Christmas bonus 2026 in Greece: what to know now

The bonus is a duty that the law puts on every private-sector employer, through joint ministerial decision 19040/1981 and article 142 of Presidential Decree 62/20251. The boss does not hand it out for a good year, and you do not earn it through performance. It does not depend on the profits of the business, on its size, or on whether your contract mentions it.

You are entitled to it whether you are paid a monthly salary or a daily wage, and whether you work full-time or part-time1. The type of contract does not change the right either. On an open-ended or a fixed-term contract, you are an employee and the bonus is yours. Nor do you need to have worked the whole period. If you joined in September, you get part of it. If you leave in October, your employer pays your share in the final settlement, together with your last salary.

There is one more thing that few people know. Days of annual leave, sick leave and public holidays count as working days1. If you spent two weeks in bed with flu in October, or took your normal leave in August, your bonus does not shrink by a single euro.

The bonus is for employees. If you work as a freelancer on invoices, the self-employed route known in Greece as «μπλοκάκι», your client owes you no bonus, because you are not their employee. The guide Freelance or employee explains what you gain and lose under each.

The Christmas bonus covers eight months, from 1 May to 31 December. That is 245 calendar days, weekends and public holidays included. Anyone employed for the whole of that period gets the full bonus.

Anyone employed for less gets 2/25 of their salary for every 19 days1. The sum keeps the decimals. Thirty days, for example, do not count as one block of 19. They count as one and a half blocks and a little more.

The same applies at the other end. If your job ends before 31 December, the count stops on the last day of your contract, and the calculator asks for that date as well.

Here is the bonus on €1,200 gross, by the day you started:

One detail of the sum: the bonus fills up a little before 245 days. If you started by 8 May, you have 238 days and you already get the full bonus. How to count your own days one by one, and why this happens, is in the step-by-step calculation, out on 30 November.

The full bonus is one gross salary plus an uplift of 4.1666%1. The uplift is the share of the holiday allowance that belongs to the bonus. It goes into every bonus, full or half, and that is why the bonus always comes out a little higher than your salary.

Do not confuse it with the holiday allowance itself. That is a separate payment, up to half a salary, which you receive when you go on leave2. The uplift in the bonus comes on top and does not replace it.

On the minimum wage, which has been €920 since 1 April 20263, the bonus for the whole period is €958.33 gross. On €1,500 gross it is €1,562.50. The gap above the salary is about one twenty-fourth of it. It is small, but on a salary of €1,500 it fills a supermarket trolley.

The same two deductions that come out of your salary come out of the gross bonus. Your contributions to e-EFKA, the national social insurance fund, are 13.37% of the bonus4. The tax is your average tax rate for the whole year, because the employer spreads the tax of the year over 14 payments5.

This means the bonus has no special tax of its own. Nor does it push you into a higher band because it arrives together with your December salary. It takes the same share of tax as each of your salaries, and that is why the net bonus is also a little higher than your net salary.

The net figures in the table are for someone with no children and over 30. From 2026 the tax scale changes with children and age6. On €1,500 gross, a parent of two keeps €1,263.22 of the bonus, and someone aged 25 or under keeps €1,353.59. The reasons, in full detail, are in the article How much tax comes off the bonus, out on 4 December.

One more point confuses many people in December. If the bonus comes on the same payslip as your salary, the tax at the bottom is the total of two payments, and it looks doubled. You are not paying extra tax. You are seeing the tax on the salary and the tax on the bonus together, each at the same rate.

Two groups of workers often ask whether the bonus applies to them: people paid a daily wage and people who work fewer hours. The answer is yes for both, with a small change in the sum.

On a daily wage, the full bonus is 25 daily wages, and for part of the period it is 2 daily wages for every 19 days1. The 4.1666% uplift applies here too. On the minimum daily wage of €41.093, the bonus for the whole period is €1,070.05 gross. If you started on 1 September on the same daily wage, it is €549.67. Here too the days follow the calendar, not the number of shifts you worked.

