Public Holiday Leave

What public holiday leave is

Public holiday leave is the set of days on which an employee is entitled to full pay without performing work, because a public occasion falls on them. In the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) the right rests on Article 112, a single sentence:

«لكل عامل الحق في إجازة بأجر كامل في الأعياد والمناسبات التي تحددها اللائحة.»

In our own rendering, which is not an official translation, Article 112 of the Labor Law gives every worker the right to leave on full pay on the Eids and occasions that the regulation determines. Article 112 of the Labor Law establishes the right and the pay, names no occasion at all, and leaves the list to the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية).

The four holidays the Implementing Regulation sets for public holiday leave

Article 24 of the Implementing Regulation, written to implement Article 112 of the Labor Law, sets four holidays, each with its length and its starting point:

Together they come to ten days. Article 24 of the Implementing Regulation ties each holiday to a reference point: the Umm al Qura calendar, the Day of Arafah, the sign of Libra, and a day of a Gregorian month. Only one of the four, Founding Day, is fixed to a set Gregorian date.

When public holiday leave overlaps with other days off

Article 24 of the Implementing Regulation also sets the rules for overlaps. They are the rules a leave schedule depends on, and they are the part of the provision that can drop out when it is summarised:

• With the weekly rest. The employee is compensated with the equivalent, before or after the holiday days.
• With annual leave. The annual leave is extended by the number of holiday days, so the holiday is not absorbed into it.
• With sick leave. The employee is entitled to full pay for the holiday days, regardless of the pay due for the days of sick leave. This is the rule a payroll schedule can miss: the graduated pay of sick leave does not extend to an Eid day that falls inside it.
• National Day or Founding Day falling within an Eid holiday. The employee receives no compensation for that day.

How the annual leave balance itself is calculated, and what enters it, is covered in our guide to the annual leave balance. The definition of public holiday leave concerns the holidays and their overlaps, not a balance formula.

Public holiday leave and the weekly rest in Article 104 of the Labor Law

The overlap rules make sense only once the rule they overlap with is clear. Article 104 of the Labor Law sets the weekly rest in two parts:

• Friday is the weekly rest day for all workers. The employer may substitute any other day of the week for some of its workers after notifying the competent labour office, and must enable them to perform their religious duties. The weekly rest day may not be replaced by a cash payment.
• The weekly rest day is on full pay and lasts not less than 24 consecutive hours. The requirement that the hours be consecutive is a binding qualifier: 24 hours split across the ends of two days do not satisfy Article 104 of the Labor Law.

By way of exception, Article 105 of the Labor Law allows the weekly rests due to a worker to be accumulated over a period not exceeding eight weeks, in places remote from urban areas and in work whose nature and operating conditions require it to continue, where the employer and the workers agree and the Ministry approves. The accumulated rest is counted from the hour the workers arrive at the nearest city where transport is available, and ends at the hour they return to it.

The daily breaks are a separate matter and are not measured against these two rules. Article 102 of the Labor Law places rest, prayer and meal periods outside actual working hours, and adds two consequences that can be lost when the provision is summarised: during those periods the worker is not under the employer’s authority, and the employer may not require the worker to remain at the workplace during them. A break during which the worker must stay on site and remain available is therefore not a break in the sense of Article 102 of the Labor Law. Article 103 of the Labor Law allows the Minister to determine by decision the cases and kinds of work that must continue without a rest period for technical reasons or operating conditions, and the employer remains obliged to provide a period for prayer, food and rest, arranged by the establishment’s management during work. That route removes the fixed break, not the entitlement. The weekly rest provisions are set out in full in our guide to working hours and the weekly rest.

Two overlap rules on public holiday leave and sick leave that run in opposite directions

The Implementing Regulation contains two provisions that look alike but have opposite effects, and confusing them takes days from an employee’s balance or adds days without basis:

• Article 24 of the Implementing Regulation. Where the weekly rest falls within a public holiday, the employee is compensated before or after it.
• Article 26 of the Implementing Regulation. Where days of weekly rest fall during sick leave, the employee is not compensated for those days. The same Article provides that sick leave falling inside annual leave pauses the annual leave until the sick leave ends, after which the remaining annual leave resumes.

The weekly rest is compensated when a holiday absorbs it, and is not compensated when it falls during illness. A schedule that applies either rule to the other case will be wrong in one of the two.

A worked example of public holiday leave in a year with two overlaps

The days under Article 24 of the Implementing Regulation total ten a year: four for Eid al Fitr, four for Eid al Adha, one for National Day and one for Founding Day. Take a year with two overlaps:

• A day of the Eid al Fitr holiday coincides with the weekly rest. The employee is compensated for it before or after the holiday, so the balance does not shrink. The holiday days for the year remain ten.
• National Day falls within the Eid al Adha holiday. Under Article 24 of the Implementing Regulation there is no compensation for it. The holiday days the employee actually takes that year are therefore nine, not ten: 10 minus 1.

