Fixed-term contract in Luxembourg: 24 months maximum

What is the maximum duration of a fixed-term contract in Luxembourg?

A fixed-term contract in Luxembourg may not exceed twenty-four months for the same employee, renewals and probation included, and it may be renewed twice at most; beyond that cap, the labour court may requalify the relationship as an open-ended contract, with the consequences of a dismissal.

The cap attaches to the employee, not to the post: twenty-four months in aggregate, initial contract, renewal amendments and probation period taken together. That last point is the one payroll files most often miss. The Inspection du travail et des mines states expressly that the probation period counts towards the maximum duration, whereas many employers treat it as a preliminary phase that would not consume the counter.

The two renewals are subject to a strict formal condition. The principle of renewal, or its conditions, must appear in a clause of the initial contract or in a signed amendment. Without a written agreement meeting that requirement, the renewed contract is presumed to have been concluded for an indefinite term, and the Inspection du travail et des mines specifies that the presumption admits no proof to the contrary. A renewal agreed orally cannot be regularised after the fact.

Two regimes fall outside the cap. Seasonal contracts are not subject to it. A fixed-term contract concluded with a pupil or student may reach sixty months in total, as may one concluded by a public research centre with a researcher, without the contract becoming open-ended for that reason. Certain university researchers' contracts and Éducation différenciée staff contracts may likewise be renewed more than twice.

In which cases may a fixed-term contract be concluded?

A fixed-term contract in Luxembourg is open only for carrying out a precise and non-lasting task: it cannot durably fill a job tied to the company's normal and permanent activity. The employer must justify that use in the written contract itself, through a precise definition of its purpose.

The statutory list, which the extracts consulted attach to article L. 122-1 of the Labour Code, is not exhaustive. It covers replacing an absent employee, seasonal work, a temporary and exceptional rise in activity, the start-up or expansion of a business, and a post that has become vacant pending the effective arrival of the employee who will fill it. The Inspection du travail et des mines adds occasional, one-off tasks outside the normal activity, together with urgent work.

Written form is a substantive condition, not a formality. The contract must be drawn up in writing for each employee individually, no later than the start of employment. Without a written statement of the term, the contract is deemed open-ended, and here too the Inspection du travail et des mines indicates that no proof to the contrary is admissible. The contract must carry either the end date or the minimum duration; information items not communicated beforehand must be given to the employee in one or more documents, no later than the seventh calendar day of work.

Requalification therefore turns on three grounds: the purpose, which must remain a precise and non-lasting task, the writing, which must exist on day one, and compliance with the caps. Omitting a single mandatory item does not, on its own, lead to requalification. In an outsourced payroll file, it is the contract that drives the set-up, and a requalified contract works back onto the notice period, the severance pay and the length of service declared.

How long may the probation period last in Luxembourg?

The probation period in Luxembourg runs from two weeks to three months for an employee below DAP or CATP level, six months at that level or above, and twelve months where the starting gross monthly pay exceeds an indexed threshold. That threshold stands at EUR 5,318.41 at the index in force since 1 June 2026.

That last threshold is the source of a difficulty we meet regularly on assignment, because two official pages publish two different amounts. Guichet.lu gives EUR 5,188.69, the Inspection du travail et des mines EUR 5,318.41 at index 992.24. Both are accurate: the threshold is set by grand-ducal regulation and expressed by the Inspection du travail et des mines as EUR 536 at index 100, and is therefore indexed. The gap is one index bracket, and the figure to apply is the one produced by the index in force at the hiring date.

In a fixed-term contract the cap changes nature: the probation period may not exceed a quarter of the duration set in the contract, or of its minimum duration. On a twelve-month contract, probation is therefore limited to three months. Combined with the two-week floor, that quarter has a consequence most contract templates ignore: a four-week contract should not be able to carry a probation clause, and neither should a contract of less than two months.

The clause must be in writing no later than the employee's start date, failing which it is void. A probation period longer than one month must be expressed in whole months. The Inspection du travail et des mines also considers that a one-month probation is in principle not possible, given how the two-week floor and the notice period interact, but accepts that duration by exception for a fixed-term contract of more than four and less than eight months. A clause exceeding the maxima is not void in its entirety: it is void only for the excess duration.

What notice applies to termination during probation?

During the probation period in Luxembourg, notice is calculated on the probation duration agreed in the contract, not on the time already elapsed: four days per month of probation, with a floor of fifteen days and a ceiling of one month. Where probation is expressed in weeks, notice runs for as many days as there are weeks.

Two rules frame that calculation, and they are the ones that produce requalifications. The first is that the first two weeks cannot be touched: during that period the contract cannot be terminated without the other party's agreement, whether it is fixed-term or open-ended, and a unilateral termination notified within that window is wrongful. Only serious misconduct remains available.

