Vacation days by country: paid time off and annual leave, ranked

By Skyler Bissell · Updated September 2026 · 71 countries · statutory minimums on a five-day week

Austria guarantees 25 paid vacation days a year by statute. The United States guarantees 0. Statutory paid vacation is the minimum number of paid days off a country's labour law promises a full-time employee each year, counted on this page on a five-day working week and before public holidays. The US is the only one of the 71 countries here with no federal minimum, so its row is 11 federal holidays and nothing else.

Every number below is computed from the statute behind it. Where a law counts six-day weeks (Norway) or calendar days (the UAE, Brazil), the figure is converted to the weekdays you would take off. Public holidays are counted twice: once as the law lists them, and once as the number that lands on a working day, because 45 of these countries never replace a holiday that falls on a weekend. The gap against the US is priced at a $150,000 salary, where one workday is worth about $577.

Paid vacation days by country, ranked

Each bar is one country's total paid days off a year: statutory vacation on the left, public holidays that land on a working day on the right. The dashed line is the US total of 11 days. 70 countries clear it. The lowest-ranked country with a vacation statute, Philippines, gives 14.4.

The full table: vacation days, public holidays and the US gap

Two holiday columns, and the difference between them is the point. Statutory holidays is what the law lists. Holidays you get is how many of those land on a working day once you account for whether the country moves a weekend holiday to a weekday. Sweden lists 13 and delivers 7.3. The United States delivers all 11. Totals, the vs-US column and the dollar column all use the second holiday figure.

Vacation days are the statutory minimum for a full-time employee in the first year of service, on a five-day week. The holidays-you-get column is derived: each country's statutory holiday list and substitute-day rule is run over the full 400-year calendar cycle and the landings inside the local working week are counted. Israel and the Gulf states are counted against their own working week. Dollar value uses salary divided by 260 workdays. Method and per-country sources: methodology.

How the count is built, and the six-day-week trap

Every row is on the same basis: the number of Monday-to-Friday days a first-year, full-time employee can take off with pay because the law says so. That sounds simple until you read the statutes, because they do not share a unit.

Norway's Ferieloven section 5 grants 25 virkedager, and the same section defines a virkedag as every day that is not a Sunday or a public holiday. Saturday counts. Twenty-five virkedager is four weeks and one day, which is 21 five-day weekdays, and that is the figure Norway carries here. The five weeks many Norwegians have come from collective agreements, and a statutory table cannot credit them. Sweden's Semesterlagen also says 25, and Sweden keeps all 25, because section 3a of that act states that Saturdays and Sundays are never semesterdagar. Two statutes, the same headline number, a four-day difference in what you get. Only the definitions section separates them.

Germany's Bundesurlaubsgesetz section 3 is the same shape: 24 Werktage, with Werktage defined as every calendar day that is not a Sunday or a public holiday, so the five-day-week floor is 20. Morocco's Code du travail article 231 accrues one and a half jours ouvrables a month, 18 a year, and a jour ouvrable excludes only the single weekly rest day, so Morocco carries 15. Then there are the calendar-day statutes. The UAE's Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 article 29 grants 30 calendar days, Brazil's CLT article 130 grants 30 dias corridos, and 30 calendar days taken as one block is four weeks and two days, which is 22 weekdays. Saudi Arabia's Labor Law article 109 grants 21 days, three calendar weeks, so 15; South Africa's Basic Conditions of Employment Act section 20 grants 21 consecutive days, so 15.

Where a conversion has any latitude the page takes the lower figure, so a country is never flattered by a rounding. The rule that produced these numbers, and the corrections it forced, is written up in the methodology.

Statutory minimum vs what contracts pay

This table is the legal floor, and in several countries the floor is well below the market. Germany is the clearest case. The Bundesurlaubsgesetz floor is 20 days, and the WSI Tarifarchiv reports that 30 days, six weeks, is the standard in German collective agreements, with only isolated sectors at 28. A Berlin engineering contract at 25 to 30 days is normal. The table still shows 20, because it compares what the law guarantees, and that has to hold in every row at once. Fill Germany with 30 and you would have to fill every other country with its market norm too, and for most of the 71 that number does not exist in any source you could check. The floor reaches a remote worker only on a local contract or through an employer of record, the routes set out in working remotely for a US company from Europe.

