Technical report · data version 2026-10-30

Prostitution law in 196 countries and territories: a sourced comparative dataset

Prostitution Laws editorial team, Prostitution Laws · published 1 November 2026 · CC BY 4.0

Cite as: Prostitution Laws editorial team (2026). Prostitution law in 196 countries and territories: a sourced comparative dataset. Prostitution Laws, technical report PL-2026-10-30. https://prostitutionlaws.org/publications/prostitution-law-by-country/

Abstract

This report describes a dataset of the prostitution laws of 196 countries and territories, current to 30 October 2026. Each country is placed in one of five legal models (decriminalisation, regulation, abolitionism, the Nordic model of criminalising the purchase, and prohibition) and answers five core questions, on selling and buying sexual services, brothels, third-party procuring and advertising, with a status, the type of penalty and the statutory provisions relied on. 15 countries have full profiles that answer six further questions. Every answer cites its sources, 1,040 in all, 56% of them legislation, and carries the date it was checked and a confidence level. Abolitionism, where selling and buying are lawful but organising is not, is the most common model (99 countries), followed by prohibition (69); 12 countries criminalise the purchase only. The data are released under CC BY 4.0 as CSV and JSON, with an archived version at doi:10.5281/zenodo.23847615.

1. Purpose

Prostitution is regulated very differently from one country to the next, and the differences are often in the details: whether buying is an offence, whether two people may work together, whether a venue can be licensed, whether an advertisement is lawful. This dataset records those details country by country, ties each statement to the provision and the official text it rests on, and dates it, so that a reader can check it and see how current it is. It describes the law; it takes no position on which model is preferable.

2. Coverage

The dataset covers 196 countries and territories: the UN member states that have been researched, plus Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Kosovo, which have their own legal systems on this question. 15 countries have full profiles answering all eleven questions, with at least three key laws, a timeline and, where available, official statistics; the other 181 are overviews answering the five core questions. 23 countries record states, regions or cities whose rules differ from the national framework, and 76 pending bills, reviews or proposals are tracked with their next known step.

3. Classification

Each country is placed in one of five models, from the least to the most criminalised. The model follows what the law penalises rather than what it declares, and it describes the national framework.

Each question is answered with one status: legal, legal under licence / registration, legal with restrictions, illegal or varies by region. Answers describe an adult, consensual situation with no trafficking or coercion; offences involving minors, coercion or trafficking fall under separate laws and are not what a status shows. Where an act is an offence, the answer records whether the penalty is criminal or administrative and, for selling and buying, the maximum penalty.

4. Sources and verification

What a statute says is cited to the official consolidated text on the national legislation portal, at section level where possible; court rulings to the court's own database; then government, parliamentary, statistical and intergovernmental sources. Academic, NGO and news sources give context, enforcement practice and pending legislation, and are never the only source for what a statute says. The 1,040 citations (1,031 distinct URLs) break down as follows:

Every source carries the date it was opened and every answer the date it was checked (all on 30 October 2026 in this version). Of the 1,077 answers, 448 are marked high confidence, 464 medium and 165 low; medium and low answers state what could not be confirmed, for example a legislation portal that could not be opened, so that a reproduction of the statute was used. The full rules are in the methodology.

5. Results

Selling sexual services is an offence, criminal or administrative, in 64 of the 196 countries, and lawful but restricted, for example by offences of soliciting in public, in 73 more. Buying is an offence in 52. The 12 Nordic-model countries penalise only the buyer; conversely, 24 of the 69 prohibitionist countries penalise the person selling but not the buyer. Running a brothel is an offence in 170 countries and third-party procuring in 177, which is why most countries where selling and buying are lawful still fall under abolitionism rather than regulation.

6. Limitations

• A statute is not its enforcement. Where practice differs sharply from the text, the profile notes it, but the status records the law.
• One model per country simplifies federal and devolved systems; subnational differences are recorded separately and local rules (zoning, municipal licensing) are summarised, not listed exhaustively.
• Overviews answer five questions only, and maximum penalties are not recorded for every country.
• Laws change. Answers carry their check date; open bills are tracked, and every profile is re-checked at least once a year.
• This is a description of the law, not legal advice.

7. Data availability

The data are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with the credit “Source: Prostitution Laws (prostitutionlaws.org)”. The current files are on the data page as CSV (one row per country) and JSON (full profiles with every source); each country also has a page and a Markdown version on this site. The archived version is at doi:10.5281/zenodo.23847615, with copies on IEEE DataPort, figshare, Kaggle, Hugging Face, B2SHARE (EUDAT) and Mendeley Data. Corrections go to the address on the about page.

References

1. Prostitution Laws editorial team (2026). Prostitution Laws: prostitution law by country (dataset, version 2026-10-30). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23847615
2. Prostitution Laws. Methodology. https://prostitutionlaws.org/methodology/