Key takeaways
- 30 calendar days, not 30 working days. Weekends inside your leave are leave. So are public holidays — the government portal states that holidays falling within annual leave count as part of it, unless your contract is more generous.
- Between six months and one year of service you accrue 2 days per month. Below six months there is no statutory entitlement, though a contract may give one.
- You may carry forward no more than half your annual leave. Not the whole balance — half.
- Cash in lieu is paid at two different rates, and almost every guide gets this wrong. Carried-forward leave converted to cash is paid at the wage you earn when the leave falls due. Leave paid out when your service ends is paid at basic salary. Those are different numbers.
- Your employer sets the dates, not you — but must give you at least one month’s notice, and cannot block your accrued leave for more than two consecutive years.
Annual leave looks like the simplest entitlement in UAE employment law. It is not. It is the one that produces the most end-of-service disputes, because four separate things — how days are counted, how much can be carried, which wage applies to a payout, and who controls the calendar — are each governed by a different rule, and most people know none of them precisely.
This guide sets out all four from the published instruments: Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 on the Regulation of Employment Relationships, its Executive Regulations under Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022, and the Official Portal of the UAE Government.
The entitlement, exactly as published
| Length of service | Annual leave entitlement |
|---|---|
| One year or more | 30 days, fully paid |
| More than six months, less than one year | 2 days for each month of service |
| Less than six months | No statutory entitlement |
| Part of a final year | Leave for the fraction of the last year worked |
| Part-time employees | Pro-rated to actual working hours as specified in the contract, per the Implementing Regulations |
Two things in that table are routinely misread.
The six-month threshold is a cliff, not a slope. At five months and twenty-nine days there is no statutory annual leave. At six months and one day you are accruing two days per month. Nothing accrues retroactively for the first six months under the statute — though a contract or company policy may be more generous, and many are.
The final-year fraction is an entitlement, not a courtesy. If you leave in month seven of a year, you are entitled to leave for that fraction. It does not vanish because you did not complete the year.
Thirty calendar days, not thirty working days
This is the single most common misunderstanding, and it is worth doing the arithmetic because the gap is large.
The law grants 30 days. It does not say 30 working days. Weekends inside your leave period are consumed by it.
| What people assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| 30 working days off | 30 calendar days off |
| Roughly six working weeks | Roughly four and a bit weeks in total |
| Weekends are free | Weekends inside the leave are part of the 30 |
| Public holidays extend the leave | They are counted as part of it |
On a standard Monday-to-Friday pattern, thirty calendar days of leave contains roughly eight or nine weekend days. So the entitlement that sounds like six weeks away from work delivers about twenty-one or twenty-two working days of actual absence.
It changes the value of your balance on termination.
If you believe you are owed “30 working days” and your employer calculates 30 calendar days, you will think you have been short-changed by roughly a third when in fact the calculation is correct.
Conversely, if your contract genuinely says working days — and some do, particularly in senior or free zone contracts — then that is more favourable than the statute and it is what governs. Read the wording on your own contract before assuming either way. The law is a floor, not a ceiling.
Public holidays that fall inside your leave
The government portal is explicit: public holidays or agreed leave days falling within the annual leave period are considered part of the annual leave, unless the employment contract or company policies provide more favourable terms.
So booking your leave across Eid does not buy you extra days. Those holiday days are absorbed into the 30.
Two related rules are worth knowing, because they change how you plan:
- Under Article 3 of Cabinet Resolution No. 27 of 2024 on public holidays, a public holiday is not transferred to another day if it coincides with another public holiday or falls on a weekend. There is no “day in lieu” for a holiday landing on your rest day.
- Islamic holiday dates depend on moon sighting and are announced by MoHRE for the private sector, sometimes only days ahead. Eid holidays are frequently announced as a range spanning several days.
Because holidays inside leave are absorbed, and because holidays are not moved when they fall on a weekend, the cheapest leave you can take is leave immediately before or after a public holiday, not across it.
