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Annual leave and holiday pay in Sweden: a guide for employers
Twenty-five leave days is the easy part. Which of them are paid comes out of a formula with a denominator most spreadsheets get wrong, and which holiday-pay model applies is not always the employer's choice.
Two questions decide almost every Swedish leave calculation, and they are easy to confuse.
How many days off is this person entitled to? Twenty-five. How many of those are paid? That comes out of a formula, and it is frequently a different number.
Everything below runs on the Annual Leave Act (1977:480), which covers every employee in Sweden whether or not you have a collective agreement. It is mandatory in the employee’s favour: under 2 §, an agreement reducing an employee’s rights under the Act is void to that extent. References like “4 §” or “16 a §” below point to a section of the Act; the full citation is in Sources at the end.
TL;DR
- You get 25 annual leave days every holiday year.
- Start after 31 August and you’re entitled to only five annual leave days that year.
- Paid days come from a formula: employment days ÷ days in the earning year × 25, rounded up.
- Holiday pay follows one of two models: sammalöneregeln pays a 0.43 percent supplement per day, or procentregeln pays 12 percent of earned pay.
- You can save any day above 20 paid days, but not while previously saved days are still being used.
- Unused leave is paid out as holiday compensation within one month of the employee leaving.
How many annual leave days do you get — and what’s the 31 August cut-off?
An employee is entitled to 25 annual leave days every holiday year — the whole of 4 §. A collective agreement can add days, never subtract them.
The same paragraph carries the exception people miss when hiring late in the year. An employee whose employment starts after 31 August of the holiday year is entitled to only five annual leave days that year. Since the holiday year begins 1 April, that catches everyone starting between 1 September and 31 March.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Holiday year | 1 April – 31 March (3 §) |
| Earning year | The twelve months immediately before the holiday year |
| Annual leave days | 25 per holiday year, 5 if employment started after 31 August |
| Paid annual leave days | Calculated separately under 7 § |
Next: for anyone who joined between September and March, check that your system gave them five days rather than a pro-rated twenty-five.
Which of those days are paid?
The right to 25 days of leave is not the right to 25 paid days. The paid days are worked out separately, under 7 §:
paid annual leave days = (employment days in the earning year − unpaid, non-holiday-pay-generating absence) ÷ actual days in the earning year × 25, rounded up
The denominator is the actual number of days in the earning year: 365 or 366, depending on whether a 29 February falls inside it. A hard-coded 365 is the most common defect in a spreadsheet built in a hurry.
And rounding always goes up, in the employee’s favour. Not to the nearest whole day.
Worked through with a real hire. Someone starting 1 October 2025 is entitled to five annual leave days in the running holiday year, because employment began after 31 August. The following holiday year runs 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, when the full 25 days of leave apply. Only 13 of those days are paid — apply the 7 § formula above to this employee’s employment days and the year’s actual length, then round up. The other twelve are leave you can take unpaid, unless you agree otherwise.
Next: open your payroll’s leave formula and find the denominator. If it is the literal number 365, it is wrong one year in four.
The same-pay method or the percentage method?
Swedish holiday pay is calculated one of two ways, and confusing them is the most common payroll error under this Act.
Sammalöneregeln, the same-pay rule (16 a §), is the default for an employee on a fixed monthly salary. Pay continues unchanged during leave, and on top of it comes a holiday supplement of 0.43 percent of monthly pay per paid leave day, or 1.82 percent of weekly pay for weekly-paid staff. Two details in the same paragraph change the amount: fixed pay supplements are folded into monthly pay before the supplement is worked out, and any variable pay component carries holiday pay of 12 percent of the variable pay that fell due during the holiday year.
Procentregeln, the percentage rule (16 b §), sets holiday pay at 12 percent of pay that fell due during the earning year. It normally covers employees without a fixed monthly salary: hourly-paid staff, or people whose variable pay sammalöneregeln does not capture well.
The choice is not yours in every case. The second paragraph of 16 § makes the percentage rule mandatory, even for a monthly-paid employee, in five situations:
- pay that is not fixed on a weekly or monthly basis;
- pay regularly consisting of a fixed and a variable part, where the variable part can be estimated at at least ten percent of total pay for the holiday year;
- an employment level that varied during the earning year;
- an employment level that changed between the earning year and the time of leave;
- absence during the earning year for reasons that do not generate holiday pay, unless it ran at the same level throughout the earning year and still does at the time of leave.
