consultancy needs no warehouse, and a food business cannot run from a desk. The same law attaches a person to the place: the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment.
The bank runs on its own file, not the ministry's. An address that carries a permit file can still leave an account opening open.
Is domiciliation allowed for my company?
Domiciliation sits under the amended law of 31 May 1999 governing the domiciliation of companies, and it is not a service anyone may sell. The activity is reserved by law to credit institutions, other financial-sector and insurance-sector professionals, list I lawyers, list IV European lawyers, réviseurs d'entreprises, réviseurs d'entreprises agréés and experts-comptables, as guichet's domiciliation page sets out, verified in August 2026. A provider outside those professions is not selling domiciliation, whatever the page calls it, because the law reserves the activity and not the wording.
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The published rule, qualifier included: a company without its own premises may, under certain conditions, be domiciled with a third party and fix its registered office there — but guichet states this suits only companies whose activity does not require their own premises, and expressly not a commercial company which the law requires to have a physical establishment in Luxembourg; to count as a stable establishment a company must occupy real premises of its own.
A holding or administrative vehicle whose work happens in files and decisions is the case guichet describes. A commercial company that the law expects to have a physical establishment is not, and no agreement stands in for premises the activity itself requires. Settle the scope before signing, because the arrangement has to hold on the agent's side of the file as well as yours.
An accountant's office counts only through this route, and only where the firm is an expert-comptable on the reserved list. A friend with a spare office is not, and the same scope limit applies.
The four routes, side by side
Every route works for some activities and fails for others, and the failure point is the activity, not the price. Read the last column first.
| Route | What you sign | What the file shows | Where it runs out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial lease | A lease in the company's name | Premises the company controls, with a rent trail | Fixed commitment, unavoidable once the activity needs space |
| Coworking, named workstation | A membership with a real right to work there | Somewhere the business can genuinely operate from | A mail plan under a coworking brand evidences mail handling only |
| Domiciliation, licensed agent | An agreement under the 1999 law | A regulated third party hosting the office | Scoped to activities needing no premises of their own |
| Your Luxembourg home | Nothing new, the lease or co-ownership rules govern | An address the founder already occupies | Professional use must be allowed by the lease and building rules |
A PO box, a forwarding-only virtual address or an address abroad produces none of these documents.
How far away may the manager live?
Behind the registered office sits central administration. The company is actually run from Luxembourg, where the managers decide and where the books and bank mandates live. No official page publishes a distance, a day count or a numeric substance test. A kilometre figure quoted elsewhere is someone's practice written up as a rule.
The permit law asks for a real link instead: alongside the physical presence, the manager must be the 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.
Why does the address stall the permit, the register and the bank?
The register comes before the permit's last step, so the permit file, the RCS filing and the bank file interlock. Each states the address, and each institution reads only its own copy. Three bodies pausing once each adds weeks.
The ministry acknowledges receipt of the permit file within 15 days and then has 3 months to decide; the absence of a ministerial reply before the end of the 3-month period counts as a tacit authorisation.
Founders leave the address until last because it is the only element of the file that is not a form. A lease or a domiciliation agreement is a negotiation on someone else's timetable, which is what stalls the chain.
Can I move the registered office later?
A transfer is two acts: the decision that amends the articles, and the filing that updates the register. On the register side, filings are made electronically, and the change must be filed within 1 month under article 15 of the law of 19 December 2002. Publication follows: the deed is published in RESA on the day of filing, or on a fixed date chosen by the filer when creating the filing request, within a limit of 15 days after filing.
The permit is issued against an establishment, and guichet runs a modification through the same procedure as an initial application. The awkward case is the repair, not the move: an address that never met the test is not cured by a later transfer.
Can two companies use the same address?
Nothing published turns on exclusivity. The tests are whether the office is determinable and, where a permit applies, whether the installation is adapted to the activity's nature and scale. Several companies at a licensed agent's premises is ordinary. Several unrelated operating businesses claiming adapted premises at one small address is not.
Does the commune change the tax bill?
The municipal layer varies, so the address is not tax-neutral. Municipal business tax is a 3% base rate multiplied by the commune's coefficient, which runs generally between 200% and 400%. Luxembourg City applies 225%, which produces a 6.75% municipal rate. The commune follows where the business is actually established, so the establishment question comes first and the tax question second.
Before you commit to an address
Address problems surface months later, at a filing, a permit decision or a bank onboarding, once the contract is fixed. Three checks come before signing.
- Check whose name the contract is in: a lease in a founder's personal name evidences the founder's arrangement and must be transferable to the company at incorporation.
- Check the use clause: a residential lease or a building's co-ownership rules may restrict professional use, and that restriction outranks your intention.
- Check that the address reads identically in the permit file and the bank file, because each is read on its own.
Then write the same address into the articles and the RCS registration: the articles of association must be registered with the Trade and Companies Register before the permit is definitively granted.