Booking two weeks that happen to contain a four-day Eid costs you fourteen days of balance and returns roughly the same time off as booking ten days either side of it. The difference over a career is substantial, and it costs nothing to plan for.
Carrying leave forward: the half rule
Here the statute and the government portal say slightly different things, and the difference matters enough to set out both.
Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 provides that the worker may carry forward into the following year what does not exceed half of the annual leave, or agree with the employer to receive its equivalent in cash.
On a 30-day entitlement, that is a ceiling of 15 days carried into the next year.
The Official Portal describes the same mechanism in terms of employer consent: the employee may, with the consent of the employer and in accordance with company regulations, carry over unused annual leave or part of it to the following year.
| Question | Position |
|---|---|
| How much can carry over? | No more than half the annual leave — 15 days on a 30-day entitlement |
| Is it automatic? | No. It requires employer consent and follows company regulations |
| Can I carry over two years in a row? | The employer cannot prevent you taking accrued leave for more than two consecutive years |
| What happens to the other half? | Take it, or agree cash for it. Left alone, it is at risk |
If you finish a year with 30 days untouched, only 15 of them are carryable. The other 15 need to be taken or converted by agreement.
Employees who “save up” leave across several years on the assumption it all banks are frequently wrong, and discover it at the point they try to encash it. If you are carrying a large balance, get it confirmed in writing now — what the company recognises, and at what rate — rather than at the end.
The two rates for cash in lieu — the detail everyone gets wrong
This is the most valuable section on this page, and it is almost universally misstated.
There are two different situations in which leave becomes money, and the law applies a different wage measure to each.
| Carried-forward leave converted to cash | Leave balance paid on termination | |
|---|---|---|
| When | During employment, by agreement | When service ends |
| Rate in the Decree-Law | “the wage he earns at the time the leave is due” | “in accordance with his basic salary” |
| Practical effect | The broader wage figure | The narrower basic figure |
| Who it favours | The employee | Depends entirely on your pay structure |
Why the difference is large: UAE salary packages are typically split into a basic component plus allowances — housing, transport, and others. In many contracts the basic is a minority of the total. A payout calculated on basic can therefore be a fraction of one calculated on the full wage.
The Official Portal’s summary of annual leave describes payment for carried-over unused days as calculated on the basis of basic salary. The Decree-Law’s own wording for carry-forward cash refers to the wage earned at the time the leave is due.
We are flagging that openly rather than picking whichever suits an argument. Where a portal summary and the decree text differ, the decree is the instrument — but a summary published by the government is not nothing, and an employer following it is not acting unreasonably.
Practically: if a material sum turns on which measure applies to your carried-over days, that is a question to put in writing to your employer, and if it is not resolved, to MoHRE. Do not assume either reading is automatically correct for your contract.
What this means when you resign
On termination the position is clearer. The Decree-Law provides that where service is terminated, the worker is entitled to a cash equivalent of the balance of annual leave due in accordance with basic salary. The Official Portal states the same: payment for any unused annual leave, regardless of its duration, plus payment for leave accrued for part of the year, calculated on basic salary.
Two points follow:
- “Regardless of its duration” is important. There is no minimum balance below which leave pay is forfeited. Three days owed is three days payable.
- The part-year fraction is included. If you leave seven months into a year, the accrued fraction of that year’s leave is payable on top of any carried balance.
Annual leave pay is a separate entitlement from end-of-service gratuity, and the two are calculated differently. Our guide to end of service gratuity in the UAE covers that calculation; do not let the two be merged into one lump on a final settlement without a breakdown.
Who decides when you take it
Not you, in the first instance — and this surprises people.
| Rule | Published position |
|---|---|
| Employer sets the dates | According to work requirements, in agreement with the employee |
| Rotation | The employer may grant leave in rotation among employees to ensure business continuity |
| Notice to the employee | At least one month in advance of the leave dates |
| Use it in the year it is due | Employees must use their leave in the year it falls due |
| The two-year backstop | The employer may not prevent an employee using accrued leave for more than two consecutive years |
The one-month notice cuts both ways and is frequently forgotten by employers. A company that tells staff on Thursday that the office closes for two weeks from Sunday, and books it against annual leave, has not met the published requirement.
