Defamation in Switzerland: Üble Nachrede (Art. 173 StGB) and Beschimpfung (Art. 177 StGB)

Someone searching in English for Swiss defamation law is usually in one of two positions. Either someone posted something damaging about them, on a Google review, a Facebook page, a WhatsApp group or a forum, and they want to know what they can actually do about it. Or they have just received a letter about a Strafantrag and want to understand what they are accused of.

Swiss law answers both situations through two separate criminal offences, Art. 173 StGB (üble Nachrede) and Art. 177 StGB (Beschimpfung), plus a parallel civil route under the ZGB. This page works through what each offence actually requires, where the penalty figures come from, the truth defence and an important limit on it, the deadline for bringing a criminal complaint, and how the civil personality rights route sits alongside the criminal one.

It is part of our wider Swiss defamation law coverage, itself part of the broader guide to Swiss law.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Swiss law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

What Swiss honour law actually protects

Swiss criminal law protects Ehre, a person's reputation and standing in the eyes of others, through a small cluster of offences in the StGB grouped under Ehrverletzungen. The two that matter most for a reader trying to work out what happened to them are Art. 173 StGB, üble Nachrede, and Art. 177 StGB, Beschimpfung.

The line between them is not severity, it is the type of statement. Art. 173 and Art. 174 cover a factual accusation, something that could in principle be true or false, made about a person's conduct or reputation. Art. 177 covers everything else that attacks someone's honour by another means, typically a value judgment or an insult rather than a factual claim.

That distinction decides which article applies to a given post or comment. It also decides whether a truth defence is even available at all, since only a factual accusation can be proven true or false in the first place.

Art. 173 StGB: accusing someone to a third party

Art. 173 Ziff. 1 StGB punishes two separate acts. The first is accusing or casting suspicion on a person, to another person, of dishonourable conduct or of facts capable of damaging their reputation. The second is spreading someone else's such accusation, and the statute treats that as its own, independently punishable act, not something that becomes safe merely because the speaker did not originate the claim.

Two details in that wording matter more than they first appear. The offence is committed the moment the statement reaches a single other person, described in the statute as "bei einem andern". Telling one coworker or one neighbour something damaging about a third person already satisfies the conduct requirement, and it does not need to spread further to count.

Repeating or forwarding somebody else's defamatory claim, in a group chat or by sharing a post, is covered in exactly the same way as making the original claim. Art. 176 StGB extends the rule to any medium. Spoken üble Nachrede or Verleumdung is treated as equivalent to the same statement made in writing, image, gesture or any other means, which is the textual basis for treating a written Google review, a Facebook post, a message in a WhatsApp group or a forum comment the same as something said out loud.

Where the 180 Tagessätze figure actually comes from

Art. 173 itself states only that the offence is punished, on complaint, with a Geldstrafe, a monetary penalty. It does not attach any number to that penalty in its own text. The commonly cited ceiling of 180 Tagessätze, daily penalty units, is not Art. 173's own figure.

It comes from Art. 34 Abs. 1 StGB, the general default that applies to any Geldstrafe the law does not otherwise quantify, which sets the ordinary Geldstrafe at a minimum of three and a maximum of 180 Tagessätze unless a statute provides otherwise. That figure applies to an Art. 173 case only because Art. 173 is silent and does not displace the default, not because Art. 173 sets it directly.

The distinction is not academic. An amount reported as Art. 173's own penalty is a small but real misattribution, and it matters if a reader is comparing the seriousness of what happened to them against a number they read somewhere and assume belongs to a specific article.

The truth defence, and the exception that overrides it

Art. 173 Ziff. 2 gives the accused a defence on either of two grounds. Proving the statement is true, the Wahrheitsbeweis, is one path. Proving they had serious grounds to believe it true in good faith at the time, the Gutglaubensbeweis, is the other, and this second path works even if the statement later turns out to be false. Either proof, if accepted, makes the accused not punishable.

This is the point where many readers stop, assuming that being able to show a statement was true always ends the case in the speaker's favour. Art. 173 Ziff. 3 says otherwise. It bars the accused from that proof entirely, so the truth defence is never even reached, where the statement was made without protecting a public interest or other justified cause, and predominantly with the intent to disparage the person, especially where the statement concerns their private or family life.

Consider a concrete case. A person tells a single coworker, accurately, that a colleague was convicted of a minor offence a decade ago that has no bearing on their current job. If that statement was shared predominantly to damage the colleague personally, with no public interest served and no other justified reason for bringing it up, Ziff. 3 can bar the speaker from proving the statement true at all. The case can then proceed on the basis that the truth defence was never available, regardless of whether the underlying fact was accurate.

This should not be read as a rule that any true but embarrassing statement automatically loses its defence. Ziff. 3 requires both the absence of a legitimate justification and a predominant intent to disparage, of which private or family life is the named example rather than the only trigger. A reader relying on it was true as an automatic shield should understand that Swiss law does not guarantee that outcome, and nothing on this page can predict how a specific statement would be classified.

Retraction and the court's formal finding

Art. 173 Ziff. 4 allows a lesser penalty, or a full exemption from punishment, where the person who made an untrue statement retracts it. Ziff. 5 requires the court to formally record, in the judgment or another document, the fact that the truth proof failed, that the statements were shown to be untrue, or that the accused retracted them. That record functions as a form of public correction, independent of whatever sentence is imposed.

Art. 174 StGB: the aggravated, knowing falsity version

Art. 174 StGB, Verleumdung, covers the same underlying conduct as Art. 173 but adds one element. The speaker must act knowing the accusation is false, described in the statute as acting wider besseres Wissen. That single element changes the offence completely rather than simply making it more serious.

