Singapore Leave Entitlements 2026: Employer Guide and NDR Changes

If you employ people in Singapore, the Employment Act sets the floors for annual and sick leave, and the government runs the childcare and parental schemes. At the National Day Rally on 23 August 2026 it also announced a major change to childcare leave. This guide collects what a Singapore employer owes in 2026, with statutory numbers linked to MOM or MSF, and flags the one thing to hold off on in your handbook for now.

A note on scope: this is a practical summary for employers, not legal advice, and reflects MOM and MSF guidance as of 25 October 2026. The linked MOM and MSF pages are the authority; check them before you finalise policy.

The short version

For an employee covered by the Employment Act in 2026 (the government-paid parental schemes apply to parents of Singapore citizen children):

Leave type	Entitlement	Who pays
Annual leave	7 days in year 1, rising to 14 from year 8	Employer
Outpatient sick leave	Up to 14 days per year	Employer
Hospitalisation leave	Up to 60 days per year (includes the 14)	Employer
Childcare leave (Singapore citizen child under 7)	6 days per parent per year	Employer pays days 1 to 3; government reimburses days 4 to 6, capped at S$500 per day
Extended childcare leave (Singapore citizen child 7 to 12)	2 days per parent per year	Government reimburses, capped at S$500 per day and S$1,000 per year
Childcare leave (non-citizen child under 7)	2 days per parent per year, under the Employment Act	Employer
Maternity leave	16 weeks	1st and 2nd child: employer pays weeks 1 to 8, government reimburses weeks 9 to 16. From the 3rd child: government reimburses all 16 weeks. Capped
Paternity leave	4 weeks	Government reimburses, capped at S$2,500 per week
Shared parental leave	10 weeks, shared between both parents, for babies born on or after 1 April 2026	Government-paid, capped at S$2,500 per week

Most entitlements require at least 3 months of service, and several pro-rate for new joiners. The details, and the mistakes people actually make, are below.

Annual leave: 7 days in year one, 14 from year eight

Under the Employment Act, an employee qualifies for paid annual leave after 3 months of service. The statutory floor starts at 7 days for the first year and rises by one day per year of service, reaching 14 days from the eighth year onward.

Two things worth being clear-eyed about:

1. This is the legal minimum. Many Singapore employers offer more from day one to compete for professional hires, so benchmark against your own hiring market.
2. Whatever you offer above the floor is contractual. The Act governs the statutory portion; your handbook governs the rest, so write the handbook carefully.

Pro-rating annual leave correctly

For an employee who has not completed a full year, MOM's formula is:

(Completed months of service ÷ 12) × annual entitlement, rounded to the nearest whole day (round up from half a day). Incomplete months do not count, periods of approved unpaid leave are excluded, and for an employee who has resigned, the notice period counts as service.

Three worked examples on a 14-day policy:

• Joined 1 March, leaving 30 September: 7 completed months. 7 ÷ 12 × 14 = 8.17, so 8 days.
• Joined 15 May, still employed on 31 December: 15 May to 14 December is 7 completed months, so 7 ÷ 12 × 14 = 8.17, or 8 days accrued so far.
• Joined 1 July on the statutory 7-day floor, counted to 31 December: 6 ÷ 12 × 7 = 3.5, which rounds up to 4 days.

A common mistake: counting calendar months instead of completed months of service, which overstates entitlement for mid-month joiners.

Sick and hospitalisation leave: the 14 and 60 day rules

From MOM's sick leave rules: an employee covered by the Employment Act qualifies for paid sick leave after 3 months of service, provided they inform you (or try to) within 48 hours of absence and are certified unfit for work by a registered medical or dental practitioner. Hospitalisation leave must be certified by a doctor who can admit patients into hospitals.

The full entitlement, reached at 6 months of service, is up to 14 days of paid outpatient sick leave and up to 60 days of paid hospitalisation leave per year. The 60 days is a combined cap that includes the 14 outpatient days.

Between 3 and 6 months, entitlement steps up: 5 outpatient and 15 hospitalisation days at 3 completed months, 8 and 30 at 4 months, 11 and 45 at 5 months, then the full 14 and 60 from 6 months. Before 3 months, sick leave is unpaid.

Hospitalisation leave also covers day surgery, quarantine required by law, and doctor-certified bed rest (for example pregnancy complications).

