A Pension Is Named in the Immigration Act, and the Scheme That Pays It Has to Be European
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Saint Kitts and Nevis on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
147 exceptions recorded across 54 countries · none match Saint Kitts and Nevis to Luxembourg · Residency as a retiree
Luxembourg has no permit called a retirement visa, and age is not a condition of any residence title in the Act of 29 August 2008. What it has instead is one half of one point of article 78: a residence authorisation for private reasons may be granted to a third-country national who can live on an old-age, invalidity or survivor's pension paid by a Luxembourgish social-security body or by one in another Union or Schengen state. That is the pension route, and the condition that decides most cases is not the size of the pension but who pays it. A pension from a scheme outside the Union and the Schengen area is not the thing article 78(1) point 1 b) describes, and the Act names no other category that is.
At a glance
- A retirement-specific permit
- None in the list of residence authorisations in article 38 of the Act of 29 August 2008
Article 38 point 1 lists eight kinds of temporary authorisation and point 2 adds long-term resident status; none of them is addressed to a retired person.
- Where a pension does appear
- In article 78(1) point 1 b), as one of the two permitted sources of income for the private-reasons permit
Article 78(1) point 1 b), in the wording given by the Act of 21 April 2023.
- Which pensions qualify
- Those paid by a Luxembourgish social-security body, or by one in another Union or Schengen state
Article 78(1) point 1 b). The article names the paying body, not the nationality or residence of the pensioner.
- Age as a condition of a residence title
- Not used by the Act, whose categories in article 38 turn on work, study, research, sport, family, investment or private reasons
- Health cover once you are here
- Voluntary insurance under article 2 of the Code de la sécurité sociale, after a three-month qualifying period
Article 2, second paragraph, of the Code de la sécurité sociale, for a resident who cannot be covered otherwise.
Requirements
- An old-age, invalidity or survivor's pension from a Luxembourgish or other Union or Schengen social-security body
- Resources stable, regular and sufficient to live without social assistance
- Sickness insurance cover
- Suitable housing
- An application made and granted before you arrive
Country-level policy
The Act of 29 August 2008 almost never states an amount. It requires resources and leaves a grand-ducal regulation to measure them, and that regulation - consolidated to 1 July 2024 - uses two benchmarks. The first is the salaire social minimum for an unskilled worker, which it applies to the private-reasons permit, to family reunification, to long-term resident status and to short-stay means. The second is the revenu minimum garanti, which it caps the free-movement resources test at and sets the student threshold as 80 per cent of. The revenu minimum garanti no longer exists: the Act of 28 July 2018 repealed the Act of 29 April 1999 that created it, and the Code de la sécurité sociale instructs readers that wherever a legal or regulatory text uses the term, the revenu d'inclusion sociale is to be read instead. Guichet.lu already describes the test in the new benefit's name while the regulation still names the old one.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«b) provenant d’une pension de vieillesse, d’invalidité ou de survie versée par un organisme de sécurité sociale luxembourgeois ou d’un autre État membre de l’Union européenne ou de l’Espace Schengen ;»The whole of the retirement route, in one sub-point, and the condition is about the paying institution.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Luxembourg's official legal publisher, run by the Service central de législation. It issues the Journal officiel and, separately, textes coordonnés. Everything is addressed by ELI, and the address that matters is on the data host rather than the site: legilux.public.lu is an Angular single-page application that answers every address with the same 2,118-byte shell, while data.legilux.public.lu serves the documents. The live forms are data.legilux.public.lu/eli/<type>/<yyyy>/<mm>/<dd>/<id>/jo/fr/{html,pdf} for an act as published and .../consolide/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/{html,pdf} for a consolidation, where the date must be an exact consolidation date - any other date answers 404. Codes are addressed differently again, as /eli/etat/leg/code/<name>/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/pdf. The same host answers an Accept: application/rdf+xml request for any ELI with the record's metadata, and there is a SPARQL endpoint at data.legilux.public.lu/sparqlendpoint which is how a consolidation date is found rather than guessed: ?v jolux:isMemberOf <work ELI> ; jolux:dateApplicability ?d returns every consolidation of an act.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The consolidations are documentary. The Journal officiel as published is what has legal force, and the Code de la sécurité sociale prints that on its own notes page. The two manifestations of one consolidation are not the same document: the HTML carries the change markers and the amending-act headings - 'Art. 78. (L du 21 avril 2023)' - and breaks sentences with marker digits like '145 > quinze heures 145 <', while the PDF prints clean article text and drops both the markers and the headings. A quotation has to be taken from whichever one the sentence survives in. The consolidations also carry defects of their own: article 33 of the Act of 29 August 2008 is printed twice over in both manifestations, once as the original single sentence and once again as paragraph (1) with the same words. It cannot be cited for the income tax Act at all - it holds consolidation metadata for the Act of 4 December 1967 up to 1 February 2026 but serves no document for any consolidation after 2011, so the only current coordinated text of it is the tax administration's. Code recueils are PDF-only, and two of them set the publisher's own apparatus inside the text column: the Code de la sécurité sociale prints source references like 'L. 27.7.92' mid-sentence, and the Code de la route prints case-law annotations frozen at 2 September 2013 alongside articles consolidated to 2026. The Legilux record of the loi d'adaptation fiscale of 16 October 1934 tags its expression as French while the text it serves is German from beginning to end.