Every Moroccan employee is entitled to paid annual leave once they have 6 months of continuous service with the same employer, 1.5 working days per month worked, i.e. 18 working days per year, or 2 days a month for employees under 18, under Labour Code article 231. The Code then grants a 1.5-day uplift for each 5-year block of seniority, capped at 30 days total. Leave is counted in working days: every day except the weekly rest day, paid holidays and public holidays. If you leave the company before taking accrued leave, the cash equivalent is owed. Below: the full scale, scheduling rules, and what to do if your employer denies leave.
Base entitlement
1.5 working days per month of service, i.e. 18 working days per year (Labour Code article 231). Employees under 18 get 2 days per month, 24 a year.
For the count, a month of work means 26 working days, or 191 hours of work outside agriculture and 208 hours in agriculture (article 238). Some time off counts as work and is not deducted: last year’s leave, a notice period, sick leave certified by a doctor, maternity leave, a work accident, the family-event absences below, and authorized absences of up to ten days a year (article 239).
Seniority uplift
The Code grants a 1.5-day uplift for each 5-year block of seniority, up to 30 days total.
| Seniority | Annual entitlement |
|---|---|
| < 5 years | 18 days |
| 5-10 years | 19.5 days |
| 10-15 years | 21 days |
| 15-20 years | 22.5 days |
| 20-25 years | 24 days |
| 25-30 years | 25.5 days |
| 30-35 years | 27 days |
| 35-40 years | 28.5 days |
| 40 years or more (cap) | 30 days |
Example: with 12 years of service, the annual entitlement is 18 + 2 × 1.5 = 21 working days. Eight months into the leave year, the employee has accrued 21 × 8 ÷ 12 = 14 days. The leave calculator does this from your dates.
Working days vs business days
The Code counts leave in days of effective work, which it defines as every day other than the weekly rest day, paid holidays and the public holidays the workplace closes for (article 236). It gives no conversion for a five-day week. If your employer counts leave in business days, the collective agreement or internal rules set the equivalence, and they can be more generous than the Code but not less (article 231).
Scheduling and splitting
- Leave can be taken at any time of year (article 244).
- The employer sets the leave dates after consulting staff delegates and, where there are any, union representatives. Each employee’s departure date is set after consulting them, taking account of family situation and seniority (article 245).
- The order of departures must be given to every employee at least 30 days before they leave, posted in the workplace and kept in a register (article 246).
- Leave can be split or carried over to the next year only by agreement between you and the employer, and never across more than two consecutive years. Splitting can’t leave you with a block shorter than twelve days, two of them weekly rest days (article 240).
- Public holidays and paid holidays falling during leave extend it, and days off sick are not counted as leave (article 235).
Leave pay
- During leave, the employee receives pay equivalent to what they would have earned working (article 249), including salary and its extras, in cash or in kind (article 250).
- If the contract ends before all accrued leave has been taken, a compensatory payment is owed for it, including any untaken leave from the two previous years. Every month started counts as a full month (article 251).
- Even short of six months, anyone who has worked at least a month is owed 1.5 days (2 if under 18) per full month when the contract ends (article 252), whatever the reason it ended (article 254).
Watch-outs
- You can’t sell your leave. Any agreement to give up leave in advance or abandon it is void, even in exchange for a payment (article 242). Cash for leave is only owed when the contract ends.
- On a fixed-term contract, all your leave has to be taken before the contract’s end date (article 233).
- If you resign without working your notice, the employer may offset the leave payment against the notice payment it is owed (article 255).
- A contract, collective agreement, internal rules or established practice can give more leave than the Code, and the more generous terms apply (article 231).
- If leave rights are denied, raise the matter quickly with the labour inspectorate or the social court.
Leave for family events
Separately from annual leave, article 274 gives these absences:
| Event | Days |
|---|---|
| Your own marriage | 4 |
| Marriage of your child, or of your spouse’s child from a previous marriage | 2 |
| Death of a spouse, child, grandchild, or parent or grandparent, or of your spouse’s child from a previous marriage | 3 |
| Death of a brother or sister, a brother or sister of your spouse, or a parent of your spouse | 2 |
| Circumcision | 2 |
| Surgery on your spouse or a dependent child | 2 |
Unless your contract, collective agreement or internal rules say otherwise, these absences are paid only to employees paid by the month. Two are paid for everyone: two days for your own marriage, and one day for the death of your spouse, father, mother or child (article 276).
Related tool
Enter your hire date into the paid-leave calculator and see your accrued balance instantly, with the seniority uplift.
Looking for an employer with stronger leave?
The Code sets a floor, and a collective agreement or company rules can go above it. Browse jobs in Morocco on Bayt.com and ask about leave explicitly at offer time.
Further reading
- Labour Code glossary entry, articles 231 and following
- Guide: Severance pay calculation, accrued leave is paid out at termination
- Guide: Understanding your Moroccan payslip, leave-pay line items decoded
- Guide: CDI and CDD rules, how leave accrues differently across contract types
- Guide: First job checklist, when your first leave starts accruing
- Blog: Remote work in Morocco, leave is location-neutral
Source
Labour Code (Law 65-99), as published in Bulletin officiel n° 5210 of 6 May 2004: articles 231 to 255 (annual paid leave) and 274 to 276 (family-event absences), read 15 October 2026.