The United Kingdom runs the other way. GOV.UK states the statutory entitlement as 5.6 weeks, at least 28 days for someone working five days a week, and an employer may count the 8 bank holidays inside those 28. The UK row is therefore 20 vacation days plus 8 holidays, 28 in all, and the split matches the statute's own arithmetic. In the United States the floor is zero and the market is the whole story: the BLS found private-industry workers who had paid vacation received an average of 10 days after one year of service, 15 after five, 17 after ten and 20 after twenty (2017), so a mid-career American with a good employer lands near the EU floor and a new hire lands well under it.

Tenure ladders are common in law as well as in contracts, and this page takes the first rung. Japan's Labor Standards Act article 39 starts at 10 days after six months and reaches 20 after six and a half years. Singapore's Employment Act section 43 starts at 7 and reaches 14 in year eight. China's State Council Decree 514 starts at 5 days and only reaches 15 after twenty years of cumulative service. Mexico's Ley Federal del Trabajo article 76 doubled the first-year floor from 6 to 12 in 2023 and adds two days a year to 20. Saudi Arabia moves from 15 weekdays to 22 after five years with one employer. A reader with ten years of service in any of these should mentally add a rung.

Public holidays you get, and the ones the calendar takes back

18 of the 71 countries replace a public holiday that falls on a weekend with a weekday off, 8 replace one weekend day but not the other, and 45 replace neither. In the third group a fixed-date holiday lands on a working day about five years in seven, and in the other two it is simply gone. So the page derives a second figure for every country: the mean number of listed holidays that land inside the working week across the whole 400-year Gregorian cycle, with the substitute-day rule applied where one exists.

The largest gaps between the law's list and the working week: Lithuania lists 16 and delivers 9.6, Georgia lists 17 and delivers 11.3, Sweden lists 13 and delivers 7.3, Chile lists 16 and delivers 11 and Sri Lanka lists 18 and delivers 13.1. Lithuania is the worst case in the dataset because its Labour Code article 123 fixes Mother's Day to the first Sunday in May and Father's Day to the first Sunday in June, so with Easter Sunday three of its 16 holidays can never be a day off. Sweden is the largest loss by design: Midsummer Day and All Saints' Day are pinned to a Saturday by the statute itself, Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday are Sundays, and Sweden has no substitute-day rule, so 4 of its 13 are gone every single year. Finland pins juhannuspäivä and pyhäinpäivä to Saturdays the same way. Norway's 12 deliver 8.6 because Helligdagsloven contains no rescheduling mechanism at all.

The United States delivers all 11, and the reason matters for this comparison. Six of the eleven holidays in 5 U.S.C. 6103 are written as an nth Monday or Thursday, and subsection (b) moves a Saturday holiday to the Friday before and a Sunday holiday to the Monday after for federal employees, a rule private employers near-universally mirror. The one country in the table with no statutory vacation loses no holidays to the weekend, while Lithuania, Georgia and Sweden lose the most. Using the nominal count would have hidden that asymmetry in every dollar figure on this page. Israel's working week runs Sunday to Thursday, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt and Bangladesh keep a Friday-Saturday weekend, so those six are counted against their own week; the UAE moved to Saturday-Sunday in 2022 and takes the default.

Annual leave by region: the EU floor, the Gulf's calendar days, Asia's tenure ladders

European Union. Article 7 of Directive 2003/88/EC obliges every member state to guarantee paid annual leave of at least four weeks, and the minimum may not be paid out in cash except when the job ends. On a five-day week that is 20 days. Of the 22 EU countries in this table, 15 sit exactly on the floor; Austria (25), Denmark (25), Finland (25), France (25), Sweden (25), Portugal (22) and Spain (22) go above it in statute, with Austria, Denmark, Finland, France and Sweden at five weeks. The floor is also the ILO's: Convention 132 sets three working weeks as the minimum a ratifying state may choose, and the United States has never ratified it.

United Kingdom and Ireland. The UK's 28 days under the Working Time Regulations 1998 may absorb bank holidays, which puts it at 28 paid days off in total, +17 on the US. Ireland's Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 section 19 gives 20 days plus 10 public holidays with a substitute-day rule, 30 in all.

