Frequently asked questions

No. You need 40 years to qualify for the minimum pension (the guaranteed floor of €2,376.62 per month in 2026). For a full pension calculated under the standard formula, you only need 10 years of insurance.

With less than 10 years of Luxembourg insurance, you may still qualify if your insurance from other EU countries (or treaty countries) brings the total above 120 months. If you worked in Luxembourg for less than 12 months, Luxembourg does not pay a separate pension — but the months are not lost either. They are counted by your other country of insurance for its own qualification test, under the EU totalisation rule (or a bilateral convention, where one applies). See What happens to your Luxembourg pension if you leave for detail.

Only if you have 40 years of obligatory insurance — meaning years spent actually working in employment or self-employment in Luxembourg. Study years, baby years, and other complementary periods don't count for the 57-year threshold. Most people who retire at 57 started working full-time around age 17.

Yes, if you have 40 years of total insurance, with at least 10 years of obligatory (or equivalent) insurance. Complementary periods — study years, baby years, military service — count toward the total. This is the more common early-retirement path.

Note: from 1 July 2026, the stage requirement for age-60 retirement is progressively extended. People reaching 480 months in 2026 need 1 extra month; by 2030, 8 extra months. Check the current requirement if you're planning around 60.

No. Under EU Regulation 883/2004, your Luxembourg insurance months count toward the 10-year minimum stage of any other EU country where you subsequently work. If you have 8 Luxembourg years and no EU/treaty career to aggregate with, you will not receive a Luxembourg pension, and the contributions are not refunded either — this is the hard edge of the 10-year rule. A narrow exception exists: rachat (back-purchase of insurance periods), which lets a worker who returns to Luxembourg and meets specific criteria pay in to credit additional periods — but this is a mechanism for the worker to pay, not to receive a refund. See The 10-year rule and What happens if you leave for detail.

You begin contributing as soon as you start employment in Luxembourg, at any age. For pension-calculation purposes, only years from age 16 count toward insurance (complementary periods like study years kick in from age 18 in most cases).

Toggle the "I plan to leave Luxembourg before retirement" option on the calculator. You'll enter your Luxembourg career end date, pick a claim age (57, 60, or 65 — the calculator greys out ages you don't qualify for under CSS Art 184), and select where you're moving.

The calculator groups destinations into three regimes. EU/EEA/Switzerland/UK uses the EU Regulation 883/2004 pro-rata calculation alongside your Luxembourg standalone pension. Bilateral-agreement countries (the United States, Canada, Brazil, Turkey, Japan, Morocco, and others) show your Luxembourg standalone pension with a link to the specific treaty text. Other destinations, including any country not listed in the dropdown via the "Other country (not listed)" option, show your Luxembourg standalone pension with a reminder to confirm payment abroad with CNAP before relocating.

See The 10-year rule and What happens to your Luxembourg pension if you leave for detail on how much you'd receive and when.

Each country calculates and pays its own portion of your pension based on your years there. France applies French rules to your French career; Luxembourg applies the CNAP formula to your Luxembourg career. You'll receive two pensions that run independently, each starting when the respective country's age and stage conditions are met.

Your Luxembourg pension is calculated on your Luxembourg insurance years only — French years don't boost the Luxembourg formula's output. However, French years do count toward Luxembourg's 10-year eligibility threshold.

Yes. Enter your German insurance periods alongside your Luxembourg periods and the calculator runs the EU 883/2004 coordination for the Luxembourg side: the 12-month LU gate, the aggregated 120-month stage gate, and the Art. 52 dual calculation paying the higher of the autonomous and pro-rata amounts. Your German pension is paid separately by Deutsche Rentenversicherung under German rules — the calculator does not compute the German side. See Methodology — cross-border.

Under the US-Luxembourg bilateral agreement in force since 1993, your US insurance periods can count toward Luxembourg's 10-year minimum stage. However, like EU coordination, each country pays its own portion. Your Luxembourg pension is based on Luxembourg years only; your US Social Security entitlement is calculated by SSA under US rules.

If your career was entirely in a non-treaty country (for example, some Gulf states, Singapore, Hong Kong, or certain African countries), those years do not count toward Luxembourg's minimum stage or pension formula. You would need 10 years of insurance earned in Luxembourg itself (or another treaty country) to qualify for any Luxembourg pension.

In decreasing order of likelihood:

1. Transitional rules (2013 reform). If you started working before 2013 and retire during the phase-in window through 2052, CNAP may apply transitional protections MyPensionPlan.lu does not model.
2. Data differences. A slightly different career start year, salary history, or retirement date changes results noticeably.
3. Optional cases outside the current input set. Assurance continuée top-ups, rachat purchases of past periods, and the 2026 progressive-pension fraction are not accepted as inputs.

For material differences (more than 5%), please flag it — we'd like to investigate.

Baby years (années bébé) are insurance credits for parents who took time out to care for children. The applicable regime depends on the parent's insurance status around the birth.

Art. 171 §7 grants up to 24 months per child (48 if the child has a ≥50% disability or there were ≥2 other minors in the household at birth) as obligatory-equivalent insurance — counted toward both the 10-year stage and MF. It applies when the parent was insured within 12 months before or 24 months after the birth. Art. 172 §4 credits parents who don't meet §7's affiliation window as complementary periods, counted toward the stage only.

