Vacation Days Germany Law: How Your Leave Is Calculated

JobChamp Guide · Updated July 17, 2026

Under vacation days Germany law, your statutory minimum leave (gesetzlicher Mindesturlaub) is 24 working days a year, which works out to 20 working days on a standard 5-day week. In the year you join or leave a job, you earn one-twelfth of that for every full month. And vacation only expires on December 31 if your employer gave you specific advance notice.

The statutory minimum: 24 working days

The Federal Leave Act (Bundesurlaubsgesetz, BUrlG) sets out in Section 3 that you are entitled to at least 24 working days of vacation per calendar year. In this context, "working days" (Werktage) means every day except Sunday, so Saturday counts too. In other words, the law is built around a 6-day working week. If, like most employees, you work only five days a week, you need to convert the figure.

The conversion formula

The formula is simple: statutory leave (24) ÷ 6 working days × your actual working days per week. For a 5-day week, that is 24 ÷ 6 × 5 = 20 working days. This conversion applies to any individual work schedule, including part-time arrangements with fewer weekly days.

Vacation in a partial year: joining and leaving mid-year

If you are not employed for the full calendar year, Section 5 of the Federal Leave Act applies: you earn one-twelfth of your annual leave for every full month of employment. With 20 days of annual leave and four full months, that would be 20 ÷ 12 × 4, rounded up to about 6.7 days, though in practice this is usually rounded to full or half days.

Also important is the statutory waiting period (Wartezeit): you only earn the full vacation entitlement for your first year of employment after six uninterrupted months on the job (Section 4 BUrlG). Before that, you have a partial entitlement based on the months already completed.

Worked example: starting and ending mid-year

Say you start a new job on April 1 with 20 days of annual leave on a 5-day week. From then until year-end, there are nine full months (April through December). Your entitlement for that year is therefore 20 ÷ 12 × 9 = 15 days, usually rounded up to a full day in practice. If instead you resign effective September 30 of the same year after a prior full year of employment, you would already have automatically earned six-twelfths for the full months of January through June, plus a further three-twelfths pro rata for July through September. Any days left over from this allowance must be paid out when your contract ends if you could no longer take them.

Extra contractual leave: what applies beyond the minimum

Many employment contracts and collective agreements go beyond the statutory minimum. This extra contractual leave (vertraglicher Mehrurlaub) is not automatically subject to the same strict forfeiture rules as the statutory minimum leave, provided the contract explicitly says so. Read your contract carefully: if it says nothing different, the same rules as for the statutory minimum usually apply to your entire leave.

In practice, this means that if your contract grants 30 days, of which 20 are the statutory minimum, your employer could in theory set a stricter or more generous rule for the additional 10 days, such as automatic forfeiture without prior notice. But this must be stated explicitly in the contract and must clearly distinguish between minimum and additional leave. Without that clear separation, case law generally assumes your entire leave is treated uniformly, meaning the additional days also benefit from the notice duty.

Carrying leave forward: the exceptions

Besides illness, there are other situations where vacation can be preserved across the year-end. During parental leave, the entitlement is suspended accordingly but does not simply disappear; it can be reduced pro rata or taken in parts after you return, depending on the circumstances. For other extended periods of leave from work, it is also worth checking your contract and, if needed, getting a brief legal opinion before assuming automatic forfeiture.

Forfeiture on December 31: the employer's notice duty is decisive

As a rule, vacation must be taken within the current calendar year. Under Section 7(3) BUrlG, carrying it into the next year is only possible for operational or personal reasons, and any carried-over leave must then be taken by March 31 or it lapses.

What many people do not know is that, following a landmark line of case law from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and Germany's Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht, BAG), this rigid forfeiture rule now applies only in limited circumstances. Vacation only lapses if your employer has specifically and in good time told you how many days you still have and that they will expire at year-end if you do not take them. A generic clause in your employment contract is not enough.

Vacation upon termination and during illness

When your employment ends, unused vacation must generally be paid out (Section 7(4) BUrlG). If you still have open leave before your own resignation or after being dismissed by your employer, you should actively raise this point and have it documented in your reference letter or settlement paperwork. If you are negotiating a termination agreement (Aufhebungsvertrag), check carefully how many days you are actually owed as of your exit date, since employers sometimes lowball this figure.

If you are sick for an extended period during the vacation year and could not take your leave as a result, you do not automatically lose it. Under established case law, vacation you missed due to illness remains valid for up to 15 months after the end of the vacation year before it lapses. This applies regardless of whether your employer met its notice duty, because illness made it factually impossible to take the leave.

What to do if you are unsure

First, count your total contractual annual leave and subtract the days you have already taken. Then check whether your employer told you, in writing or in text form, individually about your specific remaining leave and the looming forfeiture deadline, not just in a general clause in your contract. If that individual notice is missing entirely, raise the topic proactively and ask for written confirmation of your current balance before the year turns over.

Common mistakes in vacation calculations

In practice, most disputes over vacation entitlement come not from bad faith but from simple calculation errors or outdated assumptions. One common mistake is confusing working days (Werktage) with actual working days (Arbeitstage), which understates the statutory minimum leave. A second classic mistake is, when switching from full-time to part-time mid-year, simply recalculating the entire annual leave pro rata against the new weekly hours without accounting for the entitlement already earned before the switch. The rule here is that the original entitlement stands for the period before the change, and the new calculation basis only applies from the switch date onward.

A third mistake concerns rounding. If the formula does not produce a whole number, practice usually rounds in favor of the employee, but this is not a fixed statutory rule, just a common workplace practice. Check your contract or ask your HR department how rounding is handled specifically at your company, so there are no surprises later.

Why an accurate calculation is worth it

If you do not know your vacation entitlement, you risk giving away paid days off or missing out on a payout when your contract ends. Especially around job changes, parental leave, part-time phases, or extended illness, small calculation errors quickly add up to several days. A clean, once-a-year check of your leave balance is worth doing regardless of whether an event like a termination is coming up.

Frequently asked questions

This article is general information and does not replace legal advice for your specific situation. For concrete disputes, your union, legal insurance, or an employment lawyer can help.