Planning your time off in Germany
If you've moved to Germany for work, you've probably already noticed something: your German colleagues seem to vanish for long stretches around certain dates, especially in spring, with suspiciously short notice given to you but clearly planned for months by them. That's not a coincidence. Germany has a strong culture of using public holidays strategically, turning a single day off into a four or five day break by taking just one or two extra vacation days around it. Once you understand how the public holiday calendar works here, you can do the same thing.
This guide walks through the basics for 2026, 2027 and 2028: which holidays are nationwide and which only apply in certain states, what a "Brückentag" actually is, some of the best bridge-day opportunities coming up in the next three years, how much paid leave you're entitled to, and how leave requests typically work inside a German company. It's written for people who are new to the German system, so it starts from the basics rather than assuming you already know how Bundesländer and public holidays interact.
Planning matters more here than in some other countries for two reasons. First, the public holiday calendar genuinely differs by state, so advice that's true for a friend in Hamburg might not apply to you in Munich. Second, German leave policy is generous by many international standards, but it usually comes with an expiry date: unused vacation days don't simply roll forward forever. Combining a bit of calendar awareness with your actual entitlement is where the real value is.
One housekeeping note before we get into it: everything below is general information to help you plan, not legal advice. Your own employment contract or an applicable collective bargaining agreement (Tarifvertrag) can and often does grant better terms than the legal minimum, so always check your own contract and your employer's policies for the rules that actually apply to you.
How public holidays work in Germany
Public holidays in Germany are not set by one single national law the way they might be in some other countries. Instead, each of the 16 federal states (Bundesländer) has its own holiday law, and the states don't all choose the same list. Nine holidays are nationwide, meaning every state observes them: New Year's Day (1 January), Good Friday, Easter Monday, Labour Day (1 May), Ascension Day, Whit Monday, German Unity Day (3 October), Christmas Day (25 December) and St Stephen's Day, also known as Boxing Day (26 December).
Beyond those nine, several more holidays apply only in specific states, usually for historical or religious reasons. Epiphany (6 January) is a public holiday only in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt. Corpus Christi (Fronleichnam), a Catholic feast day that falls on a Thursday in late May or June, is observed in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.
Reformation Day (31 October) is a public holiday in nine states, most of them in the north and east, reflecting Germany's historically Protestant regions. All Saints' Day (1 November) is observed in five states with a stronger Catholic tradition. Saxony has its own unique holiday not found anywhere else in Germany: Buß- und Bettag (Day of Repentance and Prayer), usually in November.
Bavaria takes this state-by-state variation one step further, down to the municipality level. Assumption Day (15 August) is only a public holiday in Bavarian municipalities with a Catholic-majority population, not across the whole state. And the city of Augsburg alone, nowhere else, observes its own local holiday, the Augsburg Peace Festival (Friedensfest), on 8 August.
The practical upshot of all this is simple but easy to miss when you're new here: two people working in different German cities can have genuinely different numbers of public holidays in the same year, and different days off even when the total count happens to match. A friend working in Munich might have a day off that a friend working in Berlin doesn't get at all, with no mistake on anyone's side. Always check the holiday list for the specific state you work in, not a generic "Germany" list.
What is a Brückentag (bridge day)?
A Brückentag, literally a "bridge day," is a regular working day that sits between a public holiday and a weekend, or between two public holidays. Taking that one working day off as vacation "bridges" the gap, turning what would otherwise be a single day off into a much longer uninterrupted stretch. It's not a special category of leave with its own rules; it's just an ordinary vacation day, used strategically because of where it falls on the calendar.
Here's a concrete example using a real date. In 2026, Ascension Day falls on Thursday, 14 May, a nationwide public holiday. The following day, Friday, 15 May, is an ordinary working day, and the two days after that are the weekend. If you take just that one Friday off as a vacation day, you turn a single holiday into four consecutive days off: Thursday through Sunday. One day of annual leave bought you three extra days away from work.
This is why bridge days are such a fixture of German working life, and why so many offices feel noticeably emptier on the Friday after Ascension Day every year. The arithmetic is simply very favorable: a single vacation day, spent on the right date, can be worth three or four times its face value in actual days off. Once you start noticing where the public holidays in your state fall relative to the weekend, these opportunities become easy to spot for yourself.
The best bridge days coming up (2026 to 2028)
With the mechanics out of the way, here are some of the best concrete bridge-day opportunities over the next three years, based on how the nationwide and state-specific holidays actually fall on the calendar. Treat these as a starting list to plan around, not as the only good options; your own state's holiday mix might create others not listed here.
In 2026, Friday, 2 January is a bridge day after New Year's Day, again turning one vacation day into four consecutive days off, this time right at the very start of the year. Friday, 15 May, the bridge day after Ascension Day described above, works the same way for everyone in Germany. If you work in one of the Corpus Christi states (Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate or Saarland), Friday, 5 June does the same trick after that holiday. And if you're in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg or Saxony-Anhalt, Monday, 5 January gives you a four-day run leading into Epiphany.
