Luxembourg document photos online

There is a quiet wine village on the Moselle where France, Germany and Luxembourg meet at a single bend in the river. In June 1985, five governments gathered aboard a cruise boat moored at its quay and signed an agreement that would one day let 400 million Europeans cross borders without showing a passport. The village was Schengen, in Luxembourg, and its name now appears on departure boards and immigration desks across the continent. For a country smaller than many cities, lending its name to the most famous open-border zone on Earth is a remarkable footnote in the history of travel documents.

• Passport power In the 2025 Henley Passport Index the Luxembourg passport sits in joint 4th place worldwide, granting visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 188 destinations.
• Trilingual document The Luxembourgish passport carries its title in three official languages at once, French, German and Luxembourgish, mirroring a country where all three are used in daily life.
• New booklet Luxembourg rolled out a redesigned biometric passport on 11 May 2026, refreshing the security features of one of the world's most travel-friendly documents.
• Open borders The Schengen Agreement that abolished internal European border checks is named after a tiny Luxembourg wine village, signed there on a boat on the Moselle in 1985.
• Citizenship by blood Under a 2008 law anyone who could prove descent from an ancestor holding Luxembourgish nationality on 1 January 1900 could reclaim citizenship, with the final declaration deadline falling on 31 December 2025.
• Currency union Before the euro, the Luxembourg franc circulated at strict 1-to-1 parity with the Belgian franc, and from 1944 to 2002 Belgian francs were legal tender in Luxembourg and vice versa.
• Old money The Luxembourg franc, divided into 100 centimes, was introduced in 1854 and served the Grand Duchy for nearly 150 years before the euro replaced it on 1 January 2002.
• Majority migrant In 2024 Luxembourg became the first OECD country with a majority foreign-born population, with 51.2% of residents born abroad.
• Unique title Luxembourg is the world's only remaining sovereign Grand Duchy, and one of the EU's six founding members, with the planet's highest GDP per capita as of 2025.