Germany BUrlG 2026: 20 Days for a Five-Day Week; a 1 Sep–31 Dec Employment Example Gives 7 Days

Every employee has a claim to paid recreational leave in each calendar year. The statutory minimum is 24 working days per year (§ 3(1) BUrlG). The Act defines “working days” as every calendar day that is not a Sunday or a statutory public holiday (§ 3(2)). Because the 24-day figure assumes a six-day working week, a five-day week converts to 20 days (24 × 5/6). The 20 days is a conversion, not a number printed in the Act.

Posted workers are covered by the EU posting framework. Directive (EU) 2018/957 amended the Posted Workers Directive and broadened the catalogue of working conditions host states may apply to posted workers. Collective agreements under AEntG may raise the statutory holiday entitlement. BUrlG is therefore the floor for posted workers, not the ceiling.

Full annual leave only arises after the employment relationship has existed for six months (§ 4 BUrlG). If the employment relationship is shorter than that, the worker gets one-twelfth of the annual leave for each full month of employment in three cases listed in § 5(1): the waiting period is not fulfilled within the calendar year, the worker leaves before fulfilling it, or the worker leaves in the first half of the year after fulfilling it.

If the employment relationship itself runs from 1 September to 31 December 2026 — four full months — and the six-month waiting period is not met, each worker on a five-day week earns 4/12 × 20 = 6.67 days. Fractions of at least half a day round up under § 5(2), giving 7 days for the four-month period. Prior employment can change the result: if the waiting period was already fulfilled when the assignment began, the full annual entitlement applies.

The worker's wishes must be considered when scheduling leave (§ 7(1) BUrlG). You can refuse a requested date only for urgent operational reasons or because another worker's leave has social priority. Leave must be granted as one continuous block. If it has to be split, one part must be at least 12 consecutive working days (§ 7(2)).

This is a real constraint, not a formality. You cannot simply schedule all seven days for the project's quiet week. The worker can ask for a period that suits them, and a refusal needs a concrete operational or social-priority reason. If you want to avoid carry-over, the practical route is to agree and document leave during the posting, not to impose it.

Leave must be granted and taken in the current calendar year (§ 7(3) BUrlG). Carry-over into the next year is permitted only for urgent operational or personal reasons, and that carried-over leave must be granted and taken by 31 March of the following year. If the worker earned pro-rata leave under § 5(1)(a) because the waiting period was not fulfilled, that leave must be carried into the next year on the worker's request.

For the employment relationship ending 31 December 2026, the practical question is whether untaken leave should be carried or paid out. If the employment relationship ends and leave cannot be taken, payment in lieu (Abgeltung) is governed by § 7(4) BUrlG. The Bundesarbeitsgericht (BAG) has held in 9 AZR 244/20 that the Abgeltung claim for statutory minimum leave is a pure money claim and can be subject to collective-agreement exclusion periods.

There is a second important safeguard. The Court of Justice of the EU ruled on 6 November 2018 in C-684/16 (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) that leave claims do not expire as the BAG had previously allowed. The BAG decision itself describes its earlier case law as overridden and resets the exclusion-period start point to 7 November 2018. In short: untaken statutory leave does not simply vanish on 31 December. It either carries over under a permitted reason or becomes a money claim when the employment ends.

Start with one question: is the worker in construction-sector employment under § 8(1) AEntG? If yes, SOKA-BAU holiday fund procedures apply, and the mechanics are different from BUrlG. The scheme is SOKA-GERÜSTBAU, and a home-country-fund exemption exists in some cases. For everyone else, BUrlG is the statutory baseline.

The link between BUrlG and SOKA-BAU is frequently confused. If § 8(1) AEntG construction-sector employment applies, use the SOKA-BAU holiday-fund procedures rather than relying on the BUrlG calculation alone. Do not handle a construction crew with the BUrlG arithmetic above without checking SOKA-BAU first.

Whether a welder is in construction-sector employment depends on the assignment and the applicable collective agreement; do not assume. The dedicated SOKA-BAU holiday pay guide explains contribution, reporting, and refund mechanics. This article cannot classify welding work at an industrial plant from the job title alone. Check the actual site work and the applicable collective agreement against the SOKA-BAU guidance before choosing the scheme. Collective agreements under AEntG may raise the statutory holiday entitlement for posted workers, so treat the BUrlG numbers as a floor.

This question matters because the workers already receive annual leave under Slovenian law. The short answer is that the sources captured for this guide cannot resolve it. No Slovenian statutory source was retrieved in this evidence pass, and no captured authority decides whether Slovenian leave may be set off against the German BUrlG entitlement.

Before assuming double-counting is or is not permitted, obtain case-specific advice from a lawyer who can compare the Slovenian and German rules in the actual contract. The Slovenia holiday guide on this blog sets out the home-state baseline, but it cannot close the cross-border offsetting gap by itself.

Use this table to work through a fixed-term posting. Substitute your own start date and working week in step 4.

When the arithmetic is confirmed, the next administrative step is the registration already underway through the Zoll portal. The German posting registration checklist covers the steps.

This article is general guidance for employers and workers and is not legal advice.