UAE Annual Leave Entitlement Explained: How Much Paid Leave Employees Are Owed
Annual leave is a legal entitlement under UAE labour law, not a discretionary company benefit — and how much an employee has banked matters for both day-to-day approvals and final settlements.
The short answer
30 calendar days per year, once an employee has completed 1 full year of continuous service.
Before that first year is up, leave still accrues — just on a shorter scale:
- 6 months to 1 year of service: leave accrues at 2 days per calendar month worked.
- Under 6 months of service: no annual leave entitlement has accrued yet.
- 1 year of service or more: the full 30 days per year applies going forward.
What doesn't count against annual leave
If a public holiday or a period of certified sick leave happens to fall during an employee's booked annual leave, those days aren't deducted from their annual leave balance — the leave effectively pauses for that overlap.
Timing is the employer's call, within reason
An employer can generally schedule when annual leave is taken (accounting for business needs), but employees should get reasonable advance notice rather than having leave decided last-minute. Many UAE companies also allow a portion of unused leave to carry over into the next year, or let employees encash a portion instead of taking time off — both are matters of company policy layered on top of the legal minimum, not something the law mandates a specific way.
Leave balance at exit
Whatever annual leave an employee has accrued but not taken is paid out as part of their final settlement when they leave — calculated on their basic wage, the same wage basis used for gratuity. This is separate from gratuity itself; an employee gets both their unused leave payout and their gratuity (if eligible), not one or the other.
Setting this up correctly matters more than it looks
The accrual method a company chooses affects what an employee's balance actually is at any given moment — some companies grant the full year's leave upfront on the anniversary date, others accrue it monthly as the year progresses. Both are legitimate approaches to reaching the same annual entitlement; the difference shows up in mid-year balances and in what's owed if someone leaves partway through the year.
This is a general explanation of UAE annual leave entitlement under the UAE Labour Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021) for HR teams doing their own planning — not legal advice for a specific case. Confirm anything unusual (part-time contracts, unpaid leave periods, disputed balances) with a UAE labour lawyer before acting on it.
OfficeHR tracks every employee's leave balance automatically.
Choose upfront, monthly, or anniversary-based accrual per policy, and let employees request time off with manager approval built in — no spreadsheet balance-tracking.