Whoever reads about the rules for sex work in Ticino almost always reads about obligations: personal appearance at the cantonal police, ID checks, CHF 100 upon signing the registration, a personal TESEU number, CHF 25 tax account per working day, and for a premises a permit from the department. This is one half of the Legge sull’esercizio della prostituzione (LProst) from January 22, 2018, in force since July 1, 2019.
The other half is in the same law and almost never appears in newspaper articles. It obligates the canton to designate offices where sex workers can turn to free of charge — psychologically, socially, health-wise, and legally. These offices are not part of the police, they keep no register, and they demand no number. This text is about this second half: who these offices are, what they do, who pays for them — and where the net tears.
What the LProst demands besides registration
The LProst is not merely administrative law. Articles 16 and 17 govern support: persons who engage in sex work in the canton can turn to the offices designated by the Consiglio di Stato and receive there free of charge psychological, social, health, and legal counseling — explicitly also with the goal of escaping exploitation relationships.
The law sets requirements for these offices. They must ensure regular and continuous support across the entire canton and submit a framework concept describing the goals, methods of support, the groups reached, as well as organization and financing. Counseling in Ticino is thus not a random product of volunteer work, but a state mandate with performance requirements.
On the administrative side, the Divisione della salute pubblica in the Dipartimento della sanità e della socialità is responsible for promoting and monitoring appropriate measures in the areas of hygiene, information, awareness-raising, and health prevention. Supervision of registrations, housing, and premises remains with the Dipartimento delle istituzioni and the cantonal police. Two departments, two logics, one law — and for those affected, two very different types of conversation.
A right, not an obligation: medical consultation
Here a stubborn misconception persists, and it crosses borders. In Ticino there is no mandatory health examination for sex workers, no health certificate, no periodic compulsory control. What the law provides is the right to obtain free-of-charge medical consultation for preventive purposes at the moment of registration with the police. Whoever forgoes this does not lose their TESEU number.
This is not a legal detail. A testing obligation creates a document that is controlled, presented, and potentially used against persons. A consultation right creates a contact that one can accept or not. Swiss practice deliberately relies on voluntariness, low-threshold access, and anonymity — because experience shows this reaches more people than control, and because a snapshot in the lab says nothing about tomorrow anyway.
The counter that registers — and what goes from there
To understand the second half, you must know the first. Registration occurs in person at the TESEU section of the cantonal police, the department that also handles human trafficking and exploitation of prostitution in Ticino. The application is received and signed there; the registration is valid only once identification documents are checked and the TESEU number is issued. Prerequisites are Swiss citizenship, a valid residence permit, or — for service providers from the EU/EFTA area — the registration procedure within 90 days, whereby in the sex industry registration must occur from the first working day. We have detailed the process, fees, and tax flat rate in our analysis of the hundred francs at the counter and the 25 per working day.
Critical for who learns what: the cantonal police maintain the files necessary for enforcement and promptly inform the Divisione delle contribuzioni and the cantonal physician. Whoever works in an apartment must additionally expect that through notification of the apartment — to be submitted by the person providing it — municipality and property owner are also informed. How narrowly permitted work locations are defined and what inspections have revealed is detailed in our analysis of nine inspected premises and fourteen apartments.
The counseling offices stand outside this data flow. They are not a public authority, they do not report further, they work anonymously. Precisely this separation is the reason they are needed.
Primis: the designated office since 2006
Primis — the acronym stands for Prevention, Information and Mediation in the Sex Industry — is a project of the association Zonaprotetta in Lugano. Already in 2006, Primis was jointly designated by the State Council together with Antenna MayDay as a reference office: for health, social, and legal counseling of sex workers and for coordination of the support network. The mandate is thus older than the current law; the 2018 LProst codified an existing practice.
What Primis concretely offers:
- Counseling on sexual health — multilingual, anonymous, and free of charge
- Outreach work through a team of linguistically-culturally trained mediators; working languages include Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and Romanian in addition to Italian
- Access to screenings for sexually transmitted infections and gynecological check-ups — according to activity reports, partly at the hospital, partly in the counseling rooms, partly directly in apartments
- Accompaniment to offices, insurance funds, and services — that is, to where language and residence status become the actual barrier
- Coordination of the Rete di aiuto, the support network from various services in the canton
The counseling office is located at Via Bagutti 2 in Lugano; open office hours traditionally take place Wednesday afternoons without appointment. Opening hours change — check primisticino.ch or call ahead before your first visit.
The carrier association celebrated its fortieth anniversary: founded in late 1985 as Aiuto Aids Ticino, visible since 2008 under the name Zonaprotetta, which was also officially adopted in 2014. Coordinator Vincenza Guarnaccia describes the organization’s path as a transition from fighting a disease to a positive, conscious approach to sexuality. You can see this shift in the offer for sex workers: today it is less about infection prevention alone and more about rights, working conditions, and access to regular care.
Antenna MayDay: responsible for everything that is not a doctor’s matter
The second office designated by the State Council is Antenna MayDay, a service of SOS Ticino at Via Merlina 3a in Viganello (City of Lugano). It offers social, health, and legal counseling for people in precarious living situations — historically with a strong focus on migrants without regulated status — and shares the statutory mandate for sex workers with Primis.
