Leave by country / Latvia
Latvia annual leave entitlement
How much paid leave people in Latvia get, what happens to unused days, and what you owe when someone leaves — in plain English, whether you run a team there or work on one.
Latvia guarantees a statutory minimum of 20 paid annual leave days per year (4 weeks on a five-day week) under Labour Law §149. Unused statutory leave must be paid out when employment ends, and it cannot be exchanged for cash while the employee is still employed.
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What the law actually says
The Labour Law grants at least four calendar weeks of paid annual leave excluding public holidays — 20 working days on a five-day week. It may be split by agreement, provided one part is at least two uninterrupted weeks.
Worth knowing: Employees under 18 are entitled to one month of annual leave.
What happens to unused leave in Latvia
Statutory leave in Latvia is expected to be taken in the year it accrues, with limited carryover into the following period. The important protection is that leave an employee was genuinely prevented from taking — through sickness or parental leave, for example — is protected by settled case law and does not simply disappear.
When employment ends, the untaken balance must be paid. This is the rule across the European Union and Australia, and it is the sharpest contrast with the United States, where whether unused time is paid out depends entirely on which state the employee works in.
If you run a team in Latvia
- Write the entitlement into every contract. At least 20 days; more is fine, less is void. Collective agreements may add to it.
- Track accrual and carryover to the day, with a record of every approval. When someone leaves, the untaken balance is money you owe, and you will need to show how you got to the number.
- Budget for the payout. Every unused day on the books is a liability at that person's current pay rate — it does not disappear at year end.
If you work in Latvia
- Check your contract gives at least 20 days. Anything less is unenforceable.
- Keep your own record of approved leave. Payroll systems get changed; your notes don't.
- When you leave, untaken statutory leave must be paid out. It cannot be forfeited.
Countries with the same 20-day minimum
Calculating an employee's balance
Entitlement is the starting point; the working number is what an individual has actually accrued at a given date. Our accrual calculator converts an annual entitlement into a per-pay-period figure and a current balance.
Tracking Latvia leave correctly
Because untaken leave is money the employer owes, the balance has to be provable. Spreadsheets fail at exactly the moment they matter — when someone disputes what they were owed on their last day and nobody can reconstruct the record.
For a single-country team, Leavo handles Latvia accrual rules, carryover and approvals with a full audit trail. If you employ people in more than one country, statutory entitlements, carryover rules and payout obligations differ in every one — that is the case for a platform like Deel that handles multi-country employment rather than leave alone. We compare the options in our leave management software guide.
Latvia annual leave: common questions
How many paid annual leave days are employees entitled to in Latvia?
20 working days is the statutory minimum in Latvia, equivalent to 4 weeks on a five-day working week, under Labour Law §149. Employers and collective agreements may grant more, never less.
Must unused annual leave be paid out when employment ends in Latvia?
Yes. Payment in lieu of untaken statutory leave is required when the employment relationship ends in Latvia. During employment, statutory leave must be taken as time off and cannot be exchanged for cash.
Can an employer in Latvia refuse a leave request?
An employer can usually influence when leave is taken for operational reasons, but cannot deny the entitlement itself. The right to the minimum number of days is statutory and cannot be contracted away.
Do public holidays count towards the 20-day entitlement in Latvia?
No. Public holidays are separate from the 20-day statutory annual leave entitlement in Latvia.
Source
Primary source: Labour Law §149. Statutory minimums change, and collective agreements frequently exceed them — confirm against the current text before acting. See our methodology.