When you fall ill in Germany, your employer keeps paying your full wage for up to six weeks. After that, your health insurer takes over with a lower, capped payment called Krankengeld. Both sides depend on you doing one thing on time: telling your employer and backing it up with a doctor's note.
1. Six weeks of pay from your employer
If illness stops you working, your employer must keep paying your full wage for up to six weeks for that illness (§ 3(1) EFZG). The right only starts once your employment has lasted four uninterrupted weeks (§ 3(3) EFZG), and it does not apply if you are at fault for the illness yourself — ordinary illness and most accidents are not your fault; deliberately causing your own injury is the kind of case this excludes.
A new six-week period starts for a genuinely new illness. For the same illness flaring up again, you only get a fresh six weeks if you went at least six months without it making you unfit for work, or if twelve months have passed since the first time it did (§ 3(1) sentence 2 EFZG). Otherwise the new absence counts against the six weeks you already used.
2. Telling your employer and the sick note
Tell your employer that you can't work, and roughly how long it will last, without delay — a quick message as soon as you know, not at the end of the day (§ 5(1) EFZG). If the illness lasts more than three calendar days, you must also get a doctor's certificate and hand it in by the next working day at the latest. Your employer can ask for the certificate sooner, even from day one — many contracts say so.
Miss the certificate and your employer can withhold pay until you provide it (§ 7(1) EFZG), unless the delay genuinely wasn't your fault (§ 7(2) EFZG) — pay resumes once the certificate is in, it is not lost for good.
3. Krankengeld: pay from your health insurer
Once your employer's six weeks of continued pay end, members of a statutory health fund (Krankenkasse) can claim Krankengeld instead, as long as being unfit for work is confirmed by a doctor (§ 44(1) SGB V). The claim technically runs from the day of that confirmation, but it rests for as long as you are still receiving contribution-liable pay from your employer (§ 49(1) no. 1 SGB V) — in practice, that means it takes over where the six weeks of continued pay leave off.
Krankengeld is 70% of your regular gross pay, capped at 90% of your net pay (§ 47(1) SGB V), so it is always a drop from your normal wage. For the same illness, it runs for at most 78 weeks within any three-year period, counted from when you first became unable to work; a different illness arising while you are already off sick does not extend that limit (§ 48(1) SGB V). Employees whose continued pay would run for less than six weeks — some short-term contracts, for example — are normally excluded from Krankengeld altogether, but can opt in by declaration (§ 44(2) SGB V).
Privately insured employees don't get statutory Krankengeld; check your own policy for a Krankentagegeld benefit instead.
4. Being dismissed while you're sick
Being sick does not protect you from dismissal, and a sick note does not stop the clock on your employer giving notice. If ordinary dismissal protection applies to you at all (ten or more employees, over six months' service — see our dismissal guide), an illness-related dismissal still has to be socially justified by a personal reason (§ 1(2) KSchG). For illness specifically, courts ask three questions in order: is there a genuine negative prognosis that the absences will continue; would that significantly disrupt the business; and, weighing everything — length of service, the cause of the illness, your age — does the balance still favour the employer. All three have to be met, and each is decided on the facts, so this is general information, not an assessment of your own case.
Below that threshold, or during a probationary period, dismissal while you are sick is easier for the employer; see our guides on dismissal during probation and termination agreements if you are offered one while off sick.
5. Sick while abroad
Tell your employer by the fastest means available — your employer bears that cost — giving the illness, its expected length and your address (§ 5(2) EFZG). If you are a member of a statutory health fund, tell it too, immediately, and again if the illness runs longer than first expected; on returning to Germany, tell both your employer and your fund without delay.
6. When a lawyer can help
An employment lawyer helps most when continued pay is being withheld over a disputed certificate, when a long or repeat absence turns into talk of dismissal or a termination agreement, or when your health fund refuses Krankengeld or stops it early. Have your certificates, correspondence with your employer and any notice to hand.
You can request an English-speaking employment lawyer.
Sources checked on 3 November 2026. The linked provisions are the German statutory text; the explanations here are general information.