Every employee in Germany has a legal right to at least 20 days of paid holiday a year on a five-day week — more if your contract or collective agreement says so. Unused days do not simply vanish on 31 December: they lapse only if your employer asked you in time to take them and warned you that they would. If you leave your job, holiday you could not take is paid out.
1. The legal minimum, and how it scales
The Federal Leave Act (Bundesurlaubsgesetz, BUrlG) gives every employee paid holiday in each calendar year (§ 1 BUrlG) of at least 24 working days (§ 3(1) BUrlG). The Act counts every day except Sundays and public holidays as a "working day" (§ 3(2) BUrlG), so 24 days means four weeks on a six-day week. On the usual five-day week that is 20 days; if you work fewer days a week, the minimum shrinks in proportion — three days a week gives 12 days. Public holidays are not taken out of your leave.
Many contracts and collective agreements (Tarifverträge) give 25 to 30 days. That extra leave is contractual: it follows the contract's own rules where the contract sets them, and otherwise usually the same rules as the legal minimum. Severely disabled employees get five extra working days a year on a five-day week (§ 208(1) SGB IX).
A contract cannot go below the legal minimum or take its protections away from you (§ 13(1) BUrlG). A collective agreement may change some of the Act's details, but never the minimum itself.
2. In a new job: the six-month wait
You earn the full year's leave for the first time once the job has lasted six months (§ 4 BUrlG). Before that, you build up one twelfth of the annual leave for each full month (§ 5(1) BUrlG), and fractions of at least half a day are rounded up to a full day (§ 5(2) BUrlG). Whether you can insist on days off during the first six months is less clear-cut; many employers allow leave you have already built up.
You can't collect the same year's leave twice. Leave your previous employer already gave you this calendar year counts against the new one (§ 6(1) BUrlG), which is why your old employer must give you a certificate of the leave you took or were paid for that year when you leave (§ 6(2) BUrlG).
3. Who decides when you go
Formally, your employer grants the leave and sets the dates. But it has to follow your wishes unless urgent business needs, or other employees' wishes that deserve priority on social grounds (school-age children, for example), stand in the way (§ 7(1) BUrlG). Leave should be granted in one block where possible; if it is split, one part has to be at least twelve working days in a row (§ 7(2) BUrlG). Taking holiday without approval is not covered by any of this — it can be treated as unauthorised absence.
While on holiday you may not take up paid work that defeats its purpose of rest (§ 8 BUrlG).
4. Unused days at the end of the year
The Act says leave must be taken in the calendar year. It may be carried over only for urgent business or personal reasons, and then has to be taken by 31 March of the following year (§ 7(3) BUrlG).
Since 2019, though, the Federal Labour Court reads that rule in line with EU law: statutory leave normally lapses at the end of the year (or on 31 March) only if your employer did its part. It must have asked you, in good time, to take your remaining leave and told you clearly that it would otherwise lapse. A general clause in the contract or the staff handbook is usually not enough, and it is for the employer to prove it did this (BAG 9 AZR 541/15, 19 February 2019). If it didn't, the days carry forward. The usual three-year limitation period doesn't start running against them either until the employer has done so (BAG 9 AZR 266/20, 20 December 2022).
Long illness has its own rule. If you were unable to work without a break from the start of the leave year, that year's leave lapses 15 months after the year ends (on 31 March of the second year after it), whatever the employer did. If you worked for part of the year before falling ill, it lapses then only if the employer had asked and warned you in time, while you could still have taken it (BAG 9 AZR 245/19, 20 December 2022). These rules were built for the legal minimum; for extra contractual leave, check whether your contract or collective agreement sets different ones.
So if your employer has sent a reminder this autumn, read it: that is usually the notice that starts the clock. Book the days, or get in writing that they are carried over.
5. Falling sick on holiday
Days on which you are ill during your holiday, proven by a doctor's certificate, are not counted against your leave (§ 9 BUrlG). You get them back to take later; your holiday is not automatically extended, so you are due back at work on the planned date unless you agree otherwise. Report the illness to your employer straight away, as for any sick leave — our sick leave guide covers notice and sick notes, including from abroad.
6. Holiday pay
During your leave you are paid your average earnings over the last 13 weeks before it starts, leaving out extra pay for overtime (§ 11(1) BUrlG). This is Urlaubsentgelt, your normal pay continuing. Urlaubsgeld, a holiday bonus on top, is something else: there is no legal right to it, only what your contract, collective agreement or established company practice provide.
7. Leaving the job: the payout
Leave you can no longer take because the job ends has to be paid out (Urlaubsabgeltung, § 7(4) BUrlG). Otherwise, the usual approach is to use up the remaining days during the notice period; the employer can normally schedule them there.
How much leave you have in the year you leave depends on timing. If you leave in the first half of the year, or before your first six months are up, you get one twelfth for each full month worked (§ 5(1) BUrlG). If you leave in the second half after more than six months in the job, the full legal minimum for that year is yours — though a contract that clearly says so may cut extra contractual days pro rata. If you leave in the first half of the year after your first six months and had already taken more than your share, the employer can't claw back the pay for those days (§ 5(3) BUrlG).
Before signing a termination agreement, check how it deals with remaining leave; our termination agreement guide and resigning guide cover the rest of the exit.
8. When a lawyer can help
An employment lawyer is worth it when leave from earlier years is in dispute, when a payout is refused or comes out lower than expected, when a termination agreement says your leave is "settled", or when your employer refuses the dates you asked for. Bring your contract, any collective agreement that applies, your leave records and the employer's reminders or emails about leave.
You can request an English-speaking employment lawyer.
Sources checked on 4 November 2026. The linked provisions are the German statutory text; the explanations here are general information.