Finepost · Tools · Holiday entitlement
Twenty-eight days sounds like more than twenty.
It usually is not. The English 28 already contains the bank holidays; the German 20 has every public holiday stacked on top, and how many that is depends on the Land. Drag the working week: both minima appear, counted to the same finish line.
Both floors unchanged for years; part-time scales both sides pro rata.
These are the statutory minima, not anyone’s contract. German contracts commonly grant 25 to 30 days, English ones 25 plus bank holidays; the floor is what the comparison shows.
Two traps sit in the counting. § 3 BUrlG says 24 days, but counts Werktage, Monday to Saturday; on a five-day week that is the familiar 20, and Werktag is not Arbeitstag. And a bank holiday that falls on an English weekend comes back as a substitute Monday, while a German public holiday on a Saturday is simply gone. In Bavaria the thirteenth holiday holds only in predominantly Catholic municipalities.