German holiday entitlement calculator (Urlaubsanspruch)

How urlaubsanspruch in Germany is calculated

§ 3 Bundesurlaubsgesetz: *"Der Urlaub beträgt jährlich mindestens 24 Werktage."* Twenty-four. But the next subsection decides what that means: *"Als Werktage gelten alle Kalendertage, die nicht Sonn- oder gesetzliche Feiertage sind."* Saturday is a Werktag. The statutory figure is therefore measured on a **six-day** week, and 24 ÷ 6 is four weeks.

**So a five-day employee is entitled to 20 days, not 24.** "Germany gives 24 days of holiday" is true of the statute and false of almost every employee who reads it, which makes it the most misquoted figure in this family. Four weeks is also exactly the floor the EU Working Time Directive sets, which is the sanity check that the five-day reading is the right one: the German minimum meets the European minimum and does not exceed it.

Two things this page deliberately does not do. It does not add your **contractual** leave — many German contracts and most collective agreements give 25 to 30 days, and that is a fact about your contract rather than about the law. And it does not net off public holidays: § 3(2) puts them outside the Werktage the 24 is counted in, so they cannot be set against your entitlement. That is the opposite of the UK position, where an employer may count bank holidays towards the statutory minimum.