2027 is a quieter year for bridge days, but Friday, 7 May still delivers a reliable one-day-to-four-day conversion after Ascension Day, and it applies in every state. Employees in the Corpus Christi states get a second opportunity that year on Friday, 28 May.
2028 is a particularly good year if you're planning ahead. Friday, 26 May converts Ascension Day into four days off for everyone, the same pattern as in previous years. German Unity Day falls on a Tuesday in 2028, which means Monday, 2 October is a genuine bridge day for the whole country, again turning one vacation day into a four-day stretch. Corpus Christi states get Friday, 16 June, and if you're in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg or Saxony-Anhalt, Friday, 7 January gives you an early-year four-day run before Epiphany.
One more period worth flagging in general terms: the stretch between Christmas and New Year is consistently good value across all three of these years, since Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day cluster closely together and often align well with weekends. We're deliberately not giving exact day-by-day figures for that stretch here: a more detailed, dedicated planning view for the Christmas and New Year period is a separate feature of this site that's still being built. For now, it's enough to know that this window is reliably worth checking each year.
How much paid leave are you entitled to?
German law sets a legal minimum for paid annual leave in the Bundesurlaubsgesetz (Federal Leave Act, often abbreviated BUrlG): 20 working days a year, based on a standard five-day working week. That's the statutory floor, not a typical outcome; it exists so that no employment contract can legally offer less.
In practice, most employment contracts in Germany grant more than the legal minimum, commonly somewhere between 28 and 30 days a year. The exact figure depends entirely on your own contract or any collective bargaining agreement (Tarifvertrag) that applies to your employer, so check your contract rather than assuming either the 20-day legal minimum or the common 28-to-30 range applies to you specifically.
If you work part-time, your leave entitlement is prorated based on how many days a week you actually work, not reduced by a flat percentage and not left at the same number of days as a full-time colleague. Someone working three days a week, for example, gets three-fifths of the full-time entitlement in days, since the entitlement is fundamentally about days off work, not hours.
Leave you didn't use by the end of the calendar year, known as Resturlaub, usually carries over into the new year but typically expires on 31 March of that following year, unless your contract or employer explicitly allows a longer carry-over period. After that date, unused days are often simply lost. This is the "use it or lose it" side of German leave that makes planning ahead genuinely worthwhile, rather than just a nice-to-have.
How annual leave actually works in a German workplace
Requesting time off in Germany is usually a fairly structured process. Most employees submit a request to their manager, often through an HR software system, well in advance of the dates they want. There's rarely an informal "just tell me the day before" culture for planned vacation; advance notice is the norm, especially for anything longer than a day or two.
Because bridge days are so popular, the best dates get booked up early. Many teams keep a shared leave calendar so colleagues can see who's already off on a given day, and it's common courtesy, sometimes an explicit team rule, to check that calendar and coordinate with colleagues before requesting the same popular bridge-day week everyone else wants. If you wait until a few weeks before Ascension Day to request the Friday off, don't be surprised if it's already taken by half the office.
Many companies also have a noticeably slower period around Christmas and New Year, when client contact and meetings drop off and a lot of staff are away at the same time. Some employers go further and schedule a formal Betriebsferien, a company-wide shutdown where the whole business closes for a set period and employees are required to take leave during it, rather than choosing their own dates. If your employer does this, it's usually communicated well ahead of time and factored into everyone's annual leave planning automatically.
School holidays and traveling with kids
If you have school-age children, there's another layer to plan around: German school holidays are also set at the state level, not nationally, and they're deliberately staggered across the country. Rather than every German state breaking for summer at the same time, the federal states coordinate a rolling schedule so that school summer holidays start and end at different points over several weeks. This is done on purpose, mainly to spread out holiday traffic and avoid the whole country's families hitting the motorways and airports in the same single week.
That staggering is genuinely useful to know even if your own household doesn't have school-age children, since it affects when accommodation and flights get expensive and when popular destinations are busiest. We're not listing specific school holiday dates here. A dedicated dataset for state-by-state school holidays is a separate part of this project that isn't finished yet, so for now, check your own state's official school holiday calendar directly if you're planning family travel.
A few events worth keeping in mind
Beyond public holidays and school breaks, a handful of recurring annual events are worth being aware of when you're picking travel dates, even if you have no interest in attending them yourself: they affect accommodation prices and crowds in specific cities. Oktoberfest in Munich, despite the name, mostly runs in September into early October, and hotel prices in the city climb noticeably for its duration.
