Employment Law2026-10-16

Does my remaining annual leave expire on 31 December — or can I still claim old holiday days?

Annual leave does not automatically lapse at the turn of the year: without a timely, specific notice from your employer, your remaining leave stays intact — sometimes for years. Here is how to check whether you still have a claim.

Every autumn, the same email lands in many employees’ inboxes from HR: “Please take your remaining leave by 31 December, otherwise it will be forfeited.” Anyone still sitting on ten, fifteen or more untaken days starts to worry. Usually there is no need: leave lapses automatically far less often than employers make out.

In short

Your leave only expires on 31 December if your employer told you about it beforehand. That notice has to be specific and timely. It has to tell you how many days you still have left. And it has to make clear that those days will otherwise be lost. If that notice was missing, or too general, your leave entitlement stays in place — beyond the turn of the year, and in some cases across several years. The ordinary limitation period only starts to run once a proper notice is eventually given.

How I can help

Checking whether your employer has genuinely met its duty to notify you and to enable you to take your leave
Working out how many days of leave, from which years, are still outstanding
Pursuing the claim out of court against your employer, or bringing a claim before the labour court
On dismissal or a termination agreement: securing payment in lieu for untaken days

The legal framework: three dates, three different meanings

Under section 7(3) of the Federal Leave Act (Bundesurlaubsgesetz, BUrlG), leave must in principle be granted and taken within the current calendar year. Carrying it over into the following year is only permitted where urgent operational reasons, or reasons relating to you personally, justify it — such as a heavy workload at year-end or an illness. Carried-over leave must then be taken by 31 March of the following year.

Three dates you should keep apart:

31 December: the regular cut-off for the leave year — but forfeiture only applies if the employer has met its duty to notify you.
31 March: the end of the carry-over period for leave that was transferred into the following year for urgent reasons.
15 months after the end of the leave year: a special deadline where you have been continuously ill, with the illness persisting to the end of the year (more on this below).

Your employer’s duty to notify you and enable your leave

The real answer to your question lies not in the wording of the statute but in how it is interpreted. Leave is not meant to lapse automatically where you had no genuine opportunity to take it. A settled legal position has developed from this. Under it, your employer must take the initiative before leave can be forfeited on 31 December:

It must inform you individually and specifically. A general round-robin email to the entire workforce is not usually enough if it does not state your own personal number of remaining days.
It must tell you exactly how many days you still have.
It must expressly warn you that those days will be forfeited. This applies if you do not take them by the cut-off.
The notice must come early enough for you realistically still to request and take the leave. A notice on 28 December will, as a rule, not suffice.

If any one of these points is missing, the leave does not expire on 31 December. Your entitlement continues. It is not subject to the tight 31 March deadline, which applies only to leave that was expressly carried over.

Where no notice was given: limitation, not forfeiture

Without an effective notice, your leave does not lapse automatically. Instead it is subject to the ordinary limitation period under sections 195 and 199 of the Civil Code (BGB): three years. That period begins at the end of the year in which the claim arose and in which you were aware of the relevant circumstances. There is one important twist here: the limitation period for a particular year’s leave only starts to run once your employer has, after the event, properly given the notice for that leave. If it never gives that notice, limitation effectively never starts for that leave. In that case you can, in theory, still claim it going back years — up until the employer eventually gives a proper notice.

In practice this means: if you have been carrying remaining leave forward for years and have never received a specific, personalised forfeiture warning, it is worth looking back. This is not just about the current year.

The special case of long-term illness

If you are continuously unfit for work through illness beyond the end of the leave year, you genuinely could not take your leave. This applies regardless of whether the employer warned you. A separate deadline applies in this situation: the leave lapses at the latest 15 months after the end of the leave year in which it arose. For leave accrued in 2025, that deadline would therefore end on 31 March 2027. This 15-month limit applies independently of the duty to notify. It operates because your illness meant you had no opportunity to take the leave.

What about contractual additional leave?

The strict duty to notify, and the resulting continuation of leave, apply first and foremost to the statutory minimum leave (24 working days on a six-day week, usually 20 working days on a five-day week). For any contractual or collectively agreed leave on top of that, your employment contract or collective agreement may provide for different, stricter forfeiture rules. So always check your contract too, before assuming that a single set of rules governs all of your annual leave.

A practical example

Under her contract, an employee has 30 days of leave a year but, by the end of November, has taken only 18. In November the whole workforce receives a round-robin email from HR: “Please note that remaining leave is forfeited at year-end.” Her own personal number of remaining days is not stated. The email is not addressed to her personally. On 1 January, HR writes off the twelve outstanding days in the system as forfeited. On the legal position set out above, that is not automatically correct. The round-robin email is unlikely to qualify as an individual, specific notice, so the twelve days may well continue to exist.

Common mistakes

Employees accept the forfeiture because “it has always been done that way”. They do not check whether an effective notice was ever given.
A company-wide round-robin email with no personal day count is accepted as a sufficient notice.
On dismissal or a termination agreement, payment in lieu for remaining leave is never even claimed.
Only the current year is checked. Yet earlier years may also still be outstanding where no proper notice was ever given.
Leave not taken because of illness is treated as expiring at year-end, even though the 15-month deadline applies here.

Your next step

Your employer may tell you that your remaining leave is being forfeited. Check this before the turn of the year. What matters is whether the notice was effective at all. And clarify whether, alongside this, you still have claims from earlier years. I will look over your documents, recalculate your actual remaining leave, and enforce it against your employer. In employment law, that usually begins with a short initial consultation.

Frequently asked questions

Is a general email to the whole workforce enough as a notice?

As a rule, no. The notice has to state your own personal number of remaining leave days and be addressed to you individually. A blanket round-robin email without those details typically does not satisfy the duty to notify.

Does the duty to notify also apply to leave that has already been carried over into the following year?

Yes. For carried-over leave too, the employer must give a specific notice in good time before 31 March, warning that this leave will otherwise be forfeited. If it fails to do so, the same applies as for ordinary annual leave.

What happens to my remaining leave if I resign or am dismissed?

If the leave can no longer be taken because the employment relationship is ending, it must be paid out in money under section 7(4) BUrlG. This applies regardless of the duty to notify and must be expressly claimed as part of winding things up.

Does my contractual additional leave also expire automatically at year-end?

That depends on your employment contract or collective agreement. The strict duty to notify applies to the statutory minimum leave; for additional leave on top of that, different — and even stricter — rules may have been agreed.

How far back can I still claim leave from earlier years?

In theory over several years, as long as your employer never gave the specific notice for the relevant year’s leave. Only after that does the three-year limitation period begin to run. In practice, though, you should have this checked promptly, as the evidence becomes harder to establish as the years go by.

This article provides general information and is no substitute for legal advice in an individual case. Last updated: 2026-10-16.

This article was written by Christian Czirnich, a German Rechtsanwalt (lawyer) since 1994, Kirchseeon (district of Ebersberg). He advises employees, executives and small businesses in employment law, with clients from the district of Ebersberg, east Munich and the Rosenheim area, in English or German and by video on request.

Christian Czirnich, Rechtsanwalt (attorney at law), Kirchseeon near Munich

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