Luxembourg's twelve cantons, one by one

Cantons are the division travellers use least and paperwork uses most. Luxembourg has twelve, each grouping between 3 and 14 communes. Here they all are, with their 2026 population and the communes inside each, so you can place any village you come across.

Twelve cantons, a hundred communes

The current line-up is as follows. Capellen has 9 communes; Esch-sur-Alzette, 14; Luxembourg, 11; Mersch, 10; Clervaux, 5; Diekirch, 10; Redange, 9; Wiltz, 7; Vianden, 3; Echternach, 7; Grevenmacher, 8; and Remich, 7. That makes 100. The round figure is recent. On 1 September 2023 Grosbous and Wahl merged into Groussbus-Wal and Bous and Waldbredimus into Bous-Waldbredimus, and the Interior Ministry pointed out that the country hadn’t had as few as a hundred communes since at least 1840.

The commune is the real municipality, with its own town hall, and each can contain several villages. The national register of localities counts 565 across the country, and it’s the official list used for postal addresses. The canton is an intermediate level grouping communes. General elections don’t use cantons at all but four constituencies, South, Centre, East and North.

The southern cantons, where most people live

Two cantons hold more than half the population. Luxembourg canton, with the capital, had 213,766 people on 1 January 2026, and Esch-sur-Alzette, in the mining south, 197,314. Together that’s over 410,000 of the country’s 690,959. Capellen, west of the capital, comes next with 56,562.

Esch-sur-Alzette canton also has the most communes, fourteen, including Esch itself, the country’s second town, Differdange, Dudelange and Pétange. Ten of them belong to the Minett biosphere reserve. What’s worth seeing in those towns is in towns in Luxembourg.

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The centre and the east

Mersch, in the centre, has ten communes and 37,191 people. That’s where you’ll find Mersch Castle, Larochette and the Eisch valley, with Hollenfels and Ansembourg in the commune of Helperknapp. Grevenmacher, in the east, has eight communes and 34,007 people, with the Moselle at Wormeldange and Grevenmacher and Bourglinster Castle in Junglinster. Inland lie four communes of farmland and forest around the Syre, Betzdorf, Biwer, Flaxweiler and Manternach, the last of them home to the country’s largest ravine forest. Remich, in the south-east, has seven communes and 24,827 people, all vines and river, from Schengen to Mondorf-les-Bains. Echternach, with seven communes and 20,683 people, is the heart of the Mullerthal region. Out west, Redange has nine communes and 21,701 people, a rural canton with the tower of Useldange Castle, the slate museum at Haut-Martelange and Rindschleiden, which the tourist board singles out as the country’s tiniest village.

The north, few people and plenty of castles

The northern cantons are the least populated and the most rewarding for visitors. Clervaux has five communes, among them Troisvierges, home to the Kneiff, the country’s highest point, and its northernmost tip. Wiltz has seven communes and 20,391 people, with the Upper Sûre lake and Esch-sur-Sûre. Diekirch, with ten communes, includes Bourscheid, Ettelbruck and Diekirch itself. And Vianden is the smallest of all, three communes and 5,808 people, but with the castle I’d put first on any list. The best of the area is gathered in the Luxembourg Ardennes.

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Towns in name, villages in size

There’s one more layer that trips people up. A dozen communes are legally «villes», towns, regardless of how big they are. Tiny Vianden, with 2,243 residents, is officially a town, while Hesperange, in Luxembourg canton and with more than 17,000, is not. Four of the twelve are in the Minett alone. For a visitor it changes nothing, but it explains why some very small places call themselves towns.

One place, three names

Travelling around, you’ll notice that every village has more than one name. The official one, French or German, is on maps and timetables, but on the street and on plenty of signs you’ll see the Luxembourgish form too. Vianden is Veianen; Clervaux, Klierf; Beaufort, Befort; Larochette, Fiels; and Esch-sur-Sûre, Esch-Sauer. It’s the same with the capital’s districts, where the Ville Haute is the Uewerstad. In this guide I always use the official form and, where it helps, add the Luxembourgish in brackets.

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Are cantons any use for planning a trip?

Not much, honestly. The tourist offices divide the country into regions that don’t match the cantons. The Mullerthal, for example, mixes communes from Echternach, Diekirch, Mersch and Grevenmacher. I’d use this page to place a village and the regions of Luxembourg to decide where to go.

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