Those who search for Grisons’ cantonal prostitution law will search for a long time. There isn’t one. This isn’t a research failure, but the key finding: Grisons is one of the cantons that doesn’t regulate the sex trade with its own ordinance, no salon permit, and no cantonal register. At first glance, that sounds like freedom. In practice, it mainly means: The rules that actually determine your working day are elsewhere — in the municipal police law, in your municipality’s building and zoning ordinance, in federal law on freedom of movement, and in social insurance law.
Precisely this downward shift makes sex work in Canton Grisons a special case that can’t be settled with a single look at the ordinance collection. This text sorts out who is responsible for what, what you need to report, where Chur becomes concrete — and where the political debate stands in 2025/2026.
A Canton Without Its Own Sex Trade Law — and an Inquiry That Made It an Issue
In June 2025, several members of the Grisons Grand Council filed an inquiry about the situation of prostitution in the canton. The direction was uncomfortable: On relevant platforms, hundreds of ads from Grisons were active, yet the canton had neither specific regulations nor systematic surveys on health, safety, and social conditions. And: There was no specialized central contact point for legal, health, or safety-related questions. The question asked, among other things, whether the government intended to create a cantonal contact point for people in prostitution — and if not, what alternative it proposed.
The government responded. In the October session 2025, the inquiry’s submitter was not satisfied with the answer; a regional commentary spoke in September 2025 of a „government misjudgment.This is not a German-style red-light district ordinance, but rather a negative list. Its practical effect is nonetheless clear: What remains is the industrial area. Specifically, the area around Rossboden and Pulvermühle streets – there are no residential buildings, no school buildings, no parks there, and for exactly that reason, Chur’s street prostitution has shifted there. It takes place mostly on private land.
The Clock: 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Then there’s the time restriction. Street prostitution in Chur is only permitted between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.; the city council can impose further local and temporal restrictions. This night-time regulation has been in place since 2013. It is the actual reason why one speaks of a regulated, but not prohibited street scene in Chur.
That it remained this way was a deliberate decision. A proposal from the conservative faction that wanted to ban street prostitution entirely was rejected by the Chur city council in early 2014 – on the grounds that a general ban would be unconstitutional. The underlying principle applies throughout Switzerland: sex work is legal and falls under economic freedom. You can restrict it, but you cannot regulate it away.
Rossboden: What Became of the Protection Zone
A council mandate resulted in a situation analysis of street prostitution in the Rossboden area, explicitly with a view to safety and health measures for sex workers. The city council’s report was discussed in the city council in September 2020; afterwards, the city examined solutions for a protected zone. A parcel at Rossbodenstrasse 21 was evaluated as the most suitable location, along with the question of who would take responsibility for cleaning, key control, and supervision.
This has not been implemented to date – for a reason that describes the Grisons reality well: The numbers have collapsed. According to city figures, about 25 people were active in the area before the containment measures, from spring 2013 the average settled at eight to twelve people, and since the pandemic it has sometimes been only zero to two or three. For an infrastructure modeled on Zurich’s example, there is simply no basis; „sex boxes“ were explicitly classified in Chur as an unsuitable solution.
However, the decline does not mean there is less sex work. It has moved to apartments, studios, and platforms – where no authority counts it. This is precisely what the 2025 Grand Council inquiry was targeting with its reference to the hundreds of active advertisements.
Businesses and Spaces: No Salon License, But Building Rights Definitely Apply
Anyone in Grisons who wants to operate a studio, apartment, or club does not need a cantonal sex work license – it doesn’t exist. The relevant hurdles are elsewhere:
Zone Conformity. Whether a commercial use is permitted in a residential zone, mixed zone, or commercial zone is determined by the municipality’s building and zoning ordinance. A change of use requires building permission, and this permit is issued in a public procedure – with the opportunity for neighbors to object. In practice, this is the hardest barrier.
Tenancy Law. An apartment that is contractually rented for residential purposes becomes a termination risk through commercial use. This applies regardless of how legal the activity itself is.
Hospitality Law. Sale of alcohol entails its own licensing requirements, as do extended opening hours.
Labor Law and Contributions. Once people are employed rather than self-employed, payroll accounting, social insurance contributions, accident insurance, and withholding tax apply.