Childcare leave today: 6 days plus 2, and who reimburses what

Under the Government-Paid Childcare Leave scheme, each working parent of a Singapore citizen child under 7 gets 6 days per year after 3 months of continuous service: you pay days 1 to 3, and the government reimburses days 4 to 6, capped at S$500 per day including CPF contributions. Parents of Singapore citizen children aged 7 to 12 get 2 days of extended childcare leave, fully government-reimbursed (capped at S$500 per day and S$1,000 per year). For a non-citizen child under 7, the Employment Act gives 2 days per year, paid by the employer.

A few rules that trip people up:

• The days are per parent per year, regardless of the number of children, and the 6-day yearly cap covers all childcare leave types combined.
• The 6 days pro-rate for joiners and leavers using MSF's step table by months of service, not a simple fraction. Extended childcare leave is not pro-rated.
• There are lifetime caps of 42 days per child for government-paid childcare leave and 12 days per child for extended childcare leave.
• Unused childcare leave cannot be carried forward.

What NDR 2026 changed, and what is still to come

At the National Day Rally on 23 August 2026, the government announced that childcare leave and extended childcare leave will merge into one scheme for Singapore citizen children aged 12 and below. Each working parent will get 8, 10 or 12 days a year for one, two, or three or more children. The government also said it will reimburse employers for the full duration of child-related leave (maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental and childcare leave), up to the reimbursement limits. Employers will still pay first and then claim.

As of 25 October 2026, MSF had not yet published the implementation date or the new reimbursement cap, and its Pro-Family Leave portal and MOM's pages still showed the current rules.

Our advice: brief your managers that the change is coming, and update your handbook and leave system once MSF publishes the start date and rules. Announcements set direction; entitlements are defined by the implementing rules.

Shared parental leave: the 10 weeks that started 1 April 2026

For babies born on or after 1 April 2026, shared parental leave reached 10 weeks under the government-paid scheme (it was 6 weeks for babies born from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026). It is split equally between the parents by default, they can reallocate it, and it is taken after maternity and paternity leave, within 12 months of the birth. It sits on top of 16 weeks of maternity leave and 4 weeks of paternity leave. If you employ new or expecting parents, this materially changes coverage planning for small teams: two people sharing 10 weeks looks very different on a 15-person roster than on a 500-person one.

Carry-forward, forfeiture, and encashment: mostly yours to design

The Employment Act protects the statutory minimum entitlement; how generously you handle everything above it (carry-over caps, expiry dates, encashment on exit) is largely policy. The design choices that prevent disputes:

• State a carry-over cap and an expiry date explicitly, in writing. Silence creates expectations you did not intend.
• Say what happens to unused leave at resignation, in both directions: leave owed to the employee, and leave taken in advance.
• Whatever you decide, apply it uniformly. Inconsistency, not generosity, is what creates grievances.

Check the current MOM guidance when you draft this section; the statutory portion has protections that your policy cannot override.

A leave policy skeleton you can adapt

1. Annual leave: entitlement, accrual method, tenure increases, carry-over cap and expiry.
2. Sick leave: the statutory structure above, plus how employees submit medical certificates and who they notify.
3. Childcare and parental leave: mirror the government schemes and name who to notify.
4. Public holidays: Singapore's gazetted holidays, and your policy when one falls on a rest day.
5. Other leave: compassionate, exam, unpaid. Even one line each beats silence.
6. Process: where requests go, who approves, and how fast.

Setting this up once, instead of recalculating it by hand

Every rule above turns into arithmetic that someone in your company currently does in a spreadsheet: pro-rating for the designer who joined on the 15th, tracking the outpatient versus hospitalisation split, remembering that childcare days are per parent per year.

That mechanical layer is what Sparko's time and leave module handles: 13 built-in leave types, per-country leave, holiday and work-week proposals in the setup wizard, balances and accruals tracked per employee, approval routing to the right manager, and a team calendar with conflict checks before you approve. It ships on every plan, on the same employee record that runs your payroll. One honest boundary: Sparko tracks and applies the policy you configure; it does not compute statutory entitlements for you, so the numbers in this guide, and MOM's pages, remain your source of truth.

Set the policy once, point the system at it, and the recalculating stops being anyone's Tuesday.