Sweden annual leave entitlement

Disclosure: some software links on this page are affiliate links. If you sign up through one, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend tools we have set up and used, and commission never affects placement or verdicts. Not legal advice: this page summarises publicly available state agency guidance for general information. Verify with the linked agency or an employment attorney before acting on it.

What the law actually says

The Annual Leave Act gives every employee 25 days of paid holiday per year. Employees may save up to five days per year for later use, for a maximum of five years.

What happens to unused leave in Sweden

Statutory leave in Sweden 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 Sweden

• Write the entitlement into every contract. At least 25 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 Sweden

• Check your contract gives at least 25 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 25-day minimum

Compare all 20 countries →

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 Sweden 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 Sweden 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.

Source

Primary source: Semesterlagen (1977:480). Statutory minimums change, and collective agreements frequently exceed them — confirm against the current text before acting. See our methodology.