German Vacation Entitlement Calculator 2026 (Urlaubsanspruch)

The Federal Leave Act counts in Werktage, and Werktage are all days except Sundays and public holidays. The statute therefore assumes a six-day week and sets the minimum at 24 working days per year. If you work the usual five days a week, you get the same amount of holiday expressed in a different unit: 24 x 5/6 = 20 vacation days. Part-time work does not cut your holiday, it only changes the unit. At three working days a week, 12 vacation days are exactly the same four weeks off as 20 days on a five-day week.

The full annual entitlement arises for the first time after the employment relationship has existed for six months, the waiting period (Wartezeit) in section 4 BUrlG. The waiting period only delays the entitlement, it never cancels it: once complete, the full annual entitlement exists, and in every later year it arises on 1 January anyway. Before that you hold a partial entitlement, and in practice many employers voluntarily grant leave during the waiting period too.

The pro-rata rule (Zwoelftelung) in section 5 (1) BUrlG applies in exactly three situations: first, in the year you join when the waiting period can no longer be completed in that year, which means starting after 1 July; second, when you leave before the waiting period is complete; third, when you leave in the first half of a calendar year after the waiting period is complete. In those cases you receive one twelfth of the annual entitlement per full month of employment.

That produces the rule most often overlooked in practice: if you leave in the second half of the year after completing the waiting period, so on 1 July or later, you keep the FULL annual entitlement. There is no reduction, simply because that case is not listed in section 5 (1) BUrlG. Days you have not taken must then be paid out under section 7 (4) BUrlG.

Fractions are handled one-sidedly in the employee favour by section 5 (2) BUrlG: if the pro-rata calculation leaves a remainder of at least half a day, it is rounded up to a full vacation day. The statute knows no rounding down, so smaller fractions simply remain fractional. Four twelfths of 20 days is 6.67 days and therefore 7 vacation days.

The statute is only the floor. In Germany 25 to 30 vacation days on a five-day week are common, often increasing with length of service or set by a collective agreement. The distinction matters: the statutory core cannot be reduced by contract (section 13 BUrlG), while for the above-statutory excess your contract may set its own rules, for example a different pro-rata method, an earlier expiry date, or a link to length of service. This calculator applies the statutory pro-rata pattern uniformly to whatever contractual figure you enter, so check your contract for how it treats the excess.