Holiday pay (feriepenge) in Denmark: how to find and use the money you earned

What are feriepenge, in plain language?

Feriepenge is holiday pay. If your job does not pay your normal salary while you are on holiday, your employer has to set aside 12.5% of your pay as holiday pay instead, and you draw on that pot when you take your days off retsinformation.dk. Twelve point five per cent is not arbitrary: it is the cash value of five weeks off in a forty-week working year.

You get 25 days, or five weeks, of paid holiday a year, earned at 2.08 days per month whether you work full time or part time borger.dk.

How does the holiday year work?

The holiday year runs from 1 September to 31 August. You accrue holiday during that year, and because Denmark uses concurrent accrual, you can take days from the month after you earn them rather than waiting a full year borger.dk. Days earned in one holiday year can be used until 31 December of the following year, so the window is sixteen months long.

That is why the money looks late. If you start a job in January, the days you earn in January are available to book from February, but the pay sitting behind them is credited month by month and can take time to show in the system.

Your main holiday is three consecutive weeks and is normally taken between 1 May and 30 September. Your employer must give you notice of the dates, typically three months for the main holiday and one month for the rest borger.dk.

What is samtidighedsferie?

Samtidighedsferie, literally “simultaneous holiday”, is the system in force since 2020: you earn holiday and you can take holiday in the same year, at 2.08 days per month retsinformation.dk. Before that, Denmark had a system where you earned in one year and could only take the holiday in the next, and newcomers still hear outdated advice about it.

For a newly hired employee the practical rule is: you can book holiday as soon as you have accrued the days, which is why a job that starts in September lets you take a week off by November.

Ferie med løn or feriepenge: which one are you on?

The quickest way to find out which system covers you is to look at your payslip (lønseddel). A line showing feriepenge or feriegodtgørelse at 12.5% means the fund system. No such line usually means you are on holiday with pay borger.dk.

How do you see and order your feriepenge?

1. Log in to the self-service “Se og bestil feriepenge” on borger.dk with MitID borger.dk. If you would rather work in English, Life in Denmark has the same service under holiday allowance Life in Denmark.
2. Check each employer listed, the days accrued and the amount. The system shows who is due to pay: the state holiday fund, a collective-agreement holiday fund, or your employer directly.
3. Agree your holiday dates with your employer first, then order the days in the self-service.
4. The money is paid to your NemKonto, so make sure it is registered there NemKonto.
5. No MitID? There are paper forms for exactly that case on borger.dk borger.dk.
6. Do not work for pay on days you have ordered as holiday. If you do, the holiday pay can have to be repaid.

What happens if you change jobs or leave Denmark?

If you leave a job, unused holiday entitlement is converted into holiday pay and paid into the holiday fund system, where you can still order it later borger.dk. Your FerieKonto balance does not disappear when you change employer.

Leaving Denmark for good is the case where people lose money, not because the rules are unfair but because nobody chases the payout. Deregister your address with the CPR office, keep a Danish bank account open if you can, tell the system where to pay you, and settle the claim before you fly rather than emailing from another continent six months later Life in Denmark.

Why is the payout smaller than you expected?

Holiday pay is taxed when it is paid out. You pay 8% labour market contribution (AM-bidrag) and then A-skat, so the amount landing in your account is the net figure skat.dk. There is no separate holiday tax rate; it is simply your normal tax applied to a lump sum, and if your tax card is not in place the withholding is much higher skat.dk.

Two things are worth knowing: holiday pay is not a bonus, and it is not extra money on top of your salary if you are on holiday with pay. It is the same money, moved in time.

What are feriefridage?

Feriefridage are extra days off, beyond the five weeks in the Holiday Act. They are not statutory. They come from your collective agreement or your individual contract, and the common figure is five extra days, giving a sixth week Work in Denmark. Check your contract, and if you are covered by a collective agreement, check whether unused feriefridage are paid out or forfeited at the end of the year.

What if your employer never paid the money in?

Start with your payslip. If a month shows feriepenge that never appears in the self-service, raise it with your employer in writing and give them a chance to correct the report. Keep the payslip and the emails.

If that does not resolve it, your union is the practical route: employment disputes are exactly what union legal aid exists for, and it is free once you are a member union and a-kasse. If your employer has gone bankrupt, holiday pay is one of the claims you can make through Lønmodtagernes Garantifond, and borger.dk has the claim process borger.dk.

The state holiday fund publishes its own customer service line for problems with the self-service or with the amount shown ATP.

What it costs and how long it takes

• Holiday pay itself: no fee. The 12.5% comes out of your gross pay, not out of your pocket on top.
• Ordering the days: a few minutes online with MitID borger.dk.
• Payout: expect days rather than hours, and order in good time before your holiday starts.
• Paper form instead of MitID: slower, and you should allow weeks around the busy summer period borger.dk.

Common mistakes

• Waiting for the money to arrive by itself. You have to order the days Life in Denmark.
• Working for pay on days ordered as holiday, then having to pay it back.
• Letting days expire. Holiday you have earned is lost if you do not use it inside the sixteen-month window borger.dk.
• Forgetting that the payout is taxed, then budgeting as if the gross figure is what you will receive skat.dk.
• Ordering holiday pay but leaving NemKonto unregistered, so the payment has nowhere to go NemKonto.
• Leaving Denmark without claiming, then discovering that chasing a Danish holiday fund from abroad is slow and deadline-bound.
• Not checking your payslip at all, and never noticing a missing month.

If something goes wrong

If the self-service says a different amount from your payslip, the employer who earned the holiday is responsible for what was reported, so that is the conversation to have first. Then, if it is still wrong, ask the holiday fund that shows as the payer ATP.

If a decision from the holiday fund goes against you, complaint deadlines apply, and they are short, so diarise the date in the letter immediately.

If you are leaving the country and everything is tangled, do two things before departure: keep the bank account open, and make a written claim to the employer and the fund, so there is a record when you follow up from abroad borger.dk.