Annual leave in 2026: rules and entitlements

Annual leave is a right of every employee, guaranteed by the Labour Code (Codul Muncii). It looks like a simple topic, but questions come up regularly in practice: how many days are due, how leave is planned, what happens to the days left over at the end of the year. This article goes through the basic principles and shows how a digital request flow reduces friction for everyone.

Annual leave is a right, not a favour

The first thing to remember is that the right to paid annual leave cannot be waived. The employee is entitled to a minimum number of leave days per year, and the employer is obliged to make sure they are actually taken. This is a protection given by law, not a matter for negotiation.

The Labour Code sets a minimum duration for annual leave. A company may grant more days than that minimum — through the individual or collective employment contract, through the internal rules or as a benefit — but not fewer.

How the number of days is set

The specific number of days for each employee starts from the legal minimum and may increase depending on company policy or seniority, where the employer provides for such rules. A few useful principles:

• The right to leave relates to the working year; for employees who have not worked the whole year, the days are calculated in proportion to the period worked.
• Certain periods of absence may affect how the calculation is made, depending on their type.
• The company’s internal rules (seniority, additional benefits) are added on top of the legal minimum, they do not replace it.

Because the details can differ from one company to another, it is important for the leave policy to be clear and written down, so that it does not depend on case-by-case interpretation.

Planning leave

Annual leave is taken, as a rule, on the basis of a plan, so that the company’s activity is not disrupted and, at the same time, employees can take the days they are due. Good planning means:

• Visibility — everyone knows who is on leave and when.
• Balance — overlapping requests within the same team can be anticipated and resolved in good time.
• Predictability — the employee knows in advance whether their request has been approved.

The problem appears when all of this is handled on paper or by email: requests get lost, nobody has the full picture, and the balance of remaining days is calculated by hand, with the usual risk of error.

Why a digital request flow helps

A digital leave system turns a disorderly process into a clear one. The employee submits the request from the app, the manager approves or rejects it, and the balance of days updates automatically. The benefits are concrete for everyone:

• For the employee — transparency: they can see how many days they have left and the status of their request.
• For the manager — an easy decision: they can see who else is on leave in the same period before approving.
• For HR — clean records: balances calculate themselves, with no manually maintained spreadsheets.

In Workly, leave works on a request → approval flow, with multiple absence types (annual, sick and others) and with the balance updated automatically. Because time tracking, leave and payroll are in the same place, leave days are also reflected correctly further down the line, in the payroll calculation.

Key takeaways

Annual leave is a guaranteed right, with a minimum duration set by law that a company may exceed but cannot reduce. The key to managing it properly is a clear policy and a transparent process for planning and approval. A digital request flow, integrated with time tracking and payroll, removes lost paperwork and manual calculations — and lets everyone focus on work rather than on bureaucracy.