The difference between the two cases lies not in the number of days but in the kind of day absorbed: a weekly rest, which the text compensates, or one holiday inside another, which it does not. A schedule built on “every absorbed day is compensated” adds a day, and a schedule built on “overlaps are never compensated” removes one.

Public holiday leave outside the chapter on leave

• Probation. Under Article 19 of the Implementing Regulation, the probation period does not count the leave for the two Eids, the leave for National Day, the leave for Founding Day, or sick leave. All four apply together. A list that names the two Eids and sick leave but leaves out National Day and Founding Day omits two of the four; the shorter list matches the wording of Article 53 of the Labor Law before Royal Decree M/44 amended it.
• Working hour ceilings. Article 106 of the Labor Law allows the employer to disregard Articles 98 and 101 and paragraph 1 of Article 104 of the Labor Law in four cases, the fourth being Eids, seasons, other occasions and seasonal work determined by decision of the Minister. In the sources we reviewed, we did not find the ministerial decision that lists them. In all four cases actual working hours may not exceed ten hours a day or sixty hours a week. The limit of thirty days a year is part of the wording of the first case only, and does not extend to the other three.
• Pay for work on a public holiday. Paragraph 3 of Article 107 of the Labor Law provides that all hours worked on holidays and Eids are overtime hours. Under paragraph 1 of Article 107 of the Labor Law the overtime pay is the hour’s wage plus 50% of the basic wage. Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H added that the employer may, with the worker’s consent, credit paid compensatory leave days in place of that pay. Under Article 22 bis of the Implementing Regulation, that alternative requires an agreement of both parties fixing the duration of the assignment and the amount of leave, gives not less than one and a half hours of leave for each overtime hour, and may not exceed thirty days in the year. What the basic wage in Article 107 of the Labor Law covers is examined in our guide to compensatory rest and overtime.

How public holiday leave differs from occasion leave under Article 113 of the Labor Law

The two can be confused because the Arabic uses the same word, «المناسبات», in two different provisions. Article 113 of the Labor Law gives the worker leave on full pay for personal occasions that concern the worker alone:

• Five days on the worker’s marriage, or on the death of the worker’s spouse, an ascendant or a descendant.
• Three days on the death of a brother or sister.
• Three days on the birth of a child to the worker, within seven days of the date of the birth.

The days are counted from the date of the event, and the employer may ask for supporting documents. Article 113 of the Labor Law opens with a qualifier that can be overlooked: it applies without prejudice to the leave of female workers set out elsewhere in the Labor Law.

The difference is that public holiday leave under Article 112 of the Labor Law falls on the whole establishment on the same day and takes its date from the calendar, while leave under Article 113 of the Labor Law falls on one employee and takes its date from an event in that employee’s life. A work regulation that puts both in a single clause merges two entitlements with different causes and different proof.

Public holiday leave dates in a particular year

Article 24 of the Implementing Regulation fixes the length of each holiday and the reference point for its start. It does not fix a Gregorian date for either Eid or for National Day in a particular year, and in the sources we reviewed we found no annual schedule of the holidays published with it. An organisation that needs the date for a given year takes it from a source for that year, not from the regulation. Two related questions sit alongside:

• Days beyond those in the regulation. Where an organisation grants days in addition to the four holidays in Article 24 of the Implementing Regulation, those days rest on the organisation’s grant, not on Article 112 of the Labor Law, and the overlap rules of Article 24 of the Implementing Regulation are written for the four holidays it lists.
• An employee who was not working on the holiday for another reason. Article 112 of the Labor Law establishes the right to the leave on full pay. Any other situation is governed by the provision that applies to it.

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Articles 102 to 107 (rest periods, continuous operation, weekly rest, accumulated rest, the hour ceilings and overtime), Article 112 (public holidays), Article 113 (occasion leave) and Article 53 (probation); together with Articles 19, 22 bis, 24 and 26 of the Implementing Regulation. Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H, in force since 19 February 2025, amended Article 107, Article 113 and Article 53 of the Labor Law. That decree did not amend Articles 102 to 106 of the Labor Law. Article 112 of the Labor Law carries no amendment footnote in the consolidated text the Ministry publishes, and the Ministry’s summary of the amendments has no entry for it.

Before an annual public holiday leave calendar is built

An organisation building its annual calendar can keep two things apart: the number of days and the reference point for their start, which are fixed, and the Gregorian date in a particular year, which has to be established for that year. Mixing the fixed with the variable is how a calendar can look precise and still be wrong about the day.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.

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