Are you talking about an apartment? If yes, then yes.

Lease of an appartment? What is your question? Or are you just interested, if anyone has been in a similiar situation ;)

apologies for the lack of clarity. It appears that the only way to break a lease is to find a solvable tenant to take over your lease. But what if you need to terminate the lease before the end of the contract and cannot find another tenant? Can you give a notice to terminate the lease, say 90 days before the end of the contract?

you can ALWAYS find another tenant. just put an add, hundreds of people will flow to volunteer to take the lease. present 5 people to the regie, one will be good (the 3 key points: valid permit, salary 3-4 times higher than rental, declaration de non-pursuit). but i think rarely regie takes the person appointed by the last tenant anyway....

and you should give notice 3 months before, dont forget this!

There are limited or indefinite leases. http://www.admin.ch/ch/e/rs/220/a255.html

Indefinite leases can be terminated according to http://www.admin.ch/ch/e/rs/220/a266a.html

This is usually three months. Sometimes, there are special rules, say, no termination for Dec. 31st. http://www.admin.ch/ch/e/rs/220/a266c.html

In general, as Wanessa said, you can try to find a next tenant, which will have to take the appartment to the same condition as yourself.

If you can't find a next tenant, say because you paid much more that the market would suggest, you have to pay the three months or even more, if "A party may terminate a lease of residential premises by giving three months’ notice expiring on a date fixed by local custom or, in the absence of such custom, at the end of a three-month period of the lease." the local custom has some fixed dates (for example, in Basel, there used to be only three valid termination dates. These still can be found on some old contracts. This could mean in extreme cirumstances, that one had to pay for up to six months...

Thank you all for your information.

Just to be clear, it appears that a limited lease cannto be terminated with a three month notice? 

Hm, I am on holiday, so can't check all my usual sources.

But I think you can terminate the lease but only for special reasons, found in articles 266g ff.

Will be back in a week, can do better work at home ;)