The practical difference can be summarized simply. At Primis the emphasis is on health, prevention, and access to care; at MayDay on residence, social insurance, employment and rental matters, and official correspondence. Whoever does not know which door is the right one can start at either — coordination in the support network is part of the mandate, and no one will be turned away there for making the wrong choice.
Consultori di salute sessuale: four locations, no price tag
Complementary to the specialized offer, the Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale (EOC) operates Consultori di salute sessuale at the regional hospitals in Bellinzona, Locarno, Lugano, and Mendrisio. Consultations are free and confidential, waiting times are short. Covered are sexuality and relationships, sexual orientation and gender identity, contraception including emergency contraception, pregnancy counseling, as well as prevention of sexually transmitted infections and anonymous HIV tests.
The Consultori are reachable Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., by phone (Bellinzona 091 811 92 32, Locarno 091 811 45 51, Lugano 091 811 61 48, Mendrisio 091 811 36 50) or by email at [email protected]. For sex workers, this route is also relevant because it requires no connection to the profession: one can use the counseling without telling anyone anything about one’s own work.
Where the net tears: the gap between 24 and around 100
The statutory mandate reads: canton-wide, continuous support. Recent developments make this mandate more difficult.
New registrations are rising sharply — 219 in 2022, 284 in 2023, 352 in 2024, and for 2025 authorities report a further increase. In parallel, violations for unlicensed sex work have exploded: 50 (2022), 59 (2023), 149 (2024). At the end of 2024, 24 apartments were properly registered across the entire canton; a search by RSI’s Falò magazine on Ticino classified ad portals, however, came up with around 100 active red-light apartments. In 2024, 128 persons were reported to the public prosecutor, a large portion in connection with temporarily rented apartments.
The City of Lugano confirmed in October 2025 in response to a municipal council interrogation that the phenomenon was known to the services and was being closely monitored; cases in unregistered, short-term rented apartments had in particular increased. During inspections as part of the international Operation Global Chain in summer 2025, all nine licensed premises came through without objection, while additionally inspected apartments led to 15 reports — among 128 persons inspected, no suspected cases of human trafficking emerged.
For counseling, this means a shift into the invisible. Whoever rents a short-term apartment for twelve days appears in no register, quickly changes municipalities, and is harder for a specialist office to reach than someone who works in a licensed premises. This is precisely why outreach work with mediators is not an add-on, but the core of the offer: where registration fails as an access channel, only direct contact remains. How strongly location shapes the scene is shown by the municipal map with the seven parcels in Chiasso and the 300 meters in Mendrisio.
Who pays for it — and why this is a political number
Counseling that is free of charge is not costless. The Ticino support network is subsidized by the canton — according to published association information from Zonaprotetta on the order of around CHF 230,000 per year as a cantonal contribution — supplemented by project-related federal funds. For example, fedpol supported Zonaprotetta’s project „RISPETTO plus“ in 2024 with CHF 29,896 as part of its program against human trafficking. The project goal — to promote a culture of respect and responsibility in sex work to prevent violence and exploitation — shows where prevention has developed: away from pure infection logic, toward working conditions and ways of dealing with one another.
That such amounts appear in budget debates and the association has had to take political criticism multiple times is part of the picture. For users, the message nonetheless remains simple: the offer is funded, it is anchored in law, and at the door it costs nothing.Compared with other cantons, that’s an advantage. Where no separate sex work law exists, there is also no legally designated contact point — there you have to piece together the network of general social services, victim assistance, and out-of-canton specialist services yourself, as a look at a canton without its own red light law shows. Its own law brings more obligations — but in Ticino it also brings an addressable service in return.
Practical: which door for which matter
- Registration, TESEU number, notification of an apartment, permit for an erotic establishment: Cantonal Police, TESEU Section, or Servizio autorizzazioni in the Dipartimento delle istituzioni
- Zones, distances, municipal ordinances, change of use, and building permit: the municipality (Municipio) with its building and planning services
- Tax account of CHF 25 per working day, assessment, refund: Divisione delle contribuzioni
- Prevention, hygiene, information, health policy: Divisione della salute pubblica and Cantonal Medical Officer
- Health, testing, contraception, anonymous advice: Primis/Zonaprotetta and the sexual health counselling services (Consultori di salute sessuale) of the EOC
- Residence, social insurance, law, exit from exploitation: Antenna MayDay (SOS Ticino) and Primis
- Violence, threats, exploitation, human trafficking: Police and Public Prosecutor’s Office; for those affected, additionally victim assistance
What is secured — and what you should ask about
The structure is secured: a cantonal law with its own support mandate, two service providers designated by the government council, a hospital-based counselling service at four locations, a right to free medical consultation at the time of registration, and no obligation to be examined.
The moving parts are not secured. Opening hours, telephone numbers, consultation formats and language combinations of the mediators change, as do fees and forms. And where a rule varies by municipality — zones, distances, permitted addresses — there is no cantonal answer, only that of the responsible municipality.
For everything binding, then, the rule is: ask the responsible authority — for registration and permits at the cantonal police, for location and zone at the municipality, for taxes at the Divisione delle contribuzioni. For everything else, Ticino offers a service that is free, multilingual, and explicitly not part of the control apparatus. Knowing about it before you need it is the real point.