Swedish holiday entitlement calculator (semesterdagar)
Swedish holiday entitlement calculator (semesterdagar)Semesterlagen 4 § gives every employee 25 semesterdagar a holiday year. How many of them are PAID is set exactly by 7 §: days employed in the earning year minus days wholly absent without pay, divided by the days in that year, times 25, rounded up to the next whole day. Start after 31 August and the leave right for that year is five days.
Worked example · Days Entitled
With I started after 31 August of the holiday year of 0, this model computes Days Entitled of 25. See the full working.
✓ Verified against 7 self-test cases Updated for 2026 · sources checked 2026-10-11
How semesterdagar in Sweden is calculated
*"En arbetstagare har rätt till tjugofem semesterdagar varje semesterår."* Twenty-five, and this page asks nothing about your working week — 3 a § says *"Lördag och söndag räknas inte som semesterdagar"*, so the 25 is already on a five-day basis. Multiplying by your own week, which the UK, German and Austrian pages have to do, would be wrong here.
**Sweden is the only country in this family whose rounding is in the statute.** Every other page here rounds to a tenth of a day and discloses that the law is silent. 7 § is not silent: *"Om ett brutet tal då uppstår, avrundas detta till närmast högre hela tal."* Rounded **up**, to the next whole number. Half a year worked gives 12.6027 days, which is **13** — and a calculator rounding to the nearest would say 13 by luck and 12 the next time it mattered.
**The 31 August cliff is a date, not a proportion.** Start work on 1 September and 4 § gives you *"endast fem semesterdagar"* for that holiday year — five, not the four months’ worth the accrual formula would suggest. The two numbers are genuinely separate: 4 § governs the leave you may **take** and 7 § how much of it is **paid**, so a new starter can have a full leave right and only part of the pay.
Worked example
ShowHide the full working: 7 inputs, 8 computed steps
| Inputs | |
|---|---|
| Earning year (intjänandeår) starts (YYYY-MM-DD) | 2026-01-01 |
| Earning year (intjänandeår) ends (YYYY-MM-DD) | 2026-12-31 |
| First day worked in it (YYYY-MM-DD) | 2026-01-01 |
| Last day worked in it (YYYY-MM-DD) | 2026-12-31 |
| Days wholly absent without pay | 0 |
| I started after 31 August of the holiday year | no |
| Days already taken | 0 |
| Computed by the engine | |
| Year Length Days | 365 |
| Present Days | 365 |
| Payable Days | 365 |
| Paid Days Raw | 25 |
| Paid Days ✓ pinned | 25 |
| Leave Days | 25 |
| Days Entitled ✓ pinned | 25 |
| Days Remaining | 25 |
Every computed row comes from the engine, run on the inputs above. Rows marked ✓ pinned are also fixed by a published self-test, so a change to the model that moved them would fail its own tests.
Frequently asked questions
Hur många semesterdagar har jag rätt till?
25 semesterdagar varje semesterår enligt 4 § semesterlagen. Hur många som är betalda räknas ut enligt 7 § och avrundas uppåt till närmast högre hela tal.
How are paid holiday days calculated?
Semesterlagen 7 §: take the days you were employed during the earning year, subtract days you were wholly absent without pay, divide by the number of days in that year, multiply by 25, and round the result UP to the next whole day.
Do Saturdays and Sundays count as semesterdagar?
No. 3 a § excludes them, which is why 25 semesterdagar is five weeks and why this calculator does not ask how many days a week you work.
What happens if I start in September?
4 § gives you only five semesterdagar for that holiday year. It is a cliff tied to 31 August, not a proportion of the year remaining.
Sources
- Semesterlag (1977:480), 4 §, 7 § and 3 a § — Riksdagen (the 25 days, the five-day cliff, the accrual formula and its round-up, and that Saturdays and Sundays are not semesterdagar) · checked 2026-10-11
Estimate. Not tax advice. The verification badge means the model reproduces the stated formula through 7 self-test cases; the sources support that the formula matches the rules.
Check the arithmetic yourself: how this calculator is verified — the formula behind every derived value, the 7 test cases the engine reproduces, and what the badge does and does not claim. Also available as machine-readable JSON.
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