Anyone who clarifies these four points before the first lease avoids the standard Grisons problem: A business runs for years without complaint until a single neighbor complaint triggers the building rights procedure.
Money: Old-Age and Survivors’ Insurance (AHV), Taxes, and Value-Added Tax (VAT)
Here the legal situation is uniform across the country and therefore pleasantly clear.
AHV/IV/EO. Self-employed persons pay a maximum of 10.0 percent of relevant income in 2026; a degressive rate applies for small incomes. The minimum contribution is CHF 530 per year. Register with the SVA Graubünden – no later than 90 days after starting the activity.
Income Tax. Income from sex work is taxable earned income and must be reported on your tax return. For self-employed activity, there is a record-keeping obligation; professional expenses such as room rent, advertisements, travel costs, and work materials are generally deductible. The competent authority is the tax administration of Canton Graubünden, and assessment is made at your tax domicile.
Withholding Tax. It applies to foreign persons without a residence permit in certain constellations, particularly for dependent employment. Whether and how it affects you depends on your residence status – this is clarified in advance, not retroactively.
Value-Added Tax. Mandatory from an annual turnover of CHF 100,000 from taxable services within the country. Most self-employed individuals fall below this; anyone working in seasonal businesses in Davos or the Engadin should still factor this in.
Counseling: What Exists in Graubünden – and What Doesn’t
A specialized agency for sex work modeled on Zurich, Geneva, or Basel does not exist in the canton. This was one of the main criticisms in the 2025 inquiry. What does exist is nonetheless substantial:
Aids-Hilfe Graubünden, Lürlibadstrasse 15, 7000 Chur, has been the cantonal specialist agency for health promotion, prevention, counseling, and testing around HIV, hepatitis, and other sexually transmitted infections since 1987. It explicitly offers outreach prevention for sex workers. Counseling is free and confidential, available by phone, email, or in person.
APiS – outreach HIV/STI prevention in the sex trade – works with native-speaking mediators and is designed especially for sex workers with a migration background. About 35 mediators are deployed nationwide for this purpose.
Extra-cantonal Agencies step in where Graubünden has nothing of its own: In St. Gallen, MariaMagdalena is the contact point for people in the sex trade; in the Zurich and Winterthur area, it’s Isla Victoria. Both are easily accessible and provide counseling on residence, law, and exit – a phone call across the canton border is not a mistake, but often the shortest route here.
In cases of suspected exploitation or human trafficking, the paths lead through the Graubünden cantonal police and specialized victim counseling services. That such cases also occur in Graubünden has been documented multiple times – the low visibility of the scene is part of the problem, not its refutation.
The Short Version for the Practical Case
- Clarify Residence Status. EU/EFTA and maximum 90 days per calendar year: registration procedure through the Office for Migration and Civil Rights. Longer or third country: authorization procedure. Swiss passport or residence: none of the above.
- Register with AHV. SVA Canton Graubünden, no later than 90 days after starting. Clarify self-employed or employed status in advance.
- Ask the Municipality, Not the Canton. What is permitted in public space and in what facilities is decided locally. In Chur: Article 28 of the Police Act and the time windows.
- Check Spaces. Zone conformity, building permit if there is a change of use, rental agreement.
- Keep Taxes in Mind from the Start. Record income and expenses; keep VAT threshold in view.
- Use Counseling Services. Aids-Hilfe Graubünden for health; extra-cantonal agencies for legal and social questions.
An overview of the basic structure – who permits, who registers, who inspects – can be found in our overview of Graubünden responsibilities.
ConclusionGraubünden does not regulate sex work through legislation, but through a void – and this void is filled from below. For sex workers, this means less bureaucracy when getting started, but also less legal certainty, less data foundation, and no cantonal address to turn to if a problem arises. The political debate on this has been open since 2025 and was not concluded by the unsatisfied inquiry in the Grand Council. Whether this will result in a cantonal contact point is currently undecided.
Until then, the pragmatic advice applies: don’t rely on general information – not even this. For anything binding, the municipality, the Office for Migration and Civil Law, the SVA Canton Graubünden, and the cantonal tax administration are responsible. A single call to them is more precise than any summary, because it concerns your specific case – and in a canton that leaves the details to the municipalities, the specific case is all that matters.