The 2027 Berlin Leave Year, Drawn on the Calendar
Set the leave days you actually have for 2027, then add the breaks you are considering and watch the year fill up. The ten Berlin public holidays, the six Berlin school holiday windows and every weekend are already drawn before you touch anything.
Public holiday and school holiday dates read from the Berlin Senate listings on 9 September 2026. Days off assume a Monday to Friday week; part-time and shift patterns change the arithmetic.
Most people plan next year’s leave from memory, which is how the good windows go to whoever answered the email first. 2027 makes that expensive in Berlin: four of the ten public holidays land on a weekend, only six fall on a working day, