In summer 2025, an internationally coordinated operation against human trafficking called GLOBAL CHAIN took place, supported by fedpol and Europol and coordinated locally by cantonal police forces. The Ticino portion of the results is revealing — not because of the scandals it doesn’t contain, but because of the pattern it shows.
A total of approximately 140 people were checked in the canton. All nine licensed locali erotici were inspected: all sex workers found there were correctly registered and working in compliance with regulations. No violations: none. In addition, police checked one public establishment and fourteen apartments — places where sex work is not permitted under cantonal law. Result: fifteen reports to the Ministero pubblico. No suspected cases of human trafficking or exploitation were found in Ticino.
This pair of numbers describes Ticino’s reality more accurately than any legal overview. For anyone in Canton Ticino working in sex work who faces difficulties, they almost never stem from the person themselves — but from the space in which they work. That is exactly what this text is about: sex work in Canton Ticino, licensing, registration requirements, and responsibilities from the perspective of the work location.
Ticino Regulates Places, Not Intentions
Ticino is one of the few cantons with its own detailed sex work law. The Legge sull’esercizio della prostituzione (LProst, RS/TI 550.500) dates from January 22, 2018 and has been in force since July 1, 2019; it replaced the 2001 law. The implementing regulations are found in the Regolamento (RProst, 550.510). Responsibility lies with the Dipartimento delle istituzioni, operationally with the Cantonal Police’s Sezione TESEU and Servizio autorizzazioni.
The first step is personal registration: a visit to TESEU, ID check, assignment of your own TESEU number, a fee of CHF 100 upon signing, plus the right to a free medical consultation at the time of registration. We have described in detail how this process works, what requirements apply to residency status, and what the daily flat rate of CHF 25 means in our guide to the TESEU number.
What is crucial is what this number does not do: it does not make a single square meter legal. Article 3 LProst lists where sex work is prohibited in Ticino — in public view and on the street, near schools, hospitals, care homes, recognized places of worship, cemeteries, public transport stops, public buildings and playgrounds, as well as in zones designated primarily for residential use in the land-use plan. Municipalities may set additional distances and zones by ordinance, and they do: Chiasso concentrates sex work on a few plots in a single zone, Mendrisio works with radii around sensitive locations, Lugano and Bellinzona have their own rules. Our overview of municipal ordinances shows how different the municipal maps look as a result.
In the end, there are exactly two permitted forms of work location across the canton: the licensed locale erotico or a residential apartment where work is done individually and where the person owns or has usage rights. Everything else — hotel rooms, short-term rentals, a colleague’s spare room, an unlicensed establishment — falls away.
The Licensed Establishment: What the Department Requires of the gestore
A license for a locale erotico is not a form but a procedure with preliminary stages. For sex workers, it’s worth looking into because the operator’s obligations directly affect your own daily work.
Preliminary stage one: the municipality’s building permit
Before an application even makes sense, a building permit is needed certifying that the premises may be used for the practice of prostitution. A change of use — for example from office or residential to an erotic establishment — goes through the standard building permit procedure under cantonal building law, that is, via the municipality. In addition, an original certificate of the hygienic-sanitary suitability of the premises is required, issued by the responsible cantonal health service. These two documents are the real bottleneck: projects fail at this stage long before the police review an application.
Preliminary stage two: the application itself
Among other things, submitted are a copy of the building permit, the hygiene certificate in original form, floor plans showing the number and size of all rooms, a commercial register extract, a copy of an ID, and for foreign operators, proof of work authorization in Switzerland. Anyone wishing to additionally offer food, beverages, or overnight accommodation in the establishment needs a separate hospitality license for that — and must personally run this part, not delegate it.
The licensing fee is CHF 350. The license is first issued for two years and is then renewable every two years; renewal costs CHF 250, and the application must be submitted at least 30 working days before expiry. Those who miss the deadline find themselves without a valid license on the deadline — with all that comes with it.
The gestore is not a mailbox
The regulation requires actual presence: at least eight hours daily on five days per week, with a weekly or two-weekly schedule for personal presence and that of staff. For absences of up to fifteen days, a person must be named to the Servizio autorizzazioni who assumes responsibility.
This also includes the lista giornaliera, the daily list: each time a person enters the establishment, the required data is recorded; when someone leaves and stops working, the data must be deleted immediately. The lists must be protected against any unauthorized access by third parties. This is the data protection flip side of legal work: in the licensed establishment, there exists a daily-current record of who worked there when.
Finally, the gestore collects the daily flat rate of CHF 25 as a tax account from each person working in the establishment and forwards it monthly to the tax authority. This collection is not a favor but an obligation with penalties attached.
Where the license is revoked — and why it matters to you
Article 25 LProst lists the grounds for revocation: license issued on the basis of false information, serious or repeated violations of law and regulation, non-payment of social contributions and taxes, failure to collect the account from sex workers and failure to forward it to the tax authorities by the first of the month. With revocation, the Servizio autorizzazioni orders the immediate closure of the establishment, along with related and ancillary activities. Sanctions under Articles 25 and 27 can be cumulative; Article 27 provides for fines of CHF 200 to CHF 40,000, enforced by the department according to the Violation Procedures Act of April 20, 2010. For persons with residence abroad, a security deposit for costs of proceedings and fines may be required.
For sex workers, this means quite practically: the accounting discipline of the establishment where you work is your risk. A closure due to unpaid social contributions affects you on the same day as it does the operator — just with no advance warning and no notice period.
The Registered Apartment: You Don’t File the Registration
The second permitted form is the apartment. And here the obligation lies in a place that surprises many: According to Article 43 RProst, the application is filed by the person providing the apartment — not the sex worker. In practice, both appear together at the Sezione TESEU.