Because a Verleumdung conviction requires that the speaker already knew the statement was false, there is no truth defence available at all under Art. 174. This is structural, not an oversight, since a person cannot simultaneously know a statement is false and prove that it is true. The only mitigation available is a retraction made before the court, under Ziff. 3, which can reduce the sentence but does not amount to a defence to guilt.

The penalty for ordinary Verleumdung, Ziff. 1, is a custodial sentence of up to three years or a Geldstrafe. Where the offender acted systematically, described in the statute as planmässig, to undermine the victim's reputation, Ziff. 2 raises the exposure to custody of one month to three years, or a Geldstrafe of not less than 30 Tagessätze. That is a higher floor than the ordinary default, while the ceiling still runs to 180 Tagessätze under the same Art. 34 default discussed above.

Art. 177 StGB: Beschimpfung, and why its number is different

Art. 177 StGB is a catch all for attacks on someone's honour by means other than a factual accusation, through word, writing, image, gesture or a physical act. It typically covers value judgments and insults, calling someone a degrading name rather than accusing them of specific conduct.

Unlike Art. 173 and Art. 174, Art. 177 Ziff. 1 states its own penalty directly in the article's text, a Geldstrafe of up to 90 Tagessätze. That figure is not borrowed from Art. 34. It is written into Art. 177 itself, and it is lower than the 180 Tagessätze ceiling that applies to üble Nachrede, reflecting that an insult and a factual accusation are treated as distinct wrongs with distinct maximum exposure.

Art. 177 also carries two discretionary court powers that Art. 173 and Art. 174 do not have. Under Ziff. 2, if the insulted person's own improper conduct directly provoked the insult, the court may, though is not required to, exempt the offender from punishment. Under Ziff. 3, where an insult was answered immediately with a counter insult or a physical act, the court may exempt either or both parties. Both are discretionary provisions rather than automatic defences, so neither guarantees an outcome for either side.

Filing a criminal complaint, and the deadline that ends it

Art. 173, Art. 174 and Art. 177 are all Antragsdelikte. None of them is prosecuted unless the person affected files a Strafantrag, a criminal complaint, with the police or the Staatsanwaltschaft, the public prosecutor's office, in the relevant canton. Nothing happens automatically once a defamatory statement is made.

Art. 31 StGB sets the deadline for doing so at three months, running from the day the person entitled to complain learns the identity of the offender, not from the day of the statement itself. That distinction matters most for anonymous online defamation, where the person behind an account or a post may only become known well after the post itself appeared. The clock only starts once identity is actually known, not when the statement was first seen.

Missing that three month window extinguishes the right to complain permanently, for that statement, no matter how serious it was. There is a second, separate limit as well. Art. 178 StGB sets an absolute four year prosecution period, Verjährung, for honour offences generally.

These are two independent clocks. A valid complaint filed within three months does not extend the case past the four year outer limit, and the four year limit does not revive a complaint right already lost because the three month window passed.

The civil route sits alongside the criminal one

A person defamed in Switzerland is not limited to the criminal route. Art. 28 ZGB gives a separate civil claim for any unlawful infringement of personality, where unlawfulness turns on whether the statement was justified by the affected person's own consent, an overriding private or public interest, or a specific statute. Art. 28a ZGB lets a court prohibit a threatened infringement, order removal of an existing one, or declare an infringement unlawful where its disruptive effect continues, and it can separately order a correction or have the judgment published or communicated to third parties.

Where the statement appeared in periodically published media, a separate right of reply, the Gegendarstellung under Art. 28g and following ZGB, may also be available, on a much shorter clock and subject to its own exceptions. Our Swiss defamation and honour law hub sets that route out in full. Where the speaker actually knew the statement was false, the heavier offence in Art. 174 applies instead, and our Verleumdung page covers it.

Damages and Genugtuung, satisfaction for non financial harm, run through the OR rather than the ZGB. Art. 41 OR is the general basis for tort liability for unlawfully caused damage. Art. 49 OR allows a monetary Genugtuung specifically for a personality infringement, but only where the infringement is unlawful and its severity justifies payment, and only if the harm has not already been made good another way, for example by a published correction.

Neither route guarantees a cash award, and Art. 49 sets no fixed amount. Courts set the figure case by case according to severity.

The criminal and civil routes are not mutually exclusive. A person can file a Strafantrag and also bring a civil claim over the same statement, and resolving one does not resolve the other.

What to actually do

A Strafantrag is filed with the police or the cantonal Staatsanwaltschaft, and the exact venue depends on cantonal procedure and the specifics of the case. The three month clock in Art. 31 StGB begins the moment the offender's identity is known, so identifying who made an anonymous post is often the first practical step, not the complaint itself.

A person who has just received notice of a Strafantrag against them should treat Art. 173 Ziff. 2 and Ziff. 3 as the two provisions that decide most of the outcome. Whether a truth or good faith defence is even available depends on whether the statement was made with a legitimate justification, not only on whether it happens to be accurate.

What this page does not do

Nothing here predicts how a specific statement, post or comment would be classified under Art. 173, Art. 174 or Art. 177, or whether a court would accept a truth, good faith or provocation defence in an actual case. Those outcomes depend on the exact wording used, the context it was said in, and facts this general page cannot assess.

A person facing an actual defamation matter, whether they were defamed or have received a Strafantrag, should treat the structure above as background for understanding their situation or professional advice, not as a substitute for either.