Lugano vs Zurich for remote workers
Long-term remote life planning (also vs Dubai and more)
YO
If you have read my (long) article on how to find a good base as a remote worker, with an analysis of why I’m for now choosing Switzerland as a base, you read my promise to explore further a Lugano vs Zurich comparison.
Today, I’ll iterate a bit on this comparison as it’s a topic I’ve occupied myself with recently.
Lugano vs Zurich
For this comparison, I’ll collect some comments I dropped on Alessandro Palombo X posts on Switzerland these past few days (if you aren’t following me on X, here’s my profile).
Lugano is an interesting option
I started looking into it, and there’s a lot good about it.
Link to below post
Since it seemed promising, I further iterated on it.
Alessandro Palombo brought up another feature of Lugano
Which prompted me to start a more in-depth comparison with Zurich
Link to below post
Some of the above I also heard from a guy I talked to that same morning when I was discussing a flat to take over in Lugano: he, despite also being kinda remote, was planning to move to Zurich from Lugano, after 8 years living there.
He said the main reason was bigger city for day-to-day life. He’s a Milan native and said that he’s not that enticed by Milan nowadays, and since his (also remote) gf joined him in Lugano, he kinda stopped going to Milan over the weekends.
This is a valid point: Lugano is a small town, Milan nearby is a big city, but a city with its own issues, and still, having it at 1h20m of train away isn’t exactly RIGHT THERE.
Then I also learnt about point 13 above: sublets.
If you’re a remote worker like me, one of the main feature of the Swiss-base setup, is that you don’t have to spend 12 months in Switzerland.
This is crucial.
If you can’t easily sublet your flat - which is EXTREMELY EASY in Zurich - then it becomes an issue to apply this optimisation.
If you go abroad for a few months, you’ll have to pay double rent. Which is annoying and can add up, making you reconsider if a Swiss-base is worth it.
Moreover, not subletting means that you’ll likely end up spending a lot of time there.
And, as mentioned above, Lugano is OK if you can get bigger city vibes often enough and long enough.
But, if you stay there too long, it can become restrictive, uninspiring and ultimately “not it”.
At least for me. It’s subjective of course.
So, this kinda made me take a step back from Lugano and brought me back to Zurich-base vibes.
It’s not just this sublet thing, but this thing + the other things above. If it wasn’t for this, probably I would have rented a flat there, all things considered. But when I learnt that this would be hard to implement, I thought “OK, then, probably not worth it. At least for now”.
Zurich
After harassing Alessandro Palombo long-enough, he ended up making a post about Zurich (having himself also lived there).
His post is a very balanced and IMO mostly accurate perspective on Zurich
A lot to agree with here.
I added my two cents nonetheless:
And, kind of a conclusion that I ended up on:
(shared also by my new internet friend Simon Høiberg and a few other Swiss-based remote workers friend of mine)
I bought a flight to Dubai
For 2026.
Gotta check that one out.
But, Remote Compass already highlighted some downsides of it
If you’re curious about Dubai, I’ve just seen that Alessandro Palombo (which I’ve been promoting throughout all this article - without even telling him - and from whom I now expect a free pastel de nata if we meet in Lisbon) has published a very nice writeup about it just yesterday:
btw, his newsletter is actually quite interesting for these sort of topics and country/city benchmarks, you can give it a look here.
My current strategy
I go step by step, and I analyse cities/countries kind of as a hobby at this point, or work, if you decide to buy Remote Compass lol
But for now, probably:
Continue with Swiss base: stable, reliable, high standards, good location and transports, easy sublets, low taxes, gonna get good pension etc
Get Swiss C permit (kind of a permanent residency) in 2026, potentially even citizenship in 6 years
Since I’m remote, travel to other hubs for “work or leisure”: see what happens, learn, experience, connect, etc (next year Dubai, maybe other extra-Europe places too)
Consider adding other permanent residencies and/or citizenships to the mix, for diversification (especially if a war were to come in Europe in the coming 3-10 years): Uruguay permanent residency, Dubai golden visa, Caribbean citizenships by investment (if the biz scales… If it stays like this, no xD), and maybe get some links in Rwanda, Kenya, Paraguay, and more.
On the table there’s still other options like Cyprus, Malta, Portugal, Poland. But frankly, I’m a bit skeptical at this point. But never say never.
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