The Gulf. Every Gulf statute in the table is written in calendar days or weeks: the UAE's 30 days and Kuwait's 30 under Law 6 of 2010 article 70 both convert to 22, Qatar's three weeks under Law 14 of 2004 article 79 to 15, Saudi Arabia's 21 days to 15. Add the public holidays and Kuwait reaches 31.3, the UAE 30.6, Qatar 21.7. Most Gulf and Hijri-calendar holidays drift across the week, so each is worth five sevenths of a working day where nothing substitutes for it.

Asia-Pacific. Australia's National Employment Standards and New Zealand's Holidays Act both set four weeks, 20 days, and both replace weekend holidays, so they land at 28.7 and 32. Everywhere else in the region the statute is a tenure ladder and the first rung is short: Japan 10, South Korea 15, Vietnam 12, Hong Kong 7 under Employment Ordinance section 41AA, Taiwan 7, Singapore 7, Thailand 6, China 5 and the Philippines 5 days of service incentive leave. What lifts several of them up the table is the holiday count: Thailand's 19 public holidays with substitution deliver 19, Hong Kong's 17 deliver 16, so Thailand finishes at 25 paid days off with a six-day vacation floor.

Latin America. Brazil's 30 dias corridos give 22 weekdays and Brazil finishes at 31.7, ranked 14 of 71. Colombia's Código Sustantivo del Trabajo article 186 grants 15 días hábiles, counted on the contracted five-day week, and Chile's 15 días hábiles sit on the same basis. Mexico's reformed floor is 12, Argentina's 14 calendar days for the first five years are 10 weekdays. Chile then loses the most holidays of the five: 16 listed, 11 delivered, with no substitute-day rule.

Africa. Kenya's Employment Act 2007 section 28 grants 21 working days, 21 here and the highest floor among the African countries in this table. Ghana's Labour Act 2003 section 20 grants 15 working days; South Africa's 21 consecutive days and Egypt's 21 days under the 2025 Labour Law article 124 both convert to 15; Morocco's 18 jours ouvrables to 15. Nigeria's Labour Act section 18 grants six working days after twelve months, and Nigeria finishes at 15.1 paid days off, 69 of 71.

Canada. Two weeks after a year under section 184 of the Canada Labour Code and under the British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta and Quebec statutes, rising to three weeks at five years federally. Canada carries 10 days and 11 holidays with substitution, 21 in all, which puts it +10 on the US and below every EU member in the table.

The United States: PTO on a statutory floor of zero

The Department of Labor states the rule in one sentence: the Fair Labor Standards Act does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations or holidays, and these benefits are a matter of agreement between employer and employee. The 11 federal holidays in 5 U.S.C. 6103 bind federal agencies. A private employer may observe all of them, some, or none. No state requires paid vacation. Maine, Nevada and, from January 2024, Illinois require paid leave usable for any reason, capped at 40 hours a year under the Illinois Paid Leave for All Workers Act, which is five days and still under every statutory floor in the table except the American one.

What people receive is a contract term, and the BLS measures it. In March 2021, 79% of private-industry workers had access to paid vacation, so roughly one in five had none. Among those who did, the 2017 averages by tenure were 10, 15, 17 and 20 days at one, five, ten and twenty years. An unlimited-PTO policy changes none of this: it is an employer promise with no accrual and no payout on exit, which is why it stays out of a statutory table and why we compared it with a European contract separately in unlimited PTO vs European vacation. The federal leave people do have a right to, the 12 unpaid weeks of FMLA, is covered in is FMLA paid or unpaid.

So the US row is 0 vacation days, 11 holidays that all land on a workday, 11 in total, and it is the baseline for every other row. 70 of 71 countries clear it. It is the only country in the table without a vacation statute.

What a day off is worth

At a $150,000 salary one working day is worth about $577, and the last column of the table multiplies each country's gap by that figure. Germany's 17.3 extra days are worth about $9,981 a year, the UK's 17 about $9,808, Austria's 24.4 about $14,077. That is money you would have to be paid in cash in the US to match what the other statute hands you in time, and it is one line of the hidden paycheck, the part of a compensation package that never appears on the offer letter.