The conditions are strict and deliberately designed so that an apartment doesn’t turn into a small establishment: only one person per apartment, only one apartment per building, a lease or sublet agreement for at least three months, work done individually in rooms in one’s own property or with corresponding usage rights. TESEU informs both the municipality and the property owner about the registered apartment. There is no quiet solution where the neighborhood notices nothing and the landlord doesn’t need to know. What this means in practice — also for two colleagues who would prefer to work together for safety reasons — we have explained in detail in our text on the one-person-per-apartment rule.
Important for accounting: in the registered apartment, the sex worker pays the daily account of CHF 25 themselves to the tax authority. The person providing the apartment may not collect it or deduct it — unlike the gestore in the establishment, who is precisely required to do so.
Why Short-Term Rentals Systematically Fall Away
The three-month rule and the requirement for genuine usage rights are why apartments rented short-term via platforms generally do not meet the criteria. This is not an interpretation issue but the core of the regulation — and it is also the point where the inspection statistics diverge. In 2024, 128 people were reported to the Ministero pubblico for practicing or enabling sex work at unsuitable locations; around eighty of these cases involved apartments rented short-term. In summer 2025, there were again fourteen apartments that led to reports.
A detail that is occasionally misreported: in 2020, a Ticino criminal court acquitted two women who had worked with clients or in a hotel. That was a first-instance judgment in an individual case, and the government subsequently explicitly maintained the applicable regulation. No permission can be derived from this. If you want to know what applies in a specific case, clarify it beforehand with the Sezione TESEU or with legal advice — not afterwards during an inspection.
The Numbers Behind the Disparity
Ticino’s peculiarity is not that much is inspected, but how small the legal supply of work locations has become. In 2008 there were approximately 35 establishments in the canton. In 2024, there were nine licensed locali erotici, plus 24 registered apartments — one more than the year before. An ad search by RSI found approximately one hundred active erotic apartments in the same period. Between what is registered and what exists, there is thus a factor of roughly four.
In parallel, both curves are rising: new registrations at TESEU were 219 in 2022, 284 in 2023, and 352 in 2024, and continued to rise in 2025. Violations for unlicensed sex work developed from 50 (2022) through 59 (2023) to 149 (2024). More people are registering correctly — and more people are working anyway in locations that the law does not provide for. This is not a contradiction but the logical consequence of registration being easy and legal space being scarce.
A note on data: complete published annual figures are most recently available for 2024. For 2025, publicly available primarily are the results of the control operation in summer and the statement that registrations have continued to increase. If you need reliable figures for 2026, ask for them directly from the Cantonal Police or in the Accountability Report of the Government Council.
Responsibilities at a Glance
| Concern | Responsible |
|---|---|
| Personal registration, TESEU number | Cantonal Police, TESEU Section |
| Apartment registration | TESEU Section – application by the person providing the apartment |
| Locale erotico permit, renewal, revocation | Department of Institutions / Authorization Service |
| Building permit, change of use, zoning questions | Municipality according to cantonal building law |
| Additional zoning and distance rules | Municipality via Municipal Ordinance |
| Hygiene and sanitary suitability | Cantonal Health Service |
| Daily account CHF 25, tax assessment | Cantonal Tax Authority (in the venue via gestore) |
| Social security registration as self-employed | Compensation Fund |
Information from the responsible authority is always binding – this article provides guidance, it does not replace it.
Advice: where you can go without contacting authorities
Primis, a service of Zonaprotetta, has worked with sex workers in Ticino since 2006: prevention, information and mediation in the sex industry, access to social, legal and administrative support, accompaniment to medical appointments, work against stigmatization. The contact point is located at Via Bagutti 2 in Lugano, Wednesdays from 2 to 5 p.m. also without an appointment; Primis is a member of the national ProCoRe network. In late 2024, the campaign «Rispetto» launched, for which Primis staff spent months collecting statements from sex workers in Ticino’s erotic venues.
For health questions unrelated to the police, there are the Consultori di salute sessuale of the EOC in Bellinzona, Locarno, Lugano and Mendrisio. And free medical consultation at the time of registration is a right, not a favor – you can demand it.
Three misconceptions that are expensive in Ticino
„With a TESEU number, I can work wherever I want.“ No. The number legitimates the person, not the place. Without an authorized venue or registered apartment, work remains prohibited – this is exactly the situation behind the fifteen charges from summer 2025.
„I’m renting the apartment myself, that’s nobody’s business but mine.“ Also no. Registration is made by whoever provides the apartment, the contract must run for at least three months, and TESEU informs the municipality and property owner. Whoever skips this step works in an unregistered apartment – regardless of how clean your own registration is.
„That’s regulated the same way everywhere in Switzerland.“ Hardly anywhere. Ticino has its own law with its own police section; in the canton of Zug, regulation runs practically entirely via the zoning plan, and in the canton of Glarus you have to compile the responsibilities yourself from several offices, as we’ve shown elsewhere. Anyone touring between cantons cannot simply continue their Ticino routine anywhere else – and vice versa.
Conclusion
Ticino has largely translated the question of the legality of sex work into a question about the property. This makes the legal situation unusually clear – and daily life unusually restrictive, because nine authorized venues and two dozen registered apartments don’t cover a market in which several hundred people register new each year. The control balance from summer 2025 shows both sides of this: whoever worked within the authorized framework had nothing to fear. Whoever worked outside it ended up on a charges list.
If you’re starting out in Ticino or planning a tour, it’s best to clarify in this order: first the place, then personal registration, then the money. And for everything binding: TESEU Section for registration and apartment, the Authorization Service for operations, the municipality for zoning and building law – and Primis for anything you’d prefer to discuss first with someone who doesn’t work in uniform.