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«1. il est muni d’une autorisation de séjour temporaire à titre de: a) travailleur salarié visé par l’article 42, travailleur hautement qualifié, travailleur transféré temporaire intragroupe, travailleur détaché ou travailleur saisonnier; b) travailleur indépendant; c) sportif; d) étudiant, élève, stagiaire, volontaire ou jeune au pair; e) chercheur; f) membre de famille; g) investisseur; h) sinon pour des raisons d’ordre privé ou particulier, ou»The closed list of temporary residence authorisations. Nothing in it is addressed to someone who has stopped working, which is why the pension sits inside the private-reasons category.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Luxembourg's official legal publisher, run by the Service central de législation. It issues the Journal officiel and, separately, textes coordonnés. Everything is addressed by ELI, and the address that matters is on the data host rather than the site: legilux.public.lu is an Angular single-page application that answers every address with the same 2,118-byte shell, while data.legilux.public.lu serves the documents. The live forms are data.legilux.public.lu/eli/<type>/<yyyy>/<mm>/<dd>/<id>/jo/fr/{html,pdf} for an act as published and .../consolide/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/{html,pdf} for a consolidation, where the date must be an exact consolidation date - any other date answers 404. Codes are addressed differently again, as /eli/etat/leg/code/<name>/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/pdf. The same host answers an Accept: application/rdf+xml request for any ELI with the record's metadata, and there is a SPARQL endpoint at data.legilux.public.lu/sparqlendpoint which is how a consolidation date is found rather than guessed: ?v jolux:isMemberOf <work ELI> ; jolux:dateApplicability ?d returns every consolidation of an act.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The consolidations are documentary. The Journal officiel as published is what has legal force, and the Code de la sécurité sociale prints that on its own notes page. The two manifestations of one consolidation are not the same document: the HTML carries the change markers and the amending-act headings - 'Art. 78. (L du 21 avril 2023)' - and breaks sentences with marker digits like '145 > quinze heures 145 <', while the PDF prints clean article text and drops both the markers and the headings. A quotation has to be taken from whichever one the sentence survives in. The consolidations also carry defects of their own: article 33 of the Act of 29 August 2008 is printed twice over in both manifestations, once as the original single sentence and once again as paragraph (1) with the same words. It cannot be cited for the income tax Act at all - it holds consolidation metadata for the Act of 4 December 1967 up to 1 February 2026 but serves no document for any consolidation after 2011, so the only current coordinated text of it is the tax administration's. Code recueils are PDF-only, and two of them set the publisher's own apparatus inside the text column: the Code de la sécurité sociale prints source references like 'L. 27.7.92' mid-sentence, and the Code de la route prints case-law annotations frozen at 2 September 2013 alongside articles consolidated to 2026. The Legilux record of the loi d'adaptation fiscale of 16 October 1934 tags its expression as French while the text it serves is German from beginning to end.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«se voit délivrer, conformément à l’article 40, un titre de séjour avec la mention «vie privée»»A pensioner admitted under article 78 holds the same card as anyone else admitted under it.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Luxembourg's official legal publisher, run by the Service central de législation. It issues the Journal officiel and, separately, textes coordonnés. Everything is addressed by ELI, and the address that matters is on the data host rather than the site: legilux.public.lu is an Angular single-page application that answers every address with the same 2,118-byte shell, while data.legilux.public.lu serves the documents. The live forms are data.legilux.public.lu/eli/<type>/<yyyy>/<mm>/<dd>/<id>/jo/fr/{html,pdf} for an act as published and .../consolide/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/{html,pdf} for a consolidation, where the date must be an exact consolidation date - any other date answers 404. Codes are addressed differently again, as /eli/etat/leg/code/<name>/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/pdf. The same host answers an Accept: application/rdf+xml request for any ELI with the record's metadata, and there is a SPARQL endpoint at data.legilux.public.lu/sparqlendpoint which is how a consolidation date is found rather than guessed: ?v jolux:isMemberOf <work ELI> ; jolux:dateApplicability ?d returns every consolidation of an act.