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LuxTrust services operational again after technical issue

Critical banking, payment, and government services across Luxembourg were brought to a standstill for over a day by a major outage at authentication provider LuxTrust, sparking a political debate over the firm’s monopoly status.

LuxTrust experienced a major technical failure on Tuesday that rendered a wide range of services unavailable, including the government portal MyGuichet, online banking for many financial institutions, and various other online platforms.

Service restoration began on Wednesday afternoon. Initial user reports to RTL indicated that access to online banking and the Luxair website resumed in the early afternoon.
The company formally confirmed the resolution at approximately 4.10pm in a written statement, announcing that its various services were functioning normally again. LuxTrust added that it would conduct a full analysis of the incident and share its conclusions.

The Minister of the Economy Lex Delles has strongly criticised the prolonged LuxTrust service outage, describing the failure as “unacceptable”.

In an interview with RTL, Delles confirmed the government will conduct a joint analysis with LuxTrust to determine the cause, with a specific focus on system redundancy. He revealed that technical teams worked from 3am onwards to rebuild the system entirely from a backup, essentially creating a new database from scratch. “That really shouldn’t happen”, Delles stated, emphasising that the purpose of redundancy and resilience is precisely to prevent such situations. “And that is exactly what needs to be addressed,” he added.

The minister’s comments highlight broader concerns beyond the technical failure, including the adequacy of emergency mechanisms and the lack of effective communication during the crisis.

Also today

• Experts in the real estate sector agree that the crisis is far from over, with the new-build market currently at a standstill. Adding that the last trimester will be catastrophic
• Britain is to rejoin the European Union’s Erasmus student exchange programme, which it left almost five years ago following Brexit, a joint UK-EU statement said on Wednesday.
• Luxembourg’s doctors’ association AMMD and the National Health Fund will begin legally mandated talks on Wednesday after the AMMD moved to terminate their agreement, with tariff demands and divisions among doctors raising fears of stalled negotiations and concerns about a two-tier healthcare system.
• Delhaize has recalled a “creamy celeriac and truffle soup” after discovering the cans were mistakenly filled with lobster soup, posing a risk to customers with shellfish allergies.
• Diane Odem, 47, has been reported missing since the morning of December 10, 2025, she was last seen at approximately 8am in Differdange.
• In an unusual heist, two thieves armed with machetes robbed a German petrol station on Tuesday and then escaped by pedalling away on a mountain bike and a child’s bicycle.

On air

Are Christmas decorations going too far? Chrooner Christmas Songs... better, or worse than the pop ones? And have you made your pick for the Luxembourg Song Contest?

Figure of the day

Winners of 2026 World Cup to pocket $50 million in prize money

• The total World Cup prize fund of $655 million (558.5 million euros) represents an increase of almost 50% from the $440 million distributed to teams taking part in the last tournament in Qatar in 2022.
• Next year’s World Cup – to be held in the United States, Mexico and Canada from June 11 to July 19 – will be the first to feature 48 teams, a 50 percent increase from the 32 teams last time.

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