Private-sector employees in the UAE are entitled to 30 calendar days of paid annual leave after one year of service, up to 90 days of sick leave per year on a tiered pay structure, and seven public holiday occasions set annually by Cabinet decree, several of which depend on moon sighting and shift by a day or two each year. This guide sets out the full entitlement picture, the current public holiday calendar, and — the question underneath most of these searches — how many actual working days a UAE hire costs you compared with a UK one.
Statutory Annual Leave in the UAE: Entitlement, Accrual and the First-Year Rule
Annual leave is set out under Article 29 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021:
- An employee who has completed one year of service is entitled to 30 calendar days of fully paid annual leave.
- An employee with six months to one year of service accrues leave at a rate of 2 days per month.
- An employee under six months of service has no statutory entitlement, though employers may grant leave at their discretion.
- Public holidays are a separate entitlement from annual leave. If a public holiday falls during an employee’s annual leave, that day is added back rather than counted against the leave balance.
- Unused annual leave that is not taken carries commercial value on exit — it must be encashed as part of the final settlement, calculated on the employee’s full wage rather than basic salary only (see the leave salary section below).
Sick Leave: The Three Pay Bands, the Medical Certificate Requirement, and What Happens After Entitlement Runs Out
Sick leave is set out under Article 31 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, and runs on a service-year basis tied to the employee’s start date, not the calendar year:
- Total entitlement is up to 90 days per service year, available only after the probation period is completed.
- The first 15 days are paid in full.
- The next 30 days are paid at half rate.
- The remaining 45 days are unpaid.
- The tiers apply cumulatively across the whole service year, not per individual illness — five days taken in one period and ten in another draw down the same running total.
- A medical certificate from a licensed UAE healthcare provider is required, and the employee must notify the employer within three days of falling ill.
- No paid sick leave applies during probation; an employee who falls ill during probation may instead have the probation period extended by the length of the absence.
- An employer cannot terminate an employee for being sick during the 90-day entitlement period. Once the full 90 days is exhausted and the employee still cannot return, the employer may lawfully proceed to termination, subject to due process and any applicable end-of-service payments.
UAE Public Holidays 2026 — Full Table, Confirmed and Moon-Dependent Dates
Last checked: mid-September 2026. Seven holiday occasions apply across the public and private sectors in 2026, under the UAE’s public holiday resolution. Two are fixed Gregorian dates; five follow the Hijri calendar and are confirmed only close to the date via moon sighting. Since January 2025, the Cabinet may also shift a non-Eid holiday to the start or end of the working week — which is what happened to the Prophet’s Birthday holiday this year.
- 1 January (Thursday) — New Year’s Day — 1 day — Confirmed, fixed date
- 19–22 March (Thursday–Sunday) — Eid Al Fitr — up to 4 days — Confirmed (occurred; moon-sighting outcome applied)
- 26 May (Tuesday) — Arafat Day, followed by 27–29 May (Wednesday–Friday) — Eid Al Adha — 4 days total — Confirmed (occurred; moon-sighting outcome applied)
- Mid-June (around 15–16 June) — Hijri New Year (1 Muharram) — 1 day — Confirmed (occurred; sources show slight date variation, reflecting the moon-sighting confirmation process)
- 28 August (Friday) — Prophet’s Birthday (Mawlid/Eid Milad un Nabi) — 1 day — Confirmed (occurred; date shifted from the expected 25 August under the 2025 rule allowing non-Eid holidays to move to the start or end of the working week)
- 2–3 December (Wednesday–Thursday) — Eid Al Etihad / UAE National Day (55th anniversary) — 2 days — Confirmed, fixed dates
Total for 2026: 11 to 14 actual days off across the seven occasions, depending on the final length of the two Eid holidays. This table should be re-checked within 48 hours of any new Cabinet holiday decree and again at the start of each Gregorian year, since Eid and other Hijri dates are re-confirmed annually.
The Leave Types That Do Not Exist in UAE Private-Sector Law
UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 provides no distinct statutory entitlement to “emergency leave” or “marriage leave,” despite both terms being heavily searched. Employees using these terms are typically referring to one of two things:
- A short, unplanned absence for a personal matter, which in law is either unpaid leave by agreement, or covered informally through an employer’s discretionary leave policy — there is no statutory floor requiring paid time off for this.
- Time off to get married, which similarly has no dedicated statutory basis in the private-sector federal law. Any entitlement here comes purely from company policy or contract, not from the law itself.
If you want to offer either as a benefit, the two lawful routes are: a contractual discretionary leave allowance built into your own HR policy, or unpaid leave granted by mutual agreement. DIFC and ADGM run their own separate employment regulations and may differ on specific leave categories — confirm against the relevant free zone’s own employment law rather than assuming the federal position applies.
Maternity, Parental, Bereavement and Study Leave: The Statutory Minimums
These sit under Articles 30 and 32 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021:
- Maternity leave: 60 calendar days total — 45 days at full pay, followed by 15 days at half pay. There is no minimum service requirement; it applies from day one of employment. The full entitlement also applies where delivery occurs after six or more months of pregnancy, whether the child is born alive or stillborn.