The two-year backstop is the employee’s real protection. An employer may reasonably defer leave for operational reasons in a busy quarter. It cannot do so indefinitely. Once refusals span more than two consecutive years, the position is no longer a scheduling decision.
How annual leave interacts with every other leave type
Annual leave does not sit alone. Understanding where it stops and another entitlement starts prevents the commonest payroll arguments.
| Leave type | Published entitlement | Interaction with annual leave |
|---|---|---|
| Sick leave | Up to 90 days per year, continuous or intermittent, after probation ends | Separate. Sick days are not annual leave days |
| Maternity leave | Statutory entitlement, with additional fully-paid days where the baby is sick or has a disability, extendable unpaid | Separate, and annual leave continues to accrue |
| Parental leave | 5 working days, paid, for either parent, from birth up to six months | Separate. The UAE was the first Arab country to grant this in the private sector |
| Bereavement leave | 5 days for a spouse; 3 days for a parent, child, sibling, grandchild or grandparent | Separate, and paid |
| Study leave | 10 working days per year for examinations, after two years’ service, at an accredited UAE institution | Separate |
| Hajj leave | Available under the law | Separate |
| Public holidays | Per Cabinet Resolution | Absorbed if they fall inside annual leave |
Note the pattern: every other leave type is separate from annual leave, and only public holidays are absorbed by it. That single sentence resolves most of the disputes we see.
The commonest grey area. If you are hospitalised in week two of a three-week holiday, are those sick days or leave days?
Sick leave under Article 31 requires you to notify your employer within a maximum of three days and to submit a medical report issued by the medical entity. Those obligations do not pause because you are on holiday.
So the practical answer is procedural: notify within three days and obtain the medical report, and you have preserved the argument that those days should be treated as sick leave. Say nothing until you return and you have almost certainly lost it, because the evidence and the notification window have both gone.
Whether the reclassification is granted may still depend on your employer and, if disputed, on MoHRE. But the three-day notification is the step that keeps the door open, and it costs one message.
Part-time, flexible and non-standard work models
The Executive Regulations under Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022 introduced work models beyond the traditional full-time arrangement, and annual leave follows the model.
The Official Portal states that part-time employees are entitled to annual leave according to the actual working hours they spend at work, as specified in the employment contract and in accordance with the Implementing Regulations.
Practically, that means:
- The contract carries the calculation. For part-time and flexible models, the leave formula should be written into the contract. If it is not, that is a gap to close before it becomes a dispute.
- The pro-rating is by hours, not by headcount. Someone working three days a week does not simply get three-fifths of thirty days by assumption — the entitlement is tied to actual working hours as contracted.
- The other rules still apply. Carry-forward limits, the two-year backstop and the termination payout all operate the same way; only the size of the entitlement changes.
If you are on a part-time or flexible permit, the model recorded on your permit and the model in your contract should match. Our guide to UAE work permit types sets out which permits correspond to which working model.
Worked examples
The arithmetic, on real situations.
1. Eight months of service, then resignation
Service is over six months but under a year, so the entitlement is 2 days per month.
Eight months × 2 = 16 days accrued. If none were taken, 16 days are payable on termination at basic salary. If six were taken, 10 days are payable.
2. Three full years, 40 days untaken, resignation
The employee believes 90 days accrued and 40 remain. The employer’s position will depend on what was formally carried.
The carry-forward ceiling is half the annual leave — 15 days per year. A balance of 40 days claimed across three years exceeds what the statute permits to be carried, unless the excess was converted or the company’s own regulations were more generous.
This is the scenario that most often ends at MoHRE, and it is why the written confirmation described earlier matters so much. The time to establish the recognised balance is annually, not at exit.
3. Fourteen days booked across Eid
Four of those days are a public holiday.
All fourteen come off the annual leave balance, because holidays inside leave are absorbed. Booking five days before the Eid break and five after would have delivered comparable time away for ten days of balance instead of fourteen.
4. Employer announces a two-week shutdown with ten days’ notice
The employer may set leave dates according to work requirements. But it must notify the employee of the leave dates at least one month in advance.
Ten days’ notice does not meet that. The reasonable response is to raise it in writing, referencing the notice requirement, before the shutdown rather than after.
5. Leave refused for three consecutive years
An employer may not prevent an employee from using accrued annual leave for more than two consecutive years.
At three years of refusals the employer is outside the published position, and the employee has a clear point to make — in writing first, and through a MoHRE labour complaint if it is not resolved.
6. Resignation submitted while on annual leave
Notice and leave are separate concepts, and running one inside the other is a frequent source of argument.
The safest position for the employee is to serve notice in writing with a clear effective date, and to establish explicitly whether the employer treats the remaining leave as part of the notice period or in addition to it. Our guide to notice periods under UAE labour law covers what notice you owe and are owed; the interaction with a leave balance should be agreed in writing rather than assumed by either side.
Your first year, month by month
The first twelve months confuse almost everybody, because the rule changes twice. Here it is laid out.
| Service completed | Statutory accrual | Running entitlement |
|---|---|---|
| Months 1–6 | None under the statute | 0 days |
| Month 7 | 2 days per month begins | 14 days |
| Month 8 | +2 | 16 days |
| Month 9 | +2 | 18 days |
| Month 10 | +2 | 20 days |
| Month 11 | +2 | 22 days |
| Month 12 | +2 | 24 days |
| One full year completed | Entitlement becomes 30 days | 30 days |
The two-days-per-month figure applies to each month of service, not only to months after the sixth. So at seven months the calculation is 7 × 2 = 14 days, not 1 × 2.
What the six-month mark does is switch the entitlement on. Before it, the statute grants nothing; after it, the whole period counts at two days a month.
That is why leaving at five months and leaving at seven months are very different financially, and why the difference is far larger than two months of accrual suggests.
Note also that many employers operate a more generous policy — commonly accruing 2.5 days per month from day one, which reaches 30 over twelve months. That is above the statutory floor and entirely permissible. Check which model your employer runs, because it changes your position materially in the first year.
What your leave balance is actually worth
Leave is deferred pay. Treating it as an abstraction is how people end up surrendering real money at exit.
To value a balance you need two numbers: the days owed, and the daily rate under whichever wage measure applies.
| Step | How |
|---|---|
| 1. Establish days owed | Accrued, less taken, subject to the carry-forward ceiling |
| 2. Identify the wage measure | Basic salary on termination; the wage at the time due for carry-forward encashment |
| 3. Derive the daily rate | The applicable monthly figure divided across the month |
| 4. Multiply | Days × daily rate |
| 5. Check it separately | Leave pay should appear as its own line, not folded into gratuity |
The reason step two matters so much: in a package where basic is, say, half the total, a 20-day balance valued on basic is worth roughly half what the same balance would be worth valued on the full wage. Nothing about the number of days changed — only the measure applied to them.
A final settlement should show, separately: outstanding salary, annual leave pay, end-of-service gratuity, and any notice pay.
A single figure labelled “final settlement” is not a calculation, it is a conclusion — and you cannot check a conclusion. Ask for the breakdown before you sign anything, and ask which wage measure was applied to the leave line.
Signing a receipt for a lump sum you have not verified makes a later challenge considerably harder.
Categories with their own rules
Not everyone working in the UAE sits under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, and applying it to someone outside its scope produces confident wrong answers.
Domestic workers
Domestic workers are governed by a separate instrument — Federal Decree-Law No. 9 of 2022 on Domestic Workers, as amended. It is administered by MoHRE but its entitlements are its own.
Some published provisions under that regime:
- Rest of at least 12 hours per day, of which at least 8 are consecutive.
- Where the worker is required to work on a rest day, they must be granted an alternate day off or cash in lieu.
- Sick leave not exceeding 30 days in each contractual year.
- Monthly wage payable in UAE dirhams within 10 days of its due date.
