From January 19 to 23, 2026, Davos was Switzerland’s most densely populated address for five days: over 2,500 participants at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, plus roughly 400 media professionals. And as in years past, the same headlines appeared on schedule about fully booked agencies and record prices. What these texts never mention is what a sex worker in Graubünden actually needs to clarify: How many days am I allowed to work here? Where is that permitted? And which office will tell me definitively?
The answers in Graubünden are unusually scattered. The canton has no sex work law of its own. Anyone asking about permits receives not a single answer but must lay out four independent sets of rules side by side: foreign nationals law, municipal building and zoning law, hospitality law, and social insurance law. For a canton whose economy thinks in seasons, that yields a very particular calculation.
What Graubünden Does Not Regulate – and Why That Isn’t a Free Pass
Unlike, say, Ticino or Geneva, Graubünden has no cantonal prostitution legislation. There is no cantonal register, no reporting requirement specifically for sex workers, no cantonal operating permit for brothels. In its response to the Rutishauser inquiry (submitted June 13, 2025, answered August 12, 2025, dealt with in the October 2025 session), the government explicitly noted that it does not collect systematic and complete data on the number of sex workers in the canton. No specialized cantonal contact office exists; the person who posed the question was not satisfied with the response.
This absence is often read as freedom. Legally, it is more of a shift: where the canton is silent, the municipality decides – and where the municipality is also silent, building law, rental law, and neighbor law decide. Precisely therein lies the difference between cantons, which crossing the cantonal border means for one’s own work organization: not the question of whether sex work is permitted – it is, nationwide – but the question of how many offices have a say.
Federal law remains the same in any case. Art. 199 of the Criminal Code subjects to a fine anyone who violates cantonal or municipal provisions regarding place, time, and manner of practice. Where no such provisions exist, this provision runs essentially empty. Art. 195 of the Criminal Code (promotion of prostitution) and Art. 182 of the Criminal Code (human trafficking) apply unchanged and protect the sex workers themselves – even where the canton has otherwise regulated nothing.
A look back shows how long this restraint has lasted: Already an SRF report from January 21, 2014 described human trafficking in Graubünden as an invisible problem, noting at the time that there was no need for action because of a lack of reported cases. Twelve years later, the data situation is no better. Anyone working in Graubünden today works in a canton that neither demands much nor knows much.
The Real Clock Runs on Foreign Nationals Law
Anyone who is not Swiss and has no permanent residence encounters not a sex work permit in Graubünden but a calendar. The responsible office is the Graubünden Office for Migration and Civil Law.
90 Working Days per Calendar Year
Self-employed nationals from EU/EFTA states can, under the registration procedure, engage in activities in Switzerland for up to 90 working days per calendar year without applying for a permit. Three points are regularly misstated:
- Registration is mandatory, not optional. Self-employed service providers must register themselves, as a rule no later than eight days before starting work. Those employed are registered by the business – today via EasyGov, at the latest the day before starting work.
- Working days are counted, not days of residence. Travel, rest days, and return travel are not the same as work days. How counting is done in the individual case is confirmed binding only by the Office for Migration and Civil Law.
- The counter resets on January 1. For a winter sports canton, that is no minor point but the central one.
Why Graubünden’s Season Breaks the Calculation
The tourist winter season in Swiss hospitality runs from November to April; for 2025/26, nationwide 18.7 million overnight stays were counted, a gain of 1.1 percent compared to the previous year’s period. Six months of season is roughly 180 days. The registration procedure allows 90 working days. Anyone wanting to work through an entire season doesn’t come out even with registration mathematically – unless the season spans two calendar years, which in the December-through-April rhythm does indeed frequently happen.
This also explains why work in Graubünden is so often organized in short blocks rather than as a change of location. The Chur city council’s report on street prostitution in the Rossboden area notes the same point for urban reality: self-employed EU sex workers may work a maximum of 90 days per calendar year under the registration procedure.
The Way Beyond 90 Days
Anyone wishing to work self-employed for longer than 90 working days per calendar year needs a residence permit. EU/EFTA nationals receive a residence permit B EU/EFTA valid for five years upon proof of actual self-employed gainful activity. In practice, registration or confirmation from the AHV equalization office serves primarily as proof. This is supplemented by registration with the residents’ registration office of the municipality of residence, usually within 14 days of entry and before beginning work.
