The Danish Holiday Act (Ferieloven) gives every person who works for pay in Denmark five weeks of paid holiday each year. You earn 2.08 days per month starting September 1, and under the concurrent system introduced in 2020 you can use those days almost as soon as they accrue.1Virk. Holiday Act The Act covers everyone performing personal work for pay: salaried, hourly, apprentices, part-timers, and people holding a second job.
How You Earn and When You Can Take Holiday
The holiday year runs from September 1 to August 31. Each month worked adds 2.08 days to your balance, reaching 25 days (five weeks) over a full year.1Virk. Holiday Act Weekends, public holidays, sick days, and time already on holiday all continue to accrue, so short absences don’t cut into your total.
Denmark calls the current setup samtidighedsferie — concurrent holiday. Days earned in September are available in October, and so on down the year.2Life in Denmark. Holiday Allowance You are not restricted to using days within the September-to-August accrual year either. The holiday-taking period extends four months past the end of the holiday year, giving you a 16-month window from September 1 through December 31 of the following calendar year to use what you have earned.1Virk. Holiday Act
Part-time and casual workers accrue at the same 2.08-day monthly rate. The difference shows up in the money attached to each day, not in the number of days.3Business in Denmark. Employer – Holiday Pay
How You Get Paid on Holiday
Pay during leave depends on how you are employed. There are two tracks.
Salaried Employees
If you draw a fixed monthly salary, you keep receiving it while on holiday. On top of that, you get a holiday supplement of at least one percent of your total pay from the previous September-to-August period. Collective agreements often set the supplement higher. Employers pay the supplement either in two installments (with May salary for September through May, and with August salary for June through August) or each time you begin a holiday.2Life in Denmark. Holiday Allowance
Hourly Workers and FerieKonto
If you don’t have a fixed salary, your employer withholds 12.5 percent of your gross wages and transfers it to FerieKonto, the government’s central holiday pay administrator.3Business in Denmark. Employer – Holiday Pay You request the money through the borger.dk self-service portal, up to a month before your first holiday day, and it usually arrives within about four working days.2Life in Denmark. Holiday Allowance Requests after the holiday are also accepted. Alternative application routes exist through FerieKonto directly if you don’t have MitID.
Who Decides When You Take Holiday
You and your employer are expected to agree on timing, but if you can’t, the employer has the final call. That authority is bounded by mandatory notice periods.1Virk. Holiday Act
- Main holiday of three consecutive weeks, which must fall between May 1 and September 30: at least three months’ notice.
- The remaining two weeks: at least one month’s notice.
An employer who misses the notice window generally cannot force holiday on those dates.
Forced Closures (Tvungen Ferie)
Some workplaces shut down entirely around Christmas or summer and require staff to use holiday days during the closure. The Act requires the employer to make every reasonable effort to ensure employees have accrued enough paid days to cover it.1Virk. Holiday Act If a recent hire hasn’t earned enough, the employer must pay normal salary for the uncovered days, or advance the holiday pay and offset it against days the employee accrues later.
Falling Ill During Holiday
Getting sick on holiday can entitle you to replacement days, but only after a threshold. The first five sick days in a holiday year are not compensated. From the sixth sick day onward, illness that overlaps with scheduled holiday becomes replacement holiday you can take later.
To claim it, notify your employer on the first day of illness, get a doctor’s medical certificate (the cost usually falls on you), and submit that documentation to your employer once you return. The two of you then reschedule the replacement days. Many workers miss out here simply by not calling in while sick on holiday.
Unused Days: Transfer, Payout, or Forfeiture
What happens to days you don’t use depends on which week they belong to.
The first four weeks cannot be cashed out. If you don’t take them and no recognized obstacle applies, they expire at the end of the holiday-taking period on December 31. The corresponding holiday pay goes to Arbejdsmarkedets Feriefond (the Labor Market Holiday Fund), not to you.4Arbejdsmarkedets Feriefond. Reporting and Payment of Unclaimed Holiday Allowances to Arbejdsmarkedets Feriefond Employers must report and settle any unclaimed amounts with the Fund, even if the total is zero.
The fifth week is more flexible. You and your employer can agree in writing, before December 31, to transfer those days to the next holiday-taking period. If there’s no written transfer agreement, the fifth week is paid out to you instead of being forfeited.1Virk. Holiday Act That makes the fifth week the only slice of statutory holiday that can turn into cash without a job change or a holiday obstacle.
When an Obstacle Prevents You From Taking Holiday
The Act lists specific reasons that protect unused days from expiring: your own illness, pregnancy and parental leave, leave to care for seriously ill or dying relatives, and detention. If a recognized obstacle prevents you from taking accrued holiday before December 31, up to four weeks of unused statutory holiday automatically carries forward to the next holiday-taking period.1Virk. Holiday Act The employer must notify FerieKonto (or whoever handles the holiday pay) of the transfer by December 31. Carried-forward days must be used before any newly accrued holiday in the next period; the ordering is not optional.
Leaving a Job
When you resign or are dismissed, your employer has to pay out any remaining accrued holiday allowance so you can take paid time off in the next job. For salaried employees, that payment must be reported and transferred to FerieKonto no later than the last day of the month in which employment ends.5Business in Denmark. Guidelines – Payments and Reports to FerieKonto For hourly employees, the deadline depends on when the final salary period closes: if it ends on or before the 15th of the month, payment is due by the end of that same month; if it ends after the 16th, payment is due by the 15th of the following month.
If you left a job before December 31 and had earned holiday that went unused by the end of the holiday-taking period, you can apply for a payout through borger.dk. The deadline is September 30 of the year following the end of the holiday-taking period. Miss it and the money is gone. Any unemployment benefits or certain social benefits you received during a gap between jobs may be offset against the holiday allowance you’re claiming.
If a former employer never paid holiday allowance to FerieKonto at all, you file a written claim directly against the employer. You have five years from the end of the relevant holiday period before that claim expires.
Extra Weeks Beyond the Five
Many workers in Denmark get more than five weeks off, but the extra time doesn’t come from the Holiday Act. It comes from collective agreements or individual contracts, sometimes called the “sixth holiday week.” Government employees earn roughly 0.42 extra holiday days per month, about five extra days per year. Municipal and regional employees earn 18.50 extra holiday hours per month, equivalent to a full sixth week. Private-sector entitlements vary entirely by agreement.
Rules for these extra days differ from the statutory five weeks. In government positions, untaken extras are typically paid out in cash. In municipal and regional roles, they roll forward automatically unless the employee requests a payout by October 1 of the holiday year. In the private sector, unused extras often lapse if the contract or agreement is silent. The Act protects your first five weeks; anything above that lives or dies by whatever agreement covers your workplace.
Frozen Holiday Funds From the 2020 Transition
When Denmark switched from the old offset system to the concurrent model in 2020, holiday pay earned during the transition year (September 2019 to August 2020) was frozen rather than paid out. Those funds are held by Lønmodtagernes Feriemidler, which invests the money and credits returns until payout.6Life in Denmark. Frozen Holiday Funds – Lønmodtagernes Feriemidler
Standard payout happens automatically when you reach state pension age, with disbursement within six weeks unless you postpone it. Early payout is available if you leave the labor market permanently before pension age due to disability pension, senior pension, early retirement, or permanent relocation abroad (defined as an address outside Denmark for at least six months).6Life in Denmark. Frozen Holiday Funds – Lønmodtagernes Feriemidler If you worked in Denmark during that transition year and haven’t reached pension age, your frozen funds sit in the system accruing returns until one of those triggers applies.