Part-time, the bonus is worked out on the salary you earn for your hours. Four hours a day, five days a week, on the minimum wage, pays €460 gross a month, so the bonus is €479.17 gross. On such a small salary the monthly tax is €0.00, so almost nothing but contributions comes out of the bonus, and €415.10 is left net.

Both cases have their own traps, such as hours that changed during the year or seasonal work. We cover them in detail in the articles on part-time work and on daily-paid workers, on 2 and 3 December.

Your employer pays the bonus by 21 December1. This year the day falls on a Monday, so no weekend muddles the count. The 21st is the last day of the deadline. Your employer may pay earlier, but does not have to.

What your employer cannot do is pay later. Even a remark such as “we will pay it with the December salary, at the end of the month” does not move the deadline. If nothing has arrived by 22 December, the payment is late, and you have every reason to ask in writing what is going on.

If you still are not paid, you can file a complaint with the Labour Inspectorate7. The steps, from the first written message to the complaint, are in the article Your employer did not pay the bonus, out on 11 December.

The page When the Christmas bonus is paid counts down the days for you. If you are planning holiday spending, put the 21st, the last day, in your plans. A payment that comes earlier is a pleasant surprise. A payment you expected on the 15th that arrives on the 21st can leave you in a tight spot with your card.

The bonus is not worked out on your average salary for the year. It is worked out on the salary you have on 10 December, which is why the Christmas bonus calculator asks for exactly that figure1. If you got a rise in November, or if a rise starts on 1 December, the whole bonus is worked out on the new salary.

You can see this clearly this year with the minimum wage. Up to March it was €880, and from 1 April 2026 it became €9203. The Christmas bonus, though, counts from 1 May, and its base is the December salary. So anyone on the minimum wage gets the whole bonus on €920, which is €958.33 gross.

The reverse also holds. If your hours were cut during the year, and your salary with them, the base is the salary you have in December. After a change like that, it is worth asking the payroll office how they work out your bonus, and asking to see it on the payslip.

If you leave before December, the base is the salary of your last day1. And if, besides your basic salary, you receive fixed allowances under your collective agreement every month, ask which of them go into the base of the bonus. The answer changes the amount, and it is better to know it now.

The bonus follows the days you spent with each employer. If you changed jobs during the period, each employer pays the share for the days you worked for them1. The old employer pays it when you leave, in the final settlement. The new one pays its own days by 21 December.

This holds however the old job ended: by resignation, by dismissal or at the end of a fixed-term contract. The guide When you leave a job shows what else the final settlement includes, and the Resignation calculator works out the amounts with your own dates.

Nobody pays for the days between two jobs. If you left on 31 August and started on 21 September, the 20 days in between are missing from your bonus. This case, with all the sums, has its own article, Christmas bonus after changing jobs, out on 1 December.

November is the best month to check your bonus, because it has not been paid yet. A mistake you find now is fixed with one phone call. A mistake you find on 22 December means letters and waiting.

Find the day you started. If you joined before 1 May, you get the full bonus. If you joined later, the date is in your contract and on your first payslip. Count the days to 31 December.

Find out your salary on 10 December. If you expect a rise, ask when it starts. If you are paid fixed allowances, ask which of them go into the base.

Run the sum in the calculator. The Christmas bonus calculator shows the gross, the contributions, the tax and the net, with your children and your age. Keep the figure in a note on your phone.

Plan with the net figure. The gross sounds nicer, but the net is what lands in the bank. Unless your salary is small, the gap between them is a few hundred euros.

Split the amount before it arrives. Write down now where it will go: one part for presents, one for travel, and one for January, which always brings bills and never a bonus. The Budget tool helps you set a limit for each part, and on 6 December you will find an article on holiday presents within your budget.

Keep your November payslip. You will need it to compare the salary, the contributions and the tax with the lines of the bonus, when it comes.