UK Holiday Entitlement Calculator 2026

How Much Holiday Am I Entitled To in the UK?

Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, almost all workers in the UK are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday per year. For someone working 5 days a week, this equals 28 days. Part-time workers receive the same 5.6 weeks, calculated in proportion to the days they work. Your employer may offer more than the statutory minimum — always check your employment contract.

Holiday Entitlement by Working Pattern

Based on 5.6 weeks statutory minimum. Bank holidays may or may not be included depending on your contract.

What the 5.6 Weeks Actually Means

Almost every UK worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. The figure is expressed in weeks rather than days deliberately, because that is what makes it work for every pattern: your entitlement is 5.6 × the number of days you normally work per week. Five days a week gives 28 days; three days a week gives 16.8 days — the same amount of time off, measured in your own working weeks.

The statutory maximum is capped at 28 days, so working six days a week does not push entitlement beyond that. Anything above 28 days is contractual generosity rather than a legal requirement.

The most common misunderstanding concerns bank holidays. There are eight in England and Wales, and an employer may count them within the 5.6 weeks — which is exactly why so many contracts read "20 days plus bank holidays". That is the statutory minimum expressed differently, not a benefit above it. Neither is there any automatic right to take a bank holiday off or to be paid extra for working it; that depends entirely on your contract.

Irregular Hours, Part Years and Carrying Over

Entitlement builds up from your first day of employment, not after a probation period. In a first year an employer may operate an accrual system, under which you build roughly one twelfth of the annual entitlement each month. Leave in your final year is pro-rated to your leaving date, and anything untaken must be paid out — a payment treated as ordinary earnings and taxed normally.

For irregular-hours and part-year workers, entitlement now accrues at 12.07% of hours worked in each pay period. That percentage is not arbitrary: 5.6 weeks of holiday divided by the 46.4 working weeks that remain in a year is 12.07%. Employers may also use rolled-up holiday pay for these workers, paying the 12.07% uplift alongside each payslip rather than when leave is taken — legal for this group, but it must be itemised separately.

The basic four weeks derived from EU law generally cannot be carried into the next leave year, though the additional 1.6 weeks may be by agreement. The important exception is that workers unable to take leave through long-term sickness or family leave can carry it forward, and holiday continues to accrue throughout sick leave and maternity leave.

Holiday Pay Should Reflect Normal Pay

Being paid for leave is not the same as being paid your basic rate. Case law has established that holiday pay must reflect normal remuneration, so for the basic four weeks it should include regular overtime, commission and shift premiums — not just contractual base pay. Someone whose income depends heavily on commission or regular overtime may be receiving less holiday pay than they are entitled to.

Where pay varies, the reference period for calculating a week's pay is the previous 52 paid weeks, ignoring any week in which no pay was received and going back up to 104 weeks to find them. One rule has no exceptions worth noting: statutory holiday cannot be "bought out" while you are still employed. An employer may pay for contractual leave above the statutory minimum, but the 5.6 weeks must actually be taken as time off — the entitlement exists for rest, not as an alternative wage.

Frequently Asked Questions