If you are employing or working as a domestic worker, take the entitlements from that law and not from this page. The service routes differ too — several MoHRE domestic worker services run through their own channel, and in Dubai through GDRFA systems.
Government sector
Federal government employees fall under separate human resources legislation, with its own leave schedule. This guide addresses the private sector.
DIFC and ADGM
As set out earlier, these financial free zones operate their own employment laws and their own dispute forums.
Three checks, in order:
Your work permit. Who issued it — MoHRE, a free zone authority, or a government entity?
Your contract. Which law does it name? Most contracts state the governing legislation explicitly.
Your employer’s registration. Mainland, ordinary free zone, DIFC, ADGM or government.
Those three will agree in the overwhelming majority of cases. Where they do not, that inconsistency is itself worth resolving — it tends to surface later in exactly the situation where you need clarity.
The short version, if you read nothing else
- 30 calendar days after one year; 2 days a month between six months and a year; nothing statutory before six months.
- Weekends and public holidays inside your leave are consumed by it.
- Half is the carry-forward ceiling, and it needs agreement.
- Two wage measures: the wage at the time due for carry-forward encashment, basic salary on termination.
- Your employer sets the dates with a month’s notice, and cannot block accrued leave beyond two consecutive years.
- Get your balance confirmed in writing once a year. It is the single habit that prevents nearly every dispute on this page.
Annual leave and your visa status — the angle nobody covers
Leave is an employment entitlement, but taking it usually means leaving the country, and that touches a completely separate body of rules. This is where a PRO sees problems that an HR guide never mentions.
| Situation | What to watch |
|---|---|
| Long leave abroad | A UAE residence visa is automatically nullified after more than six continuous months outside the country |
| Unpaid leave extending a trip | Weeks of unpaid leave added to annual leave is how people cross the 180-day line without noticing |
| Residence expiring while you are away | Renewal generally needs you present. Check the expiry before you book |
| Emirates ID expiring while away | Its own meter runs at AED 20 a day, capped at AED 1,000 |
| Family travelling with you | Dependants’ residences are sponsored by yours and carry the same six-month exposure |
Thirty days of annual leave will never breach the six-month rule on its own. Annual leave plus unpaid leave plus a family emergency can, and does.
Somebody takes their thirty days, a parent falls ill, they agree two months unpaid with their employer, then a third. At around day 181 the residence is nullified — not by anything their employer did, and not by any fine, but by an immigration rule running quietly in the background while the employment side was perfectly in order.
If a trip is extending beyond a couple of months, put a reminder at day 150. A short return flight resets the count and costs a fraction of the alternative. Where the line has already been crossed, our guide to the UAE re-entry permit after six months sets out the published route back — including the fact that it does not apply to Dubai-issued residences.
Practical sequencing before long leave
- Check four expiry dates before booking: your residence, your Emirates ID, your passport, and each dependant’s residence.
- Confirm your leave in writing, with dates, so the absence is documented as authorised.
- Count the days out, including any unpaid extension you are contemplating.
- Tell your employer if the trip may extend — an establishment can act on your file while you are abroad, but not if it does not know.
- Run the free fines enquiry before you fly, so nothing surfaces at the border.
None of this is annual leave law. All of it is what actually goes wrong when annual leave is taken badly, and it is the reason a leave conversation and a visa conversation should not be held separately.
Tracking your own balance — and evidencing it
Almost every annual leave dispute is an evidence problem rather than a legal one. Both sides believe a different number and neither can prove it.
What to record, from day one
| Record | Why it decides a dispute |
|---|---|
| Your start date | Everything accrues from it. Take it from the contract, not memory |
| Your contractual entitlement | 30 days is the statutory floor. Your contract may give more, or specify working days |
| Every leave request and approval | Dated, in writing. Email or the HR system, not a verbal nod |
| Exact dates taken | Including whether weekends and holidays fell inside |
| Annual balance confirmation | Ask for it in writing once a year. This is the single highest-value habit here |
| Any carry-forward agreement | How many days, at what rate, agreed by whom |
| Your basic salary and total wage | The two figures that decide what a payout is worth |
Once a year, send this: “Could you confirm my annual leave balance as at [date], and how many days are being carried forward?”