The second is the end point: notice must expire no later than the last day of the probation period. Notice that is correctly calculated but served too late runs past the end of probation, and the contract may then be treated as having become definitive. On a six-month probation, the twenty-four-day notice therefore means deciding at the latest twenty-four days before the term, which brings the useful decision window back to roughly five months.

The notice periods are identical for both parties: an employee leaving during probation serves the same notice as an employer who lets them go. Termination served during probation need not be reasoned and gives no right to severance pay, which requires five years' service and falls under the regime described in our article on the notice period and severance pay.

Is the probation period extended by sick leave?

The probation period in Luxembourg is extended by a duration equal to the employee's absence where the employment contract is suspended, sick leave included, and that extension may not exceed one month in total. A six-week absence therefore shifts the end of probation by one month only.

In practice the extension is not automatic: it assumes the employee complied with the information duties, namely notifying the employer on the first day of absence and delivering the medical certificate within three days. These are the same duties that open protection against dismissal during the absence, set out in our article on continued pay during sick leave.

Where the absence outlasts the probation period itself, the employer may terminate, but notice must end at the term of the extended probation, which means that term has to be recalculated before serving notice. That is the calendar error we see most often on this point: the original term is used, the one-month extension is forgotten, and notice expires after a term that is no longer the right one.

The extension creates no new duration: it shifts a term. A three-month probation remains a three-month probation for the notice calculation, which is always read on the duration agreed in the contract, never on the duration actually elapsed.

Can a fixed-term contract be terminated before its term?

In Luxembourg, a fixed-term contract may be terminated before its term in three cases only: during the probation period, for serious misconduct, or by mutual agreement recorded in writing in two counterparts signed by both parties. Outside those three cases, early termination gives rise to damages.

Compensation is capped, and that cap is often misjudged. Where the employer terminates without serious cause, the employee is entitled to the salary remaining due until the term, but limited to the notice period that would have applied had the contract been open-ended. On an eighteen-month contract broken in the third month, the exposure is therefore not fifteen months' pay, but the notice the acquired length of service would have carried.

Serious misconduct is subject to a deadline that runs fast. Article L. 124-10 of the Labour Code provides that a fact or fault capable of justifying termination for serious cause may no longer be relied on more than one month after the day the employer became aware of it, unless criminal proceedings were brought within that period. The Inspection du travail et des mines adds that an earlier fact may be recalled in support of a new one.

At the term, the contract ends automatically, with no notice and no dismissal letter, and none of the official sources consulted provides for an end-of-contract allowance in Luxembourg, unlike the precarity premium known in other systems. If the employment relationship continues past the term, however, the labour court may requalify the contract as open-ended: letting an employee work a few extra days out of convenience is one of the rare gestures that transform a contract without either party intending it.

What waiting period applies before refilling the same post?

Once a fixed-term contract expires in Luxembourg, the same post can only be refilled on a fixed-term or temporary agency basis after a period equal to one third of the duration of the expired contract, renewals included. It applies whether the new holder is the same employee or another.

Guichet.lu gives the worked example: a twelve-month contract renewed twice for three months reaches eighteen months in total, and the same post can only be refilled on a fixed-term basis after a six-month waiting period. The period is calculated on the total duration, renewals included, not on the duration of the last amendment. It attaches to the post, not to the person: changing employee does not clear it.

Several situations escape it: a fresh absence of the replaced employee, urgent work, seasonal contracts, jobs for which fixed-term contracts are customary, and early termination at the employee's initiative. Where the waiting period is not observed, the contract concluded too early may be requalified as open-ended by the labour court.

That leaves the costliest trap of the sequence, because it occurs when everything is going well: an open-ended contract concluded after a fixed-term contract with the same employer cannot carry a probation period where the employment relationship continues. A genuine interruption, of several months or years, may reopen that possibility, but the court assesses it case by case and a short gap is not enough. We regularly see conversion contracts signed with a six-month probation copied from the in-house template: the clause is void, and an employer who relies on it to terminate ends up on the ground of ordinary dismissal without having planned for it.

On the reporting side, each sequence is one entry and one exit. The employee's entry declaration must reach the Centre commun de la sécurité sociale within eight days of the start of employment, with a thirty-day tolerance, after which a fine of EUR 50 per month of delay applies, capped at EUR 2,500. On an outsourced file this monitoring fits into a schedule per contract: term, last useful day to serve notice during probation, end date of the waiting period.

The order of magnitude of our fees is set out in our pricing schedule; what makes it vary is not the number of contracts, it is the quality of the written agreements already signed.

Sources and verification

Written for Financial Services Luxembourg and reviewed before publication by Mickaël LOC, licensed accountant (authorisation 10077274). The documentary review dated 11 October 2026 relies on the accessible sources identified below. Points not confirmed against primary texts are explicitly identified in this section.