Different, significantly stricter admission requirements apply to third-country nationals under the Foreign Nationals and Integration Act. Anyone already holding a permit with employment rights should clarify in advance with the Office for Migration and Civil Law whether the self-employed activity is covered by it. This clarification belongs at the beginning of planning, not at the end – it is the only statement of account that carries weight in case of dispute.
The dancer statute, which until the end of 2015 had its own category for cabaret performances, was abolished on January 1, 2016. Since then, EU/EFTA sex workers are treated under foreign nationals law like all other professional groups.
Location Decides: 100 Municipalities, One Building Code
Because the canton has no operating permit, everything shifts to the municipality of location – and Graubünden has roughly 100 municipalities in eleven regions. Two ordinances are involved almost always.
Building law. According to the spatial planning law for the Canton Graubünden (KRG, BR 801.100), buildings and installations may only be erected, altered, or changed in purpose with written building permission from the municipal building authority. This very word is decisive: anyone who uses an apartment permanently for commercial purposes changes its purpose. Whether that requires a building permit in the specific case depends on the zoning ordinance and on whether significant effects on land use order, infrastructure, or surroundings are to be expected. The municipality’s building authority, not the canton, provides the information.
Hospitality law. The Hospitality Act for the Canton Graubünden (GWG, BR 945.100) assigns issuance and revocation of permits to municipalities. The application for an operating permit must, as a rule, be submitted one month before opening; provisions for operating times are also the matter of municipalities, as are fees and measures for violations up to and including operational closure. A club with alcohol service therefore needs this permit just like any restaurant – only not because of sex work but because of the hospitality business.
Chur: The Only Municipality with an Explicit Rule
Chur is the exception in the canton. Art. 26 Abs. 2 and 3 of the Police Act of the City of Chur (RB 411) restricts street prostitution to the time from 22 to 06 hours and allows the city council further local and temporal restrictions. The time window has existed in fact since a city council decision in June 2013; the total revision of the Police Act was accepted in the popular vote of November 29, 2020 with 82.4 percent. A complete ban would not be compatible with economic freedom – a corresponding motion was rejected on January 30, 2014. The street stroll is located in the Pulvermühle/Rossboden Street area.
That it continues to be about concrete infrastructure there is shown by the city council’s report on the Xenia Bischof mandate for a situation analysis in the Rossboden area: it addresses waste and disposal, affected commercial enterprises, and a possible waiting container including toilet, whose costs are roughly estimated at CHF 14,500 to 22,000 plus connection costs, with regard to a certain privacy for the sex workers. How strongly this municipal level shapes events in Graubünden, we have already demonstrated by the example that the canton regulates nothing and the municipality dictates the time.
In the Resorts, Usually Nothing Is Written
In Davos, St. Moritz, Arosa, Laax, or Scuol, no determination comparable to Chur’s exists that is publicly published regarding prostitution. It does not follow that everything would be permissible there, only that no specific rule exists. Instead, the general instruments are decisive: zoning ordinance and building code of the municipality, hospitality law for businesses, rental law vis-à-vis the landlord, condominium law and neighbor law in the building. In practice, that means: the line is rarely drawn by police but by a rental contract or a neighbor complaint. If you want to be sure, ask the municipal administration before arriving about the applicable order – in writing, so the information remains verifiable.
The contrast to a canton with its own law is particularly clear here: In Ticino, the LProst specifies, among other things, that only one person may work per apartment and the contract must run at least three months. Graubünden knows no such detailed rules – but also no cantonal office that in case of doubt provides a clear answer.
Housing Is Graubünden’s Hardest Permit
The biggest practical obstacle to a season in the mountain canton is not a form but an address. According to the real estate monitoring of the Graubünden Cantonal Bank, the vacancy rate in the canton was around 0.6 percent in spring 2026. In Swiss tourism municipalities, the average vacancy rate between 2020 and autumn 2024 fell from 1.5 to 0.78 percent – values of one percent or less are considered housing shortage. Relief is barely in sight in the short term because building land is lacking, construction costs are high, and spatial planning is tight.
Added to this is the second home law, which in municipalities with a second home share of over 20 percent regulates the construction of apartments as well as structural and use-related changes to existing apartments – and that affects practically all Graubünden tourist destinations. Davos has also passed a partial revision to make the conversion of primary residences to second homes more difficult. Even the hotel industry can only recruit staff if it can provide beds for employees; for the winter season 2026, the Graubünden industry calculated a shortage of skilled workers of around five percent.
For sex workers, that means three things:1. Short-term rental is expensive and legally fraught. Holiday apartments are the most flexible offering in resort areas – but commercial use is regularly excluded by the rental agreement, house rules, or the condominium regulations. A breach leads faster to termination than to official action.
