Leave by country / Netherlands
Netherlands annual leave entitlement
How much paid leave people in Netherlands get, what happens to unused days, and what you owe when someone leaves — in plain English, whether you run a team there or work on one.
Netherlands guarantees a statutory minimum of 20 paid annual leave days per year (4 weeks on a five-day week) under Burgerlijk Wetboek, Book 7. Unused statutory leave must be paid out when employment ends, and it cannot be exchanged for cash while the employee is still employed.
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What the law actually says
The statutory minimum is four times the agreed weekly working hours, so 20 days for a five-day week. Most collective agreements add extra days on top, commonly bringing the total to 25.
Worth knowing: Statutory days expire six months after the year in which they were accrued; any additional contractual days last five years. Dutch employees also receive a holiday allowance of at least 8% of annual salary.
What happens to unused leave in Netherlands
Statutory leave in Netherlands is expected to be taken in the year it accrues, with limited carryover into the following period. The important protection is that leave an employee was genuinely prevented from taking — through sickness or parental leave, for example — is protected by settled case law and does not simply disappear.
When employment ends, the untaken balance must be paid. This is the rule across the European Union and Australia, and it is the sharpest contrast with the United States, where whether unused time is paid out depends entirely on which state the employee works in.
If you run a team in Netherlands
- Write the entitlement into every contract. At least 20 days; more is fine, less is void. Collective agreements may add to it.
- Track accrual and carryover to the day, with a record of every approval. When someone leaves, the untaken balance is money you owe, and you will need to show how you got to the number.
- Budget for the payout. Every unused day on the books is a liability at that person's current pay rate — it does not disappear at year end.
If you work in Netherlands
- Check your contract gives at least 20 days. Anything less is unenforceable.
- Keep your own record of approved leave. Payroll systems get changed; your notes don't.
- When you leave, untaken statutory leave must be paid out. It cannot be forfeited.
Countries with the same 20-day minimum
Calculating an employee's balance
Entitlement is the starting point; the working number is what an individual has actually accrued at a given date. Our accrual calculator converts an annual entitlement into a per-pay-period figure and a current balance.
Tracking Netherlands leave correctly
Because untaken leave is money the employer owes, the balance has to be provable. Spreadsheets fail at exactly the moment they matter — when someone disputes what they were owed on their last day and nobody can reconstruct the record.
For a single-country team, Leavo handles Netherlands accrual rules, carryover and approvals with a full audit trail. If you employ people in more than one country, statutory entitlements, carryover rules and payout obligations differ in every one — that is the case for a platform like Deel that handles multi-country employment rather than leave alone. We compare the options in our leave management software guide.
Netherlands annual leave: common questions
How many paid annual leave days are employees entitled to in Netherlands?
20 working days is the statutory minimum in Netherlands, equivalent to 4 weeks on a five-day working week, under Burgerlijk Wetboek, Book 7. Employers and collective agreements may grant more, never less.
Must unused annual leave be paid out when employment ends in Netherlands?
Yes. Payment in lieu of untaken statutory leave is required when the employment relationship ends in Netherlands. During employment, statutory leave must be taken as time off and cannot be exchanged for cash.
Can an employer in Netherlands refuse a leave request?
An employer can usually influence when leave is taken for operational reasons, but cannot deny the entitlement itself. The right to the minimum number of days is statutory and cannot be contracted away.
Do public holidays count towards the 20-day entitlement in Netherlands?
No. Public holidays are separate from the 20-day statutory annual leave entitlement in Netherlands.
Source
Primary source: Burgerlijk Wetboek, Book 7. Statutory minimums change, and collective agreements frequently exceed them — confirm against the current text before acting. See our methodology.