Item 2 is the one that catches growing companies. Commission, shift premiums and bonuses cross ten percent faster than expected, and if your payroll system defaults to sammalöneregeln, it will not notice. You may also choose the percentage rule voluntarily under the first paragraph of 16 §.
Next: list everyone with any variable pay component and check the ratio against ten percent for this holiday year. That list is your exception set.
The 0.43 percent supplement, worked
Per paid leave day: 0.43 percent of monthly pay, times the number of paid leave days.
An employee on SEK 30,000 a month, no fixed supplements, no variable pay, with 25 paid leave days:
25 × 0.0043 × 30,000 = SEK 3,225
That is paid on top of the unreduced monthly salary already running during leave. The supplement is an addition, never a deduction. That is why leave days cost slightly more than working days, and why your first Swedish summer may cost more than you budgeted for.
How much notice do you need before scheduling leave?
11 §: notice of scheduled leave is given at least two months before it begins. Later only for special reasons, and then where possible at least one month before.
12 §: unless otherwise agreed, leave is scheduled so the employee gets a period of at least four consecutive weeks during June to August.
Next: two months before June is the end of March. If your summer scheduling conversation happens in May, it is already late.
How many days can you save for next year?
An employee entitled to more than 20 paid annual leave days in a holiday year can save the surplus, under 18 §. At the statutory floor that is up to five days a year; a collective agreement granting more than 25 days raises it.
A saved day must be used within five years of the end of the holiday year in which it was saved. If using it in the fifth year would cause significant inconvenience, 20 §’s second paragraph lets both parties agree to push it into a sixth.
The third paragraph of 18 § is the one broken most often in practice: new days cannot be saved during a holiday year in which previously saved days are being used. Track saved days separately from the year’s new accrual, or it becomes impossible to tell later which days are closest to expiring.
Next: if your leave balance is a single number per employee, it cannot answer the expiry question. Split it.
What happens to unused leave when someone leaves?
Unused leave is paid out as holiday compensation rather than taken as time off, under 28 §, covering everything not yet taken or compensated, from earlier earning years and from the current, still-open one.
It is calculated under 29 § using whichever model applied during employment, and saved days are valued as if taken in the holiday year employment ended.
The deadline is in 30 §: without undue delay, and no later than one month after employment ends. The Act does not demand it on the final payroll run, but a month is an outer limit, not a processing time.
The recurring mistake is calculating compensation only for the last completed earning year and forgetting the proportional share accrued during the still-open one up to the final day. Both parts need working out before final pay goes out, or you underpay and turn a payslip into a dispute.
Next: before you run final pay, pull the employee’s saved-days ledger and confirm both the closed earning year and the still-open one are included in the payout.
What are the key figures at a glance?
| What | Amount / limit | Provision |
|---|---|---|
| Annual leave days per holiday year | 25 | 4 § |
| Employment starting after 31 August | 5 days that holiday year | 4 § |
| Holiday year / earning year | 1 April – 31 March | 3 § |
| Denominator in the paid-days formula | Actual days in the earning year — 365 or 366 | 7 § |
| Holiday supplement, same-pay method | 0.43% of monthly pay per paid day; 1.82% of weekly pay | 16 a § |
| Holiday pay, percentage method | 12% of pay that fell due in the earning year | 16 b § |
| Variable-pay threshold | 10% of total pay forces the percentage rule | 16 § 2nd para |
| Saveable days | Those above 20 paid days | 18 § |
| Outer limit for a saved day | Five years from the end of the saving holiday year | 18 §, sixth year by agreement under 20 § |
| Main holiday period | At least four consecutive weeks, June–August, unless otherwise agreed | 12 § |
| Notice of scheduling | Two months; later only for special reasons, then if possible one month | 11 § |
| Holiday compensation on termination | No later than one month after employment ends | 30 § |
Run the numbers for one named employee with the annual leave calculator. It implements the whole table, including the correct denominator in the 7 § formula.
How does Taito.ai help with this?
Annual leave accrual, including saved days kept separate from the current year’s balance, is a policy Taito.ai sets up and keeps maintained for every employee.
Sources
Riksdagen publishes the consolidated Swedish text of the Act. There is no citable official English translation, so every rule here is paraphrased rather than quoted. Riksdagen’s SFS pages carry no paragraph-level anchors, so links point at the whole Act and the paragraph number travels in the link text.
Disclaimer
Taito.ai does not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. This article is general information about the law as it stood on the date above, not advice on your situation, and it is not a substitute for it. Rates and thresholds change. Check with a qualified adviser before acting on anything here.