An employer confirming 12 days in January cannot credibly argue for 4 at your exit interview eighteen months later. A written confirmation converts an argument about memory into a document, and documents are what MoHRE reads.
It takes thirty seconds and it is worth more than everything else on this page.
Reconstructing a balance you never tracked
If you are already at the end and have no records, work in this order:
- Establish the start date from the contract or the work permit.
- Count completed years, then the fraction of the final year.
- Pull every approval you can find — emails, HR system exports, messages.
- Count actual dates taken, in calendar days, including weekends inside each period.
- Check payslips for any leave already encashed.
- Apply the carry-forward ceiling honestly — a claim above half per year needs an agreement behind it.
Arrive at a number you can defend line by line. A precise figure with workings behind it is treated very differently from a round number asserted at the end.
Where employers get it wrong
| Error | The published position |
|---|---|
| Announcing a shutdown with a week’s notice | At least one month‘s notice of leave dates |
| Refusing leave indefinitely because it is “always busy” | Cannot prevent use of accrued leave for more than two consecutive years |
| Treating a short balance as not worth paying | Payable regardless of its duration |
| Ignoring the final-year fraction | Leave for the fraction of the last year is payable |
| Wiping balances at year end without agreement | Half is carryable; the rest should be taken or converted by agreement |
| Merging leave pay into gratuity on the settlement | They are separate entitlements calculated differently |
| Counting sick days as annual leave | Sick leave is a separate entitlement of up to 90 days per year |
Where employees get it wrong
| Assumption | Reality |
|---|---|
| “30 working days” | 30 calendar days, unless the contract says otherwise |
| “Eid extends my holiday” | Holidays inside leave are absorbed by it |
| “I can bank it all for years” | Carry-forward is capped at half the annual entitlement |
| “I choose my dates” | The employer sets them per work requirements, with a month’s notice |
| “I’ll sort the balance when I leave” | That is precisely when it becomes contested and hardest to prove |
| “Payout is on my full salary” | On termination the Decree-Law refers to basic salary |
| “I get leave from day one” | Statutory accrual begins after six months |
| “I’ll tell them I was sick when I get back” | Sick leave requires notification within three days and a medical report |
Free zones, DIFC and ADGM
An important scoping note, because a great deal of confusion comes from applying the wrong rulebook.
Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 governs the private sector, and mainland and most free zone employees fall under it. But the DIFC and ADGM are financial free zones with their own employment legislation, and their annual leave provisions are set by their own regimes rather than by the federal law.
So before applying anything on this page:
- Check which regime your employment sits under. Your contract and your work permit will tell you.
- Mainland or ordinary free zone — the federal position on this page applies, and MoHRE is the authority.
- DIFC or ADGM — the relevant free zone employment law applies, and disputes go through that zone’s own tribunal rather than MoHRE.
Where a free zone applies the federal law, its own authority may still add procedural requirements on top. The entitlement floor does not change; the process around it can.
If it becomes a dispute
Annual leave claims are a routine part of what MoHRE handles, and the process costs nothing to start.
The sequence that works:
- Put the number in writing first, with your workings, and ask for a written response. A surprising proportion resolve here.
- Keep it factual. Dates, approvals, the entitlement, the calculation. Not the relationship.
- If unresolved, lodge with MoHRE. The worker-side complaint route is free — our guide on filing a labour complaint with MoHRE sets out the process.
- Do not simply stop attending. Whatever the provocation, absence creates a separate and much larger problem — see the types of ban and who lifts each one.
MoHRE also operates a Labour Claims and Advisory Call Centre on the toll-free number 80084, which workers can use directly.