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The consolidations are documentary. The Journal officiel as published is what has legal force, and the Code de la sécurité sociale prints that on its own notes page. The two manifestations of one consolidation are not the same document: the HTML carries the change markers and the amending-act headings - 'Art. 78. (L du 21 avril 2023)' - and breaks sentences with marker digits like '145 > quinze heures 145 <', while the PDF prints clean article text and drops both the markers and the headings. A quotation has to be taken from whichever one the sentence survives in. The consolidations also carry defects of their own: article 33 of the Act of 29 August 2008 is printed twice over in both manifestations, once as the original single sentence and once again as paragraph (1) with the same words. It cannot be cited for the income tax Act at all - it holds consolidation metadata for the Act of 4 December 1967 up to 1 February 2026 but serves no document for any consolidation after 2011, so the only current coordinated text of it is the tax administration's. Code recueils are PDF-only, and two of them set the publisher's own apparatus inside the text column: the Code de la sécurité sociale prints source references like 'L. 27.7.92' mid-sentence, and the Code de la route prints case-law annotations frozen at 2 September 2013 alongside articles consolidated to 2026. The Legilux record of the loi d'adaptation fiscale of 16 October 1934 tags its expression as French while the text it serves is German from beginning to end.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Les personnes résidant au Grand-Duché de Luxembourg qui ne peuvent bénéficier L. 27.7.92 autrement d’une protection en matière d’assurance maladie ont la faculté de s’assurer volontairement. Le droit aux prestations n’est ouvert qu’après un stage d’assurance de trois mois à partir de la présentation de la demande au Centre commun de la sécurité sociale.»Quoted as the recueil prints it: the publisher sets its source references inside the text column, and "L. 27.7.92" is one of them, not part of the sentence.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Luxembourg's official legal publisher, run by the Service central de législation. It issues the Journal officiel and, separately, textes coordonnés. Everything is addressed by ELI, and the address that matters is on the data host rather than the site: legilux.public.lu is an Angular single-page application that answers every address with the same 2,118-byte shell, while data.legilux.public.lu serves the documents. The live forms are data.legilux.public.lu/eli/<type>/<yyyy>/<mm>/<dd>/<id>/jo/fr/{html,pdf} for an act as published and .../consolide/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/{html,pdf} for a consolidation, where the date must be an exact consolidation date - any other date answers 404. Codes are addressed differently again, as /eli/etat/leg/code/<name>/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/pdf. The same host answers an Accept: application/rdf+xml request for any ELI with the record's metadata, and there is a SPARQL endpoint at data.legilux.public.lu/sparqlendpoint which is how a consolidation date is found rather than guessed: ?v jolux:isMemberOf <work ELI> ; jolux:dateApplicability ?d returns every consolidation of an act.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The consolidations are documentary. The Journal officiel as published is what has legal force, and the Code de la sécurité sociale prints that on its own notes page. The two manifestations of one consolidation are not the same document: the HTML carries the change markers and the amending-act headings - 'Art. 78. (L du 21 avril 2023)' - and breaks sentences with marker digits like '145 > quinze heures 145 <', while the PDF prints clean article text and drops both the markers and the headings. A quotation has to be taken from whichever one the sentence survives in. The consolidations also carry defects of their own: article 33 of the Act of 29 August 2008 is printed twice over in both manifestations, once as the original single sentence and once again as paragraph (1) with the same words. It cannot be cited for the income tax Act at all - it holds consolidation metadata for the Act of 4 December 1967 up to 1 February 2026 but serves no document for any consolidation after 2011, so the only current coordinated text of it is the tax administration's. Code recueils are PDF-only, and two of them set the publisher's own apparatus inside the text column: the Code de la sécurité sociale prints source references like 'L. 27.7.92' mid-sentence, and the Code de la route prints case-law annotations frozen at 2 September 2013 alongside articles consolidated to 2026. The Legilux record of the loi d'adaptation fiscale of 16 October 1934 tags its expression as French while the text it serves is German from beginning to end.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The Act was read in full for its residence categories. The statement that no category turns on age rests on the list in article 38 and on articles 42 to 78, which are the articles that fill it in.
Someone drawing a pension from a scheme outside the Union and Schengen is not told by the Act that they are excluded; they are told nothing, because article 78(1) point 1 describes two sources and theirs is neither. The remaining way in is article 78(1) point 3, which is about personal and family ties and not about income.
A pensioner who is already insured by a Union scheme is in a different position again, because coordination of social security is Union law and is not read here.
- consolidatesLoi du 29 août 2008 sur la libre circulation des personnes et l'immigration, consolidated text applicable from 12 June 2026
Legilux, Journal officiel du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg · consolidated to 2026-06-12
Known to be out of date. A Legilux consolidation is a documentary text; the Journal officiel as published is what has legal force. This manifestation is the PDF, which prints the article text without the change markers and the amending-act headings the HTML manifestation of the same consolidation carries.