The calculator takes each child's birth year, the claiming parent, and the special-status flag, then infers which regime applies from your career start year.

Luxembourg's échelle mobile des salaires adjusts wages and pensions upward when the cost-of-living index rises by 2.5%. Over decades, this keeps pensions aligned with consumer prices. The pension formula converts every historical salary into "index 100" terms before summing — this is why a 1995 salary and a 2025 salary can be directly compared in the calculation.

Indexation is also why the MF and MP amounts in your pension breakdown are multiplied by the current index value (968.04 in 2026).

Separate from indexation, the facteur de revalorisation adjusts pensions for general real wage growth in Luxembourg. For pensions starting in 2026, the factor is 1.570. This is set by grand-ducal regulation annually, based on economic data from four years earlier (the "N-4" rule).

As of 2026, yes — the progressive pension, new in 2026, lets you continue part-time work while drawing a fraction of your pension, provided you meet the conditions for age-60 retirement. This is a significant change, offering a gradual exit rather than a binary retire/don't-retire choice.

Specific conditions and how the fraction is calculated are published by CNAP. Speak to them directly or to a qualified adviser before structuring this.

Yes. You can continue in paid employment or self-employment past 65 while drawing your full pension. The 2026 reform introduced a new tax abatement for people who could retire but choose to continue working, claimable via MyGuichet.lu.

If you continue working without claiming your pension, each additional year also adds to your MF and MP components, potentially crossing the échelonnement threshold (see Methodology).

New from 2026, if you qualify for early retirement but continue working, you can claim up to €9,000 per year in tax-free income on your taxable income. Claim it via MyGuichet.lu. The intent is to encourage longer careers, partly offsetting the actuarial incentive to retire as early as possible.

Periods without contributions don't add to your career total — they're effectively a zero for that time. Some interruptions (parental leave, illness, unemployment with benefits) preserve insurance status. Long unpaid gaps reduce your pension proportionally unless covered by voluntary or continued insurance (assurance continuée).

If you're a Luxembourg tax resident, your pension is taxable income, subject to progressive income tax. Health insurance at 2.80% is deducted from the gross pension, and dependency insurance at 1.40% is applied to the gross pension minus a monthly allowance of €675.94.

For a rough guide: if your gross pension is €5,000 per month, your net take-home is typically €4,000–€4,300 depending on your family situation and any other income.

Double-taxation treaties between Luxembourg and your country of residence determine how your pension is taxed. In most cases, Luxembourg applies a withholding tax on payment and the country of residence provides either an exemption or a tax credit. Portugal, France, Belgium, and Germany each have different specifics. Professional tax advice is worth the cost here.

Social security contributions are capped at €13,518.68 per month in 2026. This is five times the unqualified minimum social wage, adjusted periodically for indexation. Earnings above this ceiling are not subject to pension contributions and don't add to your future pension.

Three categories are accepted as inputs:

• Study years — up to 9 years of higher education or unpaid professional training after age 18, under CSS Art. 174 (as amended by Law 8634, 2026-01-01, which removed the pre-reform age-27 ceiling).
• Baby years — 24 or 48 months per child under Art. 171 §7 or Art. 172 §4, regime inferred from your career start year and each child's birth year.
• Career gaps — declared stretches with no insurance contribution.

Residuals outside the current input set: military service, maternity leave as a separable credit beyond baby-year coverage, assurance continuée, and rachat. See Methodology for the underlying articles.

You can. Declared career gaps are an accepted input, and each gap is removed from the contributing years of the MP calculation. Finer-grained scenarios with variable real salary growth — phased part-time, late promotions, mid-career raises — are not modelled separately; lower the real-salary-growth parameter or run multiple scenarios to approximate them.

Insurance periods are entered country by country. The calculator then runs the EU 883/2004 coordination for the Luxembourg side:

• LU 12-month gate — at least 12 months of Luxembourg insurance are required before CNAP pays anything (Art. 57(1) of Reg 883/2004).
• Aggregated 120-month stage gate — if your LU-only stage falls short of 10 years, foreign periods in treaty countries are aggregated to test eligibility (CSS Art. 184, via Reg 883/2004 Art. 6).
• Dual calculation — the autonomous amount (A, on LU periods alone) and the pro-rata amount (C, theoretical pension on the full career scaled by the LU share) are both computed. Luxembourg pays the higher (Art. 52(1) and 52(3)).
• Uniform LU earnings imputation — foreign months in the pro-rata calculation receive the average LU index-100 earnings from your LU periods (Art. 56(1)(c)).

Each non-LU country pays its own pension under its own rules. See Methodology — cross-border.

It's a forecast, not a prediction. Parameters set annually (index, revaluation factor) are held flat at today's values. Rates in the formula (MF, MP, threshold, échelonnement bonus) follow the law-fixed phase-in schedule through 2052, so those aren't forecast. As CNAP publishes each new year's values, forecasts refine automatically — the forecast for 2045 will improve as parameters for 2027, 2028, and later years are published.

Expect forecasts further from the present to drift by a few percent in either direction as actual parameters land.

No. MyPensionPlan.lu is an independent calculator that implements the official CNAP formula, validated against CNAP's own published worked examples. It's not affiliated with CNAP and is not a replacement for an official CNAP estimate (available from age 55).