Two caveats keep the number honest. It prices statutory days, so a US offer with 20 contractual days closes most of the gap on paper, and a German offer with 30 widens it. And a day is worth your daily rate only if you would otherwise have worked it; the vacation-day valuation post walks through when that holds. Whether it is worth taking a lower salary for more of them is a separate question with its own post, is more vacation worth less salary. Paid leave around a birth is a different statute again and ranks differently: see parental leave by country. The Safety-Net Index folds vacation, leave, healthcare and childcare into one benchmark per country.

Where the numbers come from and when they change

Each vacation figure is transcribed from the country's leave statute, with the section cited, and each public-holiday list from the country's holiday law; every value has a source and a last-checked date in the dataset's audit trail, which the methodology page describes. The effective holiday count is derived by a script from a per-country rule list (fixed dates, Easter offsets, nth-weekday rules, days pinned to a Saturday or Sunday, drifting lunar-calendar days) and a test re-derives every figure on each build, so a hand-typed number cannot survive there.

Leave statutes move rarely and loudly. Mexico's 2023 reform and Egypt's 2025 Labour Law are the two most recent changes in this table, and both were re-transcribed when they took effect. Public holidays move more often, usually by one day when a government adds or drops one. The page is regenerated whenever a value changes, and the date at the top is the last build. If a figure looks wrong, the number you are looking at has a source you can check, and the correction process starts with that source.

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FAQ: vacation days, PTO and annual leave

Which country has the most paid vacation days?

Austria tops the table at 35.4 paid days off a year: 25 statutory vacation days plus 10.4 public holidays that land on a workday. On vacation days alone, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France and Sweden all guarantee 25 days, the highest statutory minimum in the dataset.

Does the US have mandatory paid vacation?

No. The Fair Labor Standards Act does not require payment for time not worked, so there is no federal minimum, and no state requires paid vacation either. Maine, Nevada and Illinois require up to 40 hours of paid leave usable for any reason. The BLS found that 79% of private-industry workers had access to paid vacation in March 2021, which leaves about one worker in five with none.

What is the EU minimum for paid annual leave?

Four weeks, under Article 7 of Directive 2003/88/EC, which is 20 days on a five-day week. 15 of the 22 EU countries in this table sit exactly at 20 days; Austria (25), Denmark (25), Finland (25), France (25), Sweden (25), Portugal (22) and Spain (22) go higher.

Is annual leave the same as vacation days?

Yes. Annual leave is the British and Commonwealth term and vacation days the North American one, and this page uses both for the same quantity: statutory paid days off that the employee chooses when to take. PTO is broader. It is a US employer's pooled bucket of paid days, and it often covers sick days too.

Do public holidays count as vacation days?

No. A public holiday is a day the whole country takes off on a date the law fixes; a vacation day is chosen by the employee. This table keeps them in separate columns and adds them for the total. The UK is the case to watch: its 28-day statutory entitlement may include the 8 bank holidays, which is why it appears here as 20 plus 8.

Why does Norway show 21 vacation days when its law says 25?

Because section 5 of Norway's Ferieloven grants 25 virkedager and defines a virkedag as any day that is not a Sunday or a public holiday, so Saturday counts. Twenty-five six-day-week days is four weeks and one day, which is 21 days on the five-day week this table uses. Sweden's 25 stays 25 because section 3a of Semesterlagen excludes Saturdays and Sundays from the count.

What is the difference between PTO and statutory leave?

Statutory leave is the floor a country's labour law sets, and an employer cannot go below it. PTO is an employer's own policy for paid days off. In the US that policy sits on a statutory floor of zero, so an unlimited-PTO plan guarantees nothing in law. This table shows statutory minimums only, which is why the US row is 0 vacation days plus 11 federal holidays.

How many countries give more paid days off than the United States?

70 of the 71 countries in this table. Philippines, the lowest-ranked country with a statutory minimum, still gives 14.4 paid days off a year against the US figure of 11.

Figures come from cityparity's per-city engine, computed from official sources with a per-value audit trail; currency conversions use rates from 2026-08-18 and drift daily. Treat any single number as a strong estimate and run your own. See the methodology.