About this source
Luxembourg's official legal publisher, run by the Service central de législation. It issues the Journal officiel and, separately, textes coordonnés. Everything is addressed by ELI, and the address that matters is on the data host rather than the site: legilux.public.lu is an Angular single-page application that answers every address with the same 2,118-byte shell, while data.legilux.public.lu serves the documents. The live forms are data.legilux.public.lu/eli/<type>/<yyyy>/<mm>/<dd>/<id>/jo/fr/{html,pdf} for an act as published and .../consolide/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/{html,pdf} for a consolidation, where the date must be an exact consolidation date - any other date answers 404. Codes are addressed differently again, as /eli/etat/leg/code/<name>/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/pdf. The same host answers an Accept: application/rdf+xml request for any ELI with the record's metadata, and there is a SPARQL endpoint at data.legilux.public.lu/sparqlendpoint which is how a consolidation date is found rather than guessed: ?v jolux:isMemberOf <work ELI> ; jolux:dateApplicability ?d returns every consolidation of an act.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The consolidations are documentary. The Journal officiel as published is what has legal force, and the Code de la sécurité sociale prints that on its own notes page. The two manifestations of one consolidation are not the same document: the HTML carries the change markers and the amending-act headings - 'Art. 78. (L du 21 avril 2023)' - and breaks sentences with marker digits like '145 > quinze heures 145 <', while the PDF prints clean article text and drops both the markers and the headings. A quotation has to be taken from whichever one the sentence survives in. The consolidations also carry defects of their own: article 33 of the Act of 29 August 2008 is printed twice over in both manifestations, once as the original single sentence and once again as paragraph (1) with the same words. It cannot be cited for the income tax Act at all - it holds consolidation metadata for the Act of 4 December 1967 up to 1 February 2026 but serves no document for any consolidation after 2011, so the only current coordinated text of it is the tax administration's. Code recueils are PDF-only, and two of them set the publisher's own apparatus inside the text column: the Code de la sécurité sociale prints source references like 'L. 27.7.92' mid-sentence, and the Code de la route prints case-law annotations frozen at 2 September 2013 alongside articles consolidated to 2026. The Legilux record of the loi d'adaptation fiscale of 16 October 1934 tags its expression as French while the text it serves is German from beginning to end.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
- consolidatesCode de la sécurité sociale, consolidated recueil applicable from 1 January 2026
Legilux, Journal officiel du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg · consolidated to 2026-01-01
Known to be out of date. The recueil says on its own notes page that where it differs from the Journal officiel, only the Journal officiel has the force of law.
About this source
Luxembourg's official legal publisher, run by the Service central de législation. It issues the Journal officiel and, separately, textes coordonnés. Everything is addressed by ELI, and the address that matters is on the data host rather than the site: legilux.public.lu is an Angular single-page application that answers every address with the same 2,118-byte shell, while data.legilux.public.lu serves the documents. The live forms are data.legilux.public.lu/eli/<type>/<yyyy>/<mm>/<dd>/<id>/jo/fr/{html,pdf} for an act as published and .../consolide/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/{html,pdf} for a consolidation, where the date must be an exact consolidation date - any other date answers 404. Codes are addressed differently again, as /eli/etat/leg/code/<name>/<YYYYMMDD>/fr/pdf. The same host answers an Accept: application/rdf+xml request for any ELI with the record's metadata, and there is a SPARQL endpoint at data.legilux.public.lu/sparqlendpoint which is how a consolidation date is found rather than guessed: ?v jolux:isMemberOf <work ELI> ; jolux:dateApplicability ?d returns every consolidation of an act.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The consolidations are documentary. The Journal officiel as published is what has legal force, and the Code de la sécurité sociale prints that on its own notes page. The two manifestations of one consolidation are not the same document: the HTML carries the change markers and the amending-act headings - 'Art. 78. (L du 21 avril 2023)' - and breaks sentences with marker digits like '145 > quinze heures 145 <', while the PDF prints clean article text and drops both the markers and the headings. A quotation has to be taken from whichever one the sentence survives in. The consolidations also carry defects of their own: article 33 of the Act of 29 August 2008 is printed twice over in both manifestations, once as the original single sentence and once again as paragraph (1) with the same words. It cannot be cited for the income tax Act at all - it holds consolidation metadata for the Act of 4 December 1967 up to 1 February 2026 but serves no document for any consolidation after 2011, so the only current coordinated text of it is the tax administration's. Code recueils are PDF-only, and two of them set the publisher's own apparatus inside the text column: the Code de la sécurité sociale prints source references like 'L. 27.7.92' mid-sentence, and the Code de la route prints case-law annotations frozen at 2 September 2013 alongside articles consolidated to 2026. The Legilux record of the loi d'adaptation fiscale of 16 October 1934 tags its expression as French while the text it serves is German from beginning to end.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source