Setting up a Gibraltar company in 2026: what to do, and what it costs

Companies House Gibraltar charges about USD 135 to incorporate a company, plus about USD 13 in capital duty. That is the whole state bill: about USD 148. Statutory fees are set in sterling; every figure here is converted to dollars at the August 2026 rate so one currency runs throughout.

That number is not what a Gibraltar company costs you. It is what the registry charges to print the certificate. The cost that matters is what it takes to keep the company alive and defensible, year after year — and the first year is only about a quarter of what you will have spent by year five.

This is a guide to the whole of it: what you actually have to do, what each part is for, and what it comes to.

What you actually have to do

The mechanics are deliberately simple. Gibraltar has spent decades sanding them down.

1. Clear the name. Companies House Gibraltar has to accept it. Anything suggesting banking, insurance or royalty needs consent.
2. Appoint a registered agent and registered office. Both must be in Gibraltar, and the office is mandatory in law. This is the part you cannot do yourself unless you already have an address on the Rock.
3. Complete KYC and beneficial-ownership due diligence. Passport, proof of address, source of funds, and a clear account of who ultimately owns and controls the company.
4. Prepare and sign the constitutional documents. Memorandum and articles, and the nominal share capital — typically USD 135 nominal, though a single share is possible.
5. File and pay. The certificate of incorporation follows in about three working days. Same-day and two-hour services exist for a higher state fee.
6. Register with the Income Tax Office. There is no VAT registration, because Gibraltar has no VAT.
7. Open a bank or EMI account. This is not a formality, and it is covered below.

Step two onwards is where the money goes. Steps one to six can be done in a week. Step seven can take months.

What you are paying for after year one

Gibraltar law requires a registered office on the Rock and, in practice, a licensed service provider to hold it. Every year, someone has to file the annual return, maintain the statutory registers, and keep the compliance file current. Those are real obligations carrying real liability for whoever signs them.

That recurring work is the actual product. The incorporation is a few days; the domiciliation is forever. When you are comparing options — including ours — ask for the recurring annual figure before you ask for the formation fee, and ask for it in writing. A first-year price tells you almost nothing about what the company will cost you.

The five-year view

Here is what a straightforward file with us looks like over five years, on our 2026 averages.

The first year carries the structuring work. The recurring figure is deliberately low, because annual domiciliation is largely fixed work — a filing, a register, a compliance review — that does not scale with your turnover. We would rather hold a file for a decade at a fair recurring price than treat it as a subscription.

What a file with us has averaged in 2026

We price company work individually, because no honest adviser can quote a structure they have not seen. What we can publish is the average: about USD 3,812 in the first year and about USD 750 a year thereafter.

Read those as averages, not as a quote. A file with nominees, a gaming licence and an audit is a different piece of work from a dormant holding company, and it is priced differently. The next section says exactly what moves it.

We take no commission from any registry, provider or bank. What we quote is the whole of what we make on the work.

If you want the number for your own file rather than the average, tell us what the company is for and we will price it — the structure, the registered office, the compliance tier and the first year's filings, in one quote. The full requirements are on our Gibraltar company formation page.

What moves the price

Five things, in roughly the order they matter:

1. Risk tier. E-gaming, crypto and DLT files carry a high-risk compliance classification. The compliance component of any Gibraltar file typically doubles or triples at that tier, and the enhanced due diligence is genuinely more work, not a surcharge. If Gibraltar appeals to you for those reasons, assume the higher end.
2. Nominees. A nominee director and a nominee shareholder together add roughly USD 1,000 to USD 1,500 a year. Many structures do not need them. Some cannot function without them, and a few are actively harmed by them — see the management-and-control point below.
3. Audit. Gibraltar has a small-company audit exemption. Above it, a statutory audit is hourly and scoped, and the total depends on activity and transaction volume. Any fixed audit quote for a business nobody has examined should be treated with suspicion.
4. Banking. The application is a fee, not an account. Budget for the possibility of paying it twice.
5. Substance. If the plan needs genuine management and control in Gibraltar rather than a registered office, that is a different and much larger piece of work. It is also the one most likely to change the number, and the one worth paying for.

The banking reality

Incorporation takes three working days. The account can take months, or fail.

Gibraltar's e-gaming and crypto profile makes EU and UK bank onboarding slow and selective, and a large share of structures end up on an electronic money institution rather than a bank. We charge for the application because it is real work — assembling the file, answering the bank's questions, and managing the follow-ups — but the fee buys the attempt, not the outcome. Anyone who guarantees you a Gibraltar bank account is telling you something they cannot know. We have written about this in more detail here.

The point that decides whether any of this was worth it

Gibraltar's corporation tax is 15%, and it is territorial: charged only on income accrued in and derived from Gibraltar. The rate rose from 12.5% in 2024. There is no VAT and no capital gains tax. The full position is on our Gibraltar tax profile.

Territorial relief hinges on management and control. To keep non-Gibraltar income outside the charge, board decisions must genuinely be taken in Gibraltar. A registered office plus a nominee director who has never made a decision is challengeable — and the challenge usually comes from your home revenue authority, not Gibraltar's.

Which brings up the cost that dwarfs every fee in this guide: controlled-foreign-company rules at home. A low-substance Gibraltar holding company can be attributed back to its owner, in which case the effective rate is your domestic rate, not 15%, and everything you spent bought you filings rather than tax.

That is not a formation question. It is a structuring question, and it should be settled before anyone reserves a name. It is also the reason our first-year figure sits where it does: the work that makes the 15% real happens before the form is filed, not after.

Who Gibraltar is actually for

It works for holding companies, and for e-gaming, crypto and DLT operators who want a territorial system, no VAT, English-law familiarity and a registrar that moves in days. Our Gibraltar company formation service sets out the requirements in full, and the process guide covers the mechanics.

It does not work as a mailbox. If the plan is a registered office and nothing else, the tax outcome you are picturing probably will not survive contact with your own tax authority, and we will tell you so before you spend anything.

Figures move. State fees and compliance tiers both changed during 2026, and the ones here are current to our review in August 2026. We date them so you can tell when they went stale.

Setting one up? We handle Gibraltar formation end to end — name, registered office and agent, KYC, filings, tax registration and the bank application — and we tell you before you spend anything if Gibraltar is the wrong answer for your case. Start with your plan, or read the service page first.