Christmas markets open across German cities from late November onward and are a genuine highlight of the season for many residents and visitors alike. In the Rhineland region, Karneval season builds through February, with its own distinct traditions, parades and public mood, particularly in cities like Cologne and Düsseldorf. These are general patterns rather than fixed dates, since the exact timing shifts a bit each year; a dedicated events feature with specific dates for this site is still being built, so treat this as general seasonal awareness rather than a precise calendar.
Adding your plan to your own calendar
Once you've worked out which bridge days and leave dates make sense for you, the obvious next step is getting them onto the calendar you actually use day to day, whether that's your iPhone, Google Calendar or Outlook. We're building direct calendar export for exactly this purpose, so your planned bridge days and holidays can be added with a couple of taps instead of typed in by hand. That export feature isn't finished yet, so for now, treat this guide and the planner above it as the place to work out your dates, with one-tap export to follow.
Frequently asked questions about German bridge days and public holidays
What's a Brückentag?
A Brückentag (bridge day) is an ordinary working day that falls between a public holiday and a weekend, or between two public holidays. Taking that single day off as vacation bridges the gap and turns what would otherwise be one day off into a much longer uninterrupted stretch, often three or four days from just one day of leave. It isn't a separate legal category of leave; it's a completely normal vacation day, just used on a particularly well-placed date.
Does a public holiday that falls on a weekend give me an extra day off?
No. Germany has no substitute or compensation day when a public holiday happens to land on a Saturday or Sunday. Unlike some countries, which shift the holiday to the following Monday, German law simply treats the holiday as having occurred on the weekend day it fell on, with no make-up day added anywhere else in the calendar. If New Year's Day falls on a Sunday, for example, you don't get an extra Monday off because of it.
How much annual leave am I legally entitled to in Germany?
The legal minimum under the Bundesurlaubsgesetz is 20 working days a year for a standard five-day working week. That's a floor, not a typical result: most real employment contracts grant more, commonly 28 to 30 days a year, and collective bargaining agreements can set even higher minimums for specific industries. Always check your own contract for the figure that actually applies to you, since it's extremely common to have more than the bare legal minimum.
Does every German state have the same public holidays?
No, and this surprises a lot of people who are new to Germany. Nine holidays are observed nationwide, but several more vary by state: Epiphany, Corpus Christi, Reformation Day, All Saints' Day and Saxony's own Buß- und Bettag are each only public holidays in specific states, not the whole country. Bavaria adds a further layer of variation at the municipality level for Assumption Day, and the city of Augsburg alone observes its own local Peace Festival. Always check the holiday list for your specific state.
What happens to unused vacation days at the end of the year?
Unused leave, known as Resturlaub, usually carries over into the following year but commonly expires on 31 March of that year unless your employer or contract explicitly allows longer. After that date, days that still weren't used are often simply forfeited. This use-it-or-lose-it structure is a real reason to plan your leave across the calendar year rather than leaving it all until the final weeks, by which point there may be very little time left to actually take it.
How far in advance should I request a bridge-day week off?
As early as you reasonably can, especially around well-known dates like the Friday after Ascension Day. Popular bridge-day weeks get booked by colleagues early, often months ahead, and many teams use a shared leave calendar precisely so people can see what's already taken before requesting the same week. There's no single legal deadline for submitting a request, but waiting until a few weeks before a popular date is a common way to find out it's already unavailable.
Can my employer refuse my vacation request?
Generally, yes, within limits. An employer can decline specific dates for legitimate business reasons, such as staffing needs or because too many colleagues have already requested the same period, but they can't refuse your leave altogether or indefinitely: the Bundesurlaubsgesetz requires your leave to actually be granted within the relevant year, with only limited exceptions for carry-over. The practical reality in most workplaces is a negotiation, which is exactly why planning and requesting early helps.
Are Saturdays counted as part of my vacation days in Germany?
It depends on how your entitlement is defined, and this is a common point of confusion. If your contract (as most do) states your entitlement based on a five-day working week, only your actual working days from Monday to Friday count against your leave balance; weekends aren't deducted. Some older contracts still use a six-day-week convention, in which case the legal minimum is correspondingly higher (24 days) to represent the same real amount of time off. Check which convention your own contract uses.
What is Betriebsferien, and do I have to take leave during it?
Betriebsferien is a company-wide shutdown period, often around Christmas and New Year, where an employer closes the business entirely and requires staff to take their vacation during that window rather than choosing their own dates. Not every company does this, and where it exists it's usually announced well ahead of time so employees can plan the rest of their annual leave around it. If your employer has Betriebsferien, factor those fixed dates in first before planning other bridge days.
Do part-time employees get fewer vacation days?
Part-time employees get a prorated entitlement based on how many days a week they actually work, not an automatically lower number tied to their hours or salary. Someone working three days a week instead of five typically receives three-fifths of the full-time day entitlement, since German leave entitlement is fundamentally measured in days away from work rather than hours. If you work reduced hours across the same five days, rather than fewer days, your day-based entitlement generally stays the same as a full-time colleague's.