Who Pays Artist's Resale Royalty on a Lot You Buy at Auction

You have a Damien Hirst spot print on your watchlist, you bid from Antwerp, and an invoice from another house carried a line marked "artist's resale right". Before you set your ceiling, you need to know who pays artist's resale royalty on that lot: when the conditions of sale pass it to you, the line adds 4% of the hammer price to your bill, €800 on a €20,000 hammer. The artist's resale right (droit de suite in French) is a royalty owed to the artist, or to the heirs for 70 years after death, each time an original work is resold through an art market professional. EU law puts it on the seller, and the conditions of each sale tell you whether the house moves its cost onto you. Reading that clause takes you about five minutes per sale.

Key points

• The royalty runs in 2026 from 4% of the price up to €50,000 down to 0.25% above €500,000, capped at €12,500 per sale.
• Your decision rule: when the conditions charge the royalty to the buyer, you lower your hammer ceiling by 4%.
• Your next step: search the conditions of sale for "resale right", about five minutes.

Who pays artist's resale royalty on a lot you buy at auction

Directive 2001/84/EC (the EU text that harmonises the resale right) answers in article 1(4): "The royalty shall be payable by the seller." The same article lets each member state make the salesroom or dealer liable instead of the seller, or jointly with the seller. Luxembourg, whose law governs the sales of LLB Auction, keeps the charge on the seller; when the seller is a private person, the professional acting as buyer or intermediary alone answers for the payment. France charges it to the seller in article L122-8 of the Code de la propriété intellectuelle (the French intellectual property code) and makes the professional in the sale responsible for paying it.

The Court of Justice of the European Union settled the point that matters to you as a bidder. In its Christie's France judgment of 26 February 2015 (case C-41/14), the Court held that the person liable for the royalty is free to agree with any other person, the buyer included, that this person will bear its cost. Liability toward the artist stays with the seller or the house. The cost reaches you only through the conditions you accept when you register, so your conditions of sale decide your invoice.

The rate table and what it adds to your invoice

The royalty is a share of the sale price net of tax, computed band by band: 4% on the part up to €50,000, 3% from €50,000.01 to €200,000, 1% up to €350,000, 0.5% up to €500,000 and 0.25% above. Your total stops at €12,500, reached at a price of €2,000,000. Luxembourg applies these rates and charges nothing below €3,000, the highest floor the directive allows.

Decision: You are bidding on a Hirst spot print in a sale held under EU rules, and you have not yet checked who carries the royalty. If the conditions of sale pass it to you and you ignore the clause, your invoice grows by 4% of the hammer, €800 on a €20,000 lot, before the buyer's premium and VAT. Three cases separate on one criterion, the wording of the clause: the seller keeps the royalty and your ceiling covers premium and VAT; the buyer bears it and you lower your hammer ceiling by 4%; your lot sells below €3,000 in Luxembourg and you owe no royalty. Your next step: open the conditions of the sale and search for "resale right", about five minutes.

Hirst spot prints sit in the first band. Across the 40 Woodcut Spots series, auction prices over the past five years ranged from £749 to £20,250, and the average sale of the last twelve months came to £4,170. At those levels the royalty on your lot is a flat 4% of the price: €200 on a €5,000 hammer.

Your print falls inside the scope of the right. It covers original works of graphic or plastic art: paintings, drawings, prints, lithographs, sculptures, photographs, ceramics and glass. Copies made in limited numbers by the artist, or under the artist's authority, count as originals, which includes your numbered and signed Hirst woodcut or etching. Hirst is a British national. The United Kingdom kept its own resale right after leaving the EU and grants it to EU nationals, which meets the reciprocity condition of article 7 of the directive.

Reading the clause on who pays artist's resale royalty

You find the clause in the conditions of sale, under the buyer's obligations or the list of charges added to the hammer price. Search the text for "resale right", "artist's resale right", ARR (the abbreviation British houses use for the right) or "droit de suite". Three cases follow from what you read, and each one sets your bidding ceiling differently.

When the clause leaves the royalty with the seller

Your invoice holds the hammer price, the buyer's premium and VAT. In the Edition Pop Art sale of LLB Auction, the premium is 25% of the hammer and Luxembourg VAT is 8% on hammer and premium together. On a €20,000 hammer you pay a €5,000 premium and €2,000 of VAT, so your total comes to €27,000. Your ceiling is the hammer that keeps this total inside your budget.

Who pays artist's resale royalty when the clause charges the buyer

The clause states that the buyer pays the resale right in addition to the hammer price and the premium. Terms of this kind are common commercial practice in the United Kingdom, and the Christie's France judgment confirms them in EU sales. Your €20,000 hammer then costs you €20,800 before premium and VAT. To hold hammer and royalty together at €20,000, divide your ceiling by 1.04, which gives you €19,230.

When no royalty applies to your lot

You owe no royalty when your lot sells below the national floor, €3,000 in Luxembourg. The right ends 70 years after the artist's death. It does not reach artists from countries without a reciprocal right, and the United States and China have no equivalent regime. France exempts a resale at €10,000 or less when the seller bought the work from the artist less than three years before.

Will the royalty come on top of the buyer's premium?

The royalty adds to your invoice only when the conditions you accepted on registering say so. Under article 1(4) of the directive and article 2 of the Luxembourg regulation of 25 August 2006, the seller carries the charge, and the Court of Justice allows its cost to move to you by contract alone. You read that charge before you bid, in the same conditions of sale that state the buyer's premium.

The second question collectors ask concerns resale. When you later sell your print through a house or a dealer, you become the seller and owe the royalty at the rate of your price band. The royalty applies to the sale price even when you resell at a loss: on a resale at €3,000 in Luxembourg, the charge is €120. Build that figure into your own resale arithmetic when you set your bid.

How LLB Auction states the price you pay

LLB Auction sets out the full price of a lot on its how to buy at LLB Auction page: the hammer price, the buyer's premium of the sale and VAT at the rate of your country. The page of each sale and of each lot states its premium. The conditions of each sale set out the remaining terms, and you read the resale right clause there before your first bid.

Your account opens once the house has reviewed your identity document, within 48 working hours. You then register for the sale and bid online, or by telephone when you write to info@llb-auction.com before the lot closes. You pay within 10 working days of the end of the sale. The specialist examines every object in person before it goes to sale, and the house publishes the result of every lot it has offered. Its Damien Hirst results at LLB Auction list the hammer prices the house has achieved for the artist and give you comparables for your ceiling.

Conclusion

Your answer to who pays artist's resale royalty on a Hirst print sits in one clause of the conditions of sale, and it moves your hammer ceiling by up to 4% below €50,000. Open the conditions of the sale you plan to bid in, find the resale right line, and set your ceiling from it in about five minutes before your first bid.

Further reading:

• How a timed online art auction runs, from catalogue to settlement
• Reading the invoice after the hammer: VAT, customs and shipping
• Registering to bid: identity checks and bidding limits

Sources:

• European Parliament and Council, Directive 2001/84/EC on the resale right for the benefit of the author of an original work of art, Official Journal L 272, 13 October 2001
• Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Règlement grand-ducal du 25 août 2006 relatif au droit de suite, Mémorial A n° 171, 22 September 2006, implementing the law of 18 April 2001 on copyright
• Légifrance, Code de la propriété intellectuelle, article L122-8, version in force
• Court of Justice of the European Union, Judgment in case C-41/14, Christie's France, 26 February 2015
• Stephenson Harwood, The Artist's Resale Right: practical considerations for art market professionals, 11 December 2025
• MyArtBroker, 40 Woodcut Spots by Damien Hirst: auction results, consulted November 2026