The sources consulted are as follows, all read on 11 October 2026.

On itm.public.lu, the questions and answers of the Inspection du travail et des mines on employment contracts give the cases in which a fixed-term contract may be used and the duty to justify that use in the written contract (D1b1), the mandatory content of the contract and the delivery of missing information no later than the seventh calendar day of work (D1b4), the maximum duration of twenty-four months renewals included and the inclusion of the probation period in that calculation (D1b5), and the possible requalification where the cap is exceeded (D1b6).

The same series gives the limit of two renewals, the requirement of a clause in the initial contract or an amendment and the irrebuttable presumption of an open-ended contract where there is no writing (D1b7), requalification where the relationship continues past the term (D1b8), the waiting period equal to one third of the expired contract's duration before refilling the same post and its application to any candidate (D1b9), the possibility of providing for probation in a fixed-term contract (D1b13), the three sole cases of termination before the term (D1b16), the cases of requalification (D1b30) and the sixty-month maximum for a pupil's or student's contract (D2c2).

The questions and answers on the probation period give the two-week floor, the caps of three, six and twelve months, the pay threshold of EUR 536 at index 100, that is EUR 5,318.41 at index 992.24, the grand-ducal regulation of 11 July 1989 as the reference text and the nullity of the clause for the excess duration only (D3a3).

The same pages give the extension of probation by a duration equal to the absence without exceeding one month, the employee's information conditions and the duty to make notice expire at the term of the extended probation (D3a6), the suspension of probation (D3a7), together with the cap of a quarter of the fixed-term contract's duration, the practical impossibility of a probation clause on a four-week contract and the one-month exception for a contract of more than four and less than eight months (D3a8).

The same series gives, finally, the ban on a probation clause in an open-ended contract concluded after a fixed-term contract with the same employer and the exception of a genuine interruption assessed by the court (D3a9), the fact that the first two weeks cannot be touched (D3b1) and the notice calculation, as many days as weeks of probation or four days per month with a fifteen-day floor and a one-month ceiling, identical for both parties (D3b3).

Question and answer D11b11 gives the one-month deadline for relying on serious misconduct and the possibility of recalling an earlier fact. On guichet.public.lu, the page on the fixed-term contract gives the precise and non-lasting task, the ban on durably filling a job tied to the normal and permanent activity, the three cases of early termination with the written agreement in two counterparts, the cap on damages at the notice period applicable to an open-ended contract, the one-third waiting period and its worked example of eighteen months giving six months of waiting.

The page on the open-ended contract gives the writing no later than the start of employment, the threshold of EUR 5,188.69 at the index it uses and the impossibility of a probation clause in a contract signed after work has begun. The page on termination of the employment contract during the probation period gives the notice scale and its term, and the page on the employee's entry declaration to social security, together with the page on fines, gives the eight-day deadline, the thirty-day tolerance and the fine of EUR 50 per month capped at EUR 2,500.

On legilux.public.lu, article L. 121-5 of the Labour Code carries the probation period, its written form no later than the start of employment, its durations and its extension capped at one month, and article L. 124-10 carries the one-month deadline for serious misconduct.

Three points could not be verified on an official source on the day of writing and are therefore not asserted here. The first is the exact numbering of the Labour Code articles carrying the twenty-four-month cap, the one-third waiting period and the continuation of the relationship past the term: the extracts consulted point to article L. 122-1 for the basis of the fixed-term contract, to article L. 122-5 for renewal and the waiting period, and to a "former article L.

122-9" for continuation past the term, without a readable consolidated version confirming those numbers; the rules themselves, by contrast, are consistent across the three official sources. The second is the existence of an end-of-contract allowance at the normal term: none of the official sources consulted mentions one, and the absence of such a right is presented here as a reading observation, not as a cited rule. The third is how the fifteen-day notice floor interacts with probation expressed in weeks, the sources attaching that floor expressly only to probation expressed in months.

A methodological reservation should be added: the domains guichet.public.lu, legilux.public.lu and itm.public.lu are blocked by the network proxy of our editorial environment, and these pages were read through indexed extracts using a search restricted to official domains; the citations above reproduce those extracts without extrapolation.

A reader can check these points in the consolidated Labour Code published on legilux.public.lu, in the questions and answers cited on itm.public.lu and in the Guichet.lu pages, and the pay threshold for the twelve-month bracket against the social parameters in force at the hiring date.

This article sets out the state of the law at the date of publication and does not constitute personalised legal or tax advice: the applicable probation duration, the notice period, the lawfulness of a renewal and the length of the waiting period depend on the employee's qualification, their starting pay, the exact duration of the contract and, where applicable, a more favourable collective agreement. Report an error to contact@financialservices.lu: the correction is dated in the article.