2. A change of use may require approval. Under Art. 86 KRG, permanent commercial use of a residential unit is not automatically permit-free just because no one notices it.
3. Those who live on the premises are doubly dependent. If the accommodation loses its basis, the workplace often ends too. This coupling is one of the central vulnerabilities of seasonal work in general – in sex work it weighs more heavily because alternatives in the valley are scarce.
What applies regardless of the municipality: AHV, taxes, VAT
Anyone who works as self-employed in Switzerland is obligated to contribute – the same everywhere, regardless of whether the municipality has regulated anything.
- AHV: The SVA Canton Graubünden is responsible. The minimum contribution for the self-employed remains CHF 530 per year in 2026. The maximum rate is 10.0 percent; below an annual income of CHF 60,500, the sliding contribution scale applies down to 5.371 percent. The contribution to the family compensation fund for the self-employed decreases as of January 1, 2026, from 1.60 to 1.50 percent of AHV-liable income.
- Status: The compensation office recognizes self-employment itself; recognition by another body does not replace it. This confirmation is at the same time the proof that the immigration office wants to see for a permit beyond 90 days – the process is similar to what we described in the example of Canton Uri, where registration as self-employed takes place at the same counter as for any other small business.
- Taxes: Income from self-employment is recorded through the ordinary tax return; the Tax Administration Graubünden is responsible. In short-stay and registration procedure situations for dependent employment, source tax comes into play. Those who mix both should clarify the allocation in advance.
- VAT: Obligation begins only from an annual turnover of CHF 100,000. For most individual workers, this remains a theoretical figure; for agencies and businesses, it does not.
From an accounting perspective, seasonal logic is an advantage here: those who earn a large portion of their annual income in a few weeks should plan reserves from the outset. The provisional AHV invoice is based on reported income; those who report too low will receive the difference as a lump sum later.
Health and counseling: sparsely populated like the canton
There is no specialized cantonal contact point for sex workers in Graubünden – the government confirmed this in 2025. Available are:
- Aids-Hilfe Graubünden, Lürlibadstrasse 15, 7000 Chur: cantonal specialist office for prevention and counseling on HIV and other sexually transmitted infections since 1987, with outreach prevention in the sex industry. Counseling by phone, email, or on-site; low-threshold and anonymous testing at the specialist office; HIV tests Mondays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- adebar for questions about sexual health and family planning.
- Opferhilfe Graubünden for violence, coercion, or exploitation – entitlement exists regardless of residency status and regardless of whether a report is filed.
- Regional Social Services of the eleven regions for existential emergencies.
Important for newcomers from eastern Switzerland: The Maria Magdalena specialist office is for persons in Canton St. Gallen, not Graubünden. Those who work in Chur or in Prättigau should contact the Graubünden offices.
A practical sequence for a season in Graubünden
- Clarify status before booking. Office for Migration and Civil Law Graubünden: registration procedure or permit? How many working days remain in the current calendar year?
- Register with AHV. SVA Graubünden – the confirmation is simultaneously proof to the immigration office.
- Ask the municipality. Is there a local regulation on prostitution? Which zone applies to the intended address? Is a change of use required?
- For businesses additionally: catering business permit under GWG; application generally one month before opening.
- Secure accommodation legally. Review rental agreement, house rules, condominium regulations – before payment.
- Set aside reserves. For AHV, taxes, possibly health insurance and provisions; with seasonal peaks, calculate realistically rather than optimistically.
- Save contact details of counseling offices before they are needed.
Conclusion: no law is no clarity
Graubünden does not require sex workers to have a cantonal permit and keeps no register. This restraint is often described as liberal, but it primarily creates ambiguity: those who want to know what is permissible must ask one of around 100 municipalities and in many cases get the answer that nothing is regulated. The actually binding limits lie elsewhere – in the 90-day clock of alien law, in the municipality’s zoning plan, in the catering law, and in a housing market with around 0.6 percent vacancy. We have compiled a compact overview of the responsibilities in Canton Graubünden separately.
Whether anything changes is open. Following the unsatisfied inquiry in the October session 2025, the ball is in the Grand Council’s court. Until then: binding information is provided exclusively by the Office for Migration and Civil Law Graubünden, the municipality where work takes place, the SVA Graubünden, and the Tax Administration Graubünden. Everything else – including this article – is orientation, not legal advice. And in a canton whose season lasts longer than any notice, it is worthwhile to obtain this information early and in writing.