For employers: getting the policy right
Most leave disputes are created by a policy gap, not by bad faith. Six things a compliant policy settles in advance.
| Policy point | What it should say |
|---|---|
| Calendar or working days | State it explicitly. The statutory floor is 30 days; if you grant working days, say so, because it is more generous and you should get credit for it |
| Carry-forward | How much, requiring whose approval, by when. The statutory ceiling is half |
| Encashment | Whether it is offered during employment, and at what wage measure |
| Notice of leave dates | Your process must be capable of giving one month’s notice |
| Rotation | How competing requests are decided, so refusals look like a system rather than a preference |
| Annual confirmation | Issue every employee a written balance once a year. This is the cheapest dispute-prevention available |
Counter-intuitively, it is the annual written balance.
An employer who confirms each employee’s balance every January has a documented record at every exit. An employer who does not is arguing from a spreadsheet nobody signed, against an employee’s recollection, in front of a ministry officer who will reasonably prefer contemporaneous evidence.
It costs an hour of admin a year and it removes the single largest category of end-of-service argument.
The shutdown question
Many companies close for a period each year and book it against annual leave. That is permissible — the employer may set leave dates according to work requirements and may grant leave in rotation.
Two conditions make it defensible:
- One month’s notice of the dates. Publish the shutdown calendar at the start of the year and the requirement is met comfortably.
- Enough balance to cover it. A new joiner with four months’ service has no statutory accrual to consume. Forcing unpaid absence on them is a different act with different consequences, and it should be handled explicitly rather than assumed.
A note on where these rules come from
Everything on this page traces to three published instruments, and you can read all of them yourself.
| Instrument | What it governs here |
|---|---|
| Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, on the Regulation of Employment Relationships | The entitlement, the carry-forward ceiling, and the two wage measures for cash in lieu |
| Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022 — the Executive Regulations | Work models, and the pro-rating of leave for part-time and flexible arrangements |
| Cabinet Resolution No. 27 of 2024, on public holidays | That holidays are not transferred when they coincide with a weekend or another holiday |
| The Official Portal of the UAE Government | The government’s own plain-language summary of all of the above |
MoHRE publishes the Decree-Law and its amendments as a downloadable PDF, and the Official Portal maintains the summaries. Where this page and those sources ever disagree, they are right and we are out of date — and we would rather hear about it than have you rely on a stale figure.
What we will and will not do
We will work out your actual accrued balance from your start date, contract and approvals rather than from an assumption; tell you plainly which wage measure applies to your situation and why; put a written position to your employer that references the published provisions; take it to MoHRE where it is not resolved; and help employers write a leave policy that will not generate disputes in the first place.
We will not tell you a claim is strong when the carry-forward ceiling says otherwise; assert that a payout is due on full salary when the Decree-Law says basic for termination; promise an outcome from a ministry officer’s assessment; or encourage you to stop attending work over a leave dispute, which converts a recoverable argument into a serious one.
Annual leave questions
How many days of annual leave am I entitled to in the UAE?
Thirty days fully paid once you have completed one year of service. Between six months and one year you accrue two days for each month of service. Below six months there is no statutory entitlement, though your contract may grant one.
Is that 30 working days or 30 calendar days?
Calendar days. The law grants 30 days, and weekends falling inside your leave are part of them. On a five-day week that is roughly 21 to 22 working days of actual absence. If your contract expressly says working days, that is more generous than the statute and it governs.
Do public holidays inside my leave give me extra days?
No. The Official Portal states that public holidays or agreed leave days falling within the annual leave period are considered part of the annual leave, unless your contract or company policy is more favourable. Booking around a holiday rather than across it preserves more of your balance.
How much leave can I carry into next year?
Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 permits carrying forward no more than half the annual leave — 15 days on a 30-day entitlement — or agreeing cash for it instead. Carry-forward also requires employer consent and follows company regulations.
Can my employer refuse my leave request?
The employer may set leave dates according to work requirements, in agreement with the employee, and may rotate leave among staff to keep the business running. But it must give at least one month’s notice of the dates, and it may not prevent you from using accrued leave for more than two consecutive years.
What rate is my leave paid out at?
It depends which situation you are in, and this is the detail most guides miss. For carried-forward leave converted to cash during employment, the Decree-Law refers to the wage earned at the time the leave falls due. For the balance paid when your service ends, it refers to basic salary. Note that the Official Portal’s summary describes carried-over payment as based on basic salary — where the summary and the decree differ, the decree is the instrument, but it is worth confirming for your own contract.
Do I get paid for unused leave if I resign?
Yes. You are entitled to a cash equivalent of your unused annual leave regardless of its duration, plus leave accrued for the fraction of the final year, calculated on basic salary. There is no minimum balance below which it is forfeited.
Is leave pay the same as gratuity?
No. They are separate entitlements calculated differently, and both may be due when you leave. Ask for a breakdown rather than accepting a single lump on a final settlement. Our guide to end of service gratuity covers that calculation.
Does annual leave accrue during probation?
Statutory annual leave accrual begins after six months of service, and probation may be up to six months. In practice most employees begin accruing at the two-days-per-month rate around the point probation ends, though contracts vary. Our guide to probation under UAE labour law covers the probation rules themselves.
What if I fall sick during my annual leave?
Sick leave is a separate entitlement of up to 90 days per year after probation, but Article 31 requires you to notify your employer within a maximum of three days and to submit a medical report from the medical entity. Those obligations apply even while you are on holiday, so notify promptly and obtain the report — that is what preserves the argument that the days should be treated as sick leave.
I work part-time. How is my leave calculated?
According to the actual working hours you spend at work, as specified in your employment contract and in accordance with the Implementing Regulations. The formula should be written into your contract; if it is not, get that closed before it becomes a dispute.
My employer wants to shut the office and use our leave. Can they?
Yes, in principle — the employer may set leave dates according to work requirements. But you must be notified of the dates at least one month in advance, and an employee without accrued balance cannot simply have leave they do not have deducted.
Does any of this apply in DIFC or ADGM?
No. DIFC and ADGM are financial free zones with their own employment legislation and their own tribunals. Check which regime your contract sits under before applying the federal position, because both the entitlement and the dispute route differ.
My employer says my balance is lower than I calculated. What now?
Put your figure in writing with the workings — start date, entitlement, dates taken in calendar days, any carry-forward agreed — and ask for a written response. Many resolve there. If not, a MoHRE labour complaint costs nothing to lodge, and the ministry’s advisory line for workers is toll-free on 80084.
Can I take my annual leave as unpaid leave instead, to travel for longer?
Unpaid leave is a matter of agreement with your employer rather than a statutory entitlement, and many employers will consider it. The risk is not employment law but immigration: a residence visa is automatically nullified after more than six continuous months outside the UAE, and annual leave stacked with unpaid leave is the commonest way people cross that line without realising. Count the total days out before you agree anything, and set a reminder at day 150.
Does my leave balance transfer if I move to a new employer?
No. Annual leave accrues against your service with a particular employer, so an unused balance is settled in cash when that employment ends rather than carried across. Accrual then starts afresh with the new employer, including the six-month qualifying period, unless your new contract is more generous. Make sure the leave payout appears as its own line on your final settlement from the outgoing employer.
- The Official Portal of the UAE Government — Annual leave
- The Official Portal — Types of leaves and entitlements in the private sector
- MoHRE — Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 and its amendments (PDF)
- UAE Legislation — Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022, Executive Regulations
- The Official Portal — Public holidays
Please note. Entitlements described here are as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation and the Official Portal of the UAE Government at the date of verification, under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 and its Executive Regulations, and are subject to amendment. Contracts and company policies may be more favourable than the statutory floor, and where they are, they govern. DIFC and ADGM employment is governed by separate legislation and is outside the scope of this guide. Nothing here is legal advice; where a material sum turns on the interpretation of a wage measure, take advice on your specific contract.
The administrative side, handled
Most of what this guide describes is an entitlement rather than a process. But the paperwork around it — contracts, permits, cancellations, WPS and renewals — runs on its own cycles and blocks things when it slips.
That administration is what our PRO services in Dubai exist for, across MoHRE, ICP and GDRFA together.
