Holiday entitlements for newly graduated students
07 Oct 2025
In September and October, a lot of the students who graduated just before summer will enter the professional world as employees. Their first months on the job will involve numerous new experiences, challenges, and significant effort, which ideally should be balanced by appropriate periods of rest. However, do newly graduated students actually enjoy (full) holiday entitlements when they first start working?
Holiday year versus holiday service year
In Belgium, statutory holiday entitlements in a given year (the ‘holiday year’) are earned based on work performed in the previous calendar year (the ‘holiday service year’). An employee acquires the full statutory entitlement of 20 days (for a five-day week) only if they worked full-time throughout the preceding year.
Consequently, a graduate who starts their first job in, for example, October 2025 will likely have no statutory holidays in 2025, as they did not work in the 2024 service year. The following year, 2026, they will still not have a full entitlement because their 2025 service year was incomplete. To ensure these employees can still take time off, two mechanisms exist alongside statutory holidays: supplementary leave (often called ‘European holidays’) and youth leave.
Year of graduation: supplementary leave
As mentioned above, new graduates often have no entitlement to statutory holidays in the calendar year they start working. In this situation, Belgium’s voluntary supplementary leave regime can bridge the gap
After an initial run-in period of having worked for three months, the employees will be entitled to five days of supplementary leave, which they can take up as from the last week of the run-in period. Afterwards, the employees will accrue days of supplementary leave at a specific rate, which is slightly different for white-collar and blue-collar workers.
When they take up days of supplementary leave, the employee receives their normal salary, but this amount is recovered through a deduction from the following year’s (double) holiday pay, meaning the employee effectively pre-finances the leave.
The supplementary leave accrued during any given calendar year must be taken up before 31 December of that year and an employee can use the system of supplementary leave both in the calendar year they started working and the year after (see below).
First calendar year after the year of graduation: youth leave (or supplementary leave)
If a newly graduated student started working in the year of graduation, they will in principle have accrued statutory holidays proportionate to their employment, which can be taken in the calendar year following graduation.
In addition, to complement these (incomplete) statutory holiday entitlement, they will be entitled to youth leave if, by 31 December of the graduation year (the holiday service year), they have not yet turned 25, they completed their studies, apprenticeship or training during that holiday service year, and, after completion, they were employed under an employment contract for at least one month and actually worked at least 13 days as an employee during that same holiday service year.
Eligible employees can be entitled to a maximum of 20 days of youth leave) in the year following graduation. Any statutory holidays to which the employee is entitled must be deducted from this maximum and taken first, before any youth leave is used. When an employee takes up youth leave, no salary is due by the employer; instead, the employee receives a lump-sum compensation from the National Employment Office.
If a recently graduated employee is not entitled to youth leave, they may rely on supplementary leave instead (see above) to complement their statutory holiday entitlements, if any. As with youth leave, statutory holidays are deducted from the supplementary leave entitlement and must be taken in priority.
Youth leave and supplementary leave cannot be combined.
Remark: unpaid leave
If an employee wants to complement the number of days of legal holiday they’re entitled to, there’s also a possibility to take up days of unpaid leave. Contrary to the systems of supplementary leave and youth leave, however, an employee cannot simply claim unpaid leave; the employer can freely choose whether to accommodate an employee’s request for unpaid leave. In addition, it’s important for an employee to keep in mind that days of unpaid leave can have an impact beyond the mere loss of salary for these days. For example, days of unpaid leave will – again contrary to days of supplementary leave or youth leave – not be considered when the employee’s legal holiday entitlement for the next calendar year is determined.
Key takeaway
Although newly graduated students who start their professional career in the year they graduate will only accrue full legal holiday entitlements as from the second calendar year following the year of graduation, various possibilities exist to make sure that these employees can enjoy a minimum of 20 days off per full calendar year.
If you have any further questions on the holiday entitlements of your younger employees, don’t hesitate to reach out; we’d love to hear from you.
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