Leave rules in Georgia in 2026: a practical guide for employers and employees

Leave is more than a calendar

Leave affects schedules, attendance, payroll, balances and monthly work-time reporting. A wrongly classified day can change salary, underwork, overtime or compliance records, so company leave policy should follow Georgian labour law and be implemented consistently.

Minimum annual leave

Georgia’s current Labour Code gives employees at least 24 working days of paid annual leave. It also recognises a minimum annual entitlement to unpaid leave. Contracts and internal policies may improve these conditions but may not reduce the statutory minimum.

When can leave be requested?

As a general rule, an employee may request leave after 11 months of work. The parties may agree to grant it earlier. From the second year, leave timing may be agreed during the working year and leave may be divided into parts.

Unpaid leave is separate

Paid and unpaid leave should remain distinct categories. The request, dates, leave type, balance and managerial decision should be recorded separately because payroll treatment is different.

Carry-over

Where taking leave in the current year could seriously disrupt the normal work process, carry-over may be possible with the employee’s consent. Consecutive carry-over is restricted, so unlimited accumulation in spreadsheets is not a sound HR practice.

Leave pay

The Labour Code sets calculation principles for leave remuneration. For fixed monthly remuneration, the last month’s remuneration is an important statutory reference. Other remuneration structures may rely on an average-based calculation.

Maternity, parental and adoption leave

Separate statutory rules apply to maternity, parental and newborn-adoption leave. Paid maternity leave is 126 calendar days and rises to 143 days in cases such as complicated childbirth or twins.

Rigi24 leave management

Rigi24 HR Manager can maintain leave types, balances, requests, approval history and the link to attendance and payroll. Employees submit from their personal account, authorised managers decide, and balance-aware checks can warn when paid entitlement is insufficient.

Eight-language experience

The HR interface is designed for Georgian, English, Russian, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Armenian and Azerbaijani.

Designing a company leave policy

The Labour Code sets minimum rights, but employers still need a clear internal process. A good policy explains how a request is submitted, who approves it, how peak periods are handled, how urgent leave is recorded and when a request becomes final. Internal rules can organize the process but should not reduce statutory rights.

Key terms should be defined consistently: working day, calendar day, paid leave, unpaid leave, sickness, parental leave and absence. Shift-based organisations especially need schedule-aware rules because a day without a scheduled shift should not automatically consume annual leave.

What do 24 working days actually mean?

Georgia’s statutory minimum is 24 working days of paid annual leave. Working days are not the same as calendar days. For a five-day employee, weekly rest days normally do not consume the working-day entitlement. For shift workers, the approved schedule is essential to determine which days are leave days.

This is one reason HR software should understand schedules rather than merely storing a start and end date. The leave engine needs to know when the employee was actually expected to work.

Unpaid leave and the two-week notice rule

The Labour Code requires two weeks’ advance notice for unpaid leave in the ordinary case, unless urgent medical necessity or family circumstances make advance notice impossible. This rule is operationally important because managers need time to plan capacity.

Rigi24 can keep paid and unpaid leave as separate request types. Exhausting paid entitlement should not silently convert a request into a different category; the employee request and the manager decision remain auditable.

Periods counted toward leave entitlement

The period used to calculate the commencement of the right to request leave includes actual work and idle time caused by the employer. Unjustified absence and more than a specified amount of unpaid leave are treated differently under the Code.

Operationally, this means day statuses matter. A simple present/absent spreadsheet loses the legal meaning of why the employee was not working.

Carrying leave into the next year

Paid leave is not intended to accumulate indefinitely. If taking leave in the current year may negatively affect normal operations, it may be carried over with the employee’s consent, but the Code restricts consecutive carry-over. Minors are subject to an additional restriction.

An HRMS should therefore track the source year of each balance. Without year-specific carry-over records, a balance can become impossible to audit after several cycles.

Leave pay and payroll integration

Leave pay is determined using statutory remuneration rules: generally the average of the previous three months, a shorter worked-period average where relevant, or the last month’s remuneration for fixed monthly pay. These inputs belong in payroll data, not in an isolated manual calculation.

Once leave is approved, payroll needs to know whether each day is paid leave, unpaid leave or actual work. Keeping these categories distinct prevents duplicate payment, incorrect deductions and false underwork.

Unused leave at termination

When employment is terminated on the employer’s initiative, the Labour Code provides for proportional compensation for unused leave. Leave balance can therefore have a direct financial effect at final settlement.

Reliable settlement depends on a history of accrued, used and carried leave. Rigi24 can keep that history next to employment and payroll records instead of relying on a private spreadsheet.

Additional leave and special conditions

The Labour Code provides additional paid leave for certain arduous, harmful or hazardous work and other specific statutory circumstances. These entitlements should be configured separately from ordinary annual leave.

Separating leave types gives HR clearer balances, cleaner reporting and better payroll treatment across different employee groups.

A 50-employee example

Consider a company with 50 employees, three departments and several schedules. Twelve people request summer leave across overlapping dates. When requests live in chats and spreadsheets, managers struggle to understand department coverage and approval status.

In Rigi24, requests remain attached to each employee, relevant managers review them, balances are visible before approval and approved leave can flow into attendance and payroll. One decision does not require several disconnected manual entries.

Common employer mistakes

Frequent mistakes include deducting weekly rest days from annual leave without checking the schedule, silently changing unpaid leave into paid leave, failing to retain approval history, maintaining the only balance copy in one HR employee’s spreadsheet and recording approved leave as absence or underwork.

Another mistake is treating an internal policy as if it can remove statutory minimum rights. Internal policy should make administration clearer, not replace the law.

An HR implementation checklist

For each employee, keep the hire date, work pattern, entitlement, balance, requests, approvals and carry-over history. Separate paid, unpaid, maternity, parental, adoption, sickness and company-specific leave categories.

Before payroll closes each month, reconcile approved leave with attendance. Before year-end, review balances and carry-over so errors are not rolled into the next year.

How Rigi24 automates the leave cycle

Rigi24 treats leave as part of Workforce rather than a standalone calendar. Employees request leave from self-service, authorised managers review it, balance rules can be checked and the outcome can feed attendance and payroll reporting.

The same workflow can be used through an eight-language interface—Georgian, English, Russian, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Armenian and Azerbaijani—while keeping one central data record.

Official sources and further reading

• Labour Code of Georgia — official Georgian text
• Labour Code of Georgia — official English text

Legal information is general guidance. For a real case, verify the current Matsne text and the relevant official portal.

Frequently asked questions

What is the minimum paid annual leave?

At least 24 working days per year.

What is the minimum unpaid leave?

At least 15 working days per year.

When can leave normally be requested?

After 11 months of work, unless the parties agree earlier.

Can leave be carried over?

In statutory circumstances with employee consent, but not for two consecutive years.

Can Rigi24 track leave balances?

Yes. Leave type, balance, request and approval can be managed as one workflow.