- Maternity leave extensions: an additional 45 days unpaid where the mother is unable to return to work due to a pregnancy- or childbirth-related illness (medical certificate required), and, separately, an additional 30 days at full pay (extendable by a further 30 days unpaid) where the child is born with a medical condition or disability requiring constant care.
- Parental leave: 5 working days of paid leave, available to both mothers and fathers, to be taken any time from the birth of the child up to six months afterward, continuously or in separate blocks. For mothers, this is in addition to maternity leave.
- Bereavement leave: 5 days for the death of a spouse; 3 days for the death of a parent, child, sibling, grandchild, or grandparent.
- Study leave: 10 working days per year to sit examinations, available only to employees who have completed two years of service and who are enrolled at an educational institution in the UAE.
- Sabbatical leave: the law also provides for a paid sabbatical leave route, but this is limited to UAE national employees and is not generally relevant to a foreign employer’s expatriate workforce.
None of these are encashable on exit — unlike annual leave, they exist only while the employment relationship is active and lapse if unused when the employee leaves.
Leave During Probation, and Leave Accrued but Untaken When Someone Leaves
Probation in the UAE is capped at six months, and leave treatment during this period differs by leave type: annual leave does not begin accruing meaningfully until service passes the six-month mark, sick leave is not paid during probation at all, and maternity leave applies regardless of probation status since it carries no minimum service requirement.
When an employee leaves — whether by resignation or termination — any annual leave accrued but not taken must be encashed as part of the final settlement, calculated on the employee’s full wage. This final settlement sits alongside end-of-service gratuity in the exit paperwork; the gratuity calculation itself runs on a different basis (basic salary only) and is covered in full in our gratuity guide.
How Leave Salary Is Calculated — Basic Salary or Total Salary?
This is a genuinely different answer from gratuity, and it’s worth being precise about, because the two calculations are easy to conflate. Annual leave pay and sick leave pay are both calculated on the employee’s full wage — basic salary plus any allowances that form a regular, contractual part of remuneration — not on basic salary alone. Gratuity, by contrast, is calculated on basic salary only.
The practical gap this creates: an employee on AED 20,000 total monthly pay, split 60% basic / 40% allowances, has their annual leave and sick leave costed on the full AED 20,000, but their gratuity costed on only AED 12,000 of that. Getting these two calculation bases confused in a payroll build is one of the more common compliance errors we see among employers new to the UAE. For how this same basic-versus-total distinction plays out in payroll processing more broadly, see our guide to running payroll in the UAE.
UAE vs UK: Working Days Actually Available per FTE per Year
This is the number most HR and finance teams actually want when comparing a UAE hire to a UK one, and it’s rarely laid out directly. Working the arithmetic in the open:
UAE: 30 days statutory annual leave, plus 11 to 14 public holiday days in 2026 across seven occasions, gives a total of roughly 41 to 44 non-working days per year, before sick leave or any of the other leave categories above are factored in.
UK: the statutory minimum under the Working Time Regulations is 28 days per year (5.6 weeks), which is typically structured as 20 days of annual leave plus 8 bank holidays, though many UK employers offer more than this floor in practice.
Netting these out, a UAE hire on the statutory minimum sits roughly 13 to 16 days above the UK statutory floor in guaranteed non-working days per year — a meaningful difference in available working capacity per employee that’s worth building into workforce planning and cost modelling, not just leave policy drafting. For how this translates into total employment cost per head, see our guide to the true cost of employing someone in the UAE, or run the comparison directly through our employee cost calculator.
FAQ
How many annual leave days are UAE private-sector employees entitled to?
30 calendar days of paid annual leave after completing one year of service, under Article 29 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021. Employees with six months to a year of service accrue leave at 2 days per month; those under six months have no statutory entitlement.
How many sick days can an employee take in the UAE, and are they paid?
Up to 90 days per service year after probation, on a tiered pay structure: the first 15 days at full pay, the next 30 at half pay, and the final 45 unpaid. A medical certificate is required, and the employee must notify the employer within three days.
Does UAE law provide emergency leave or marriage leave?
No. Neither has a distinct statutory basis in UAE private-sector law. Any such entitlement comes from company policy or individual agreement — either as discretionary paid leave under your own HR policy, or as unpaid leave granted by mutual agreement.
Is leave pay calculated on basic salary or total salary?
Total salary. Annual leave and sick leave pay are both calculated on the employee’s full wage, including regular contractual allowances — unlike end-of-service gratuity, which is calculated on basic salary only.
SOURCE AUTHORITIES
- Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 (UAE Labour Law), specifically the leave articles (Articles 28 through 32)
- Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022 (Executive Regulations)
- MOHRE — Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (mohre.gov.ae), including the MOHRE annual leave calculator
- UAE Cabinet Resolution No. 27 of 2019 concerning Public Holidays, as amended, and subsequent annual Cabinet holiday decrees
- The u.ae federal government portal, public holidays and leave-types pages
- DIFC Authority and ADGM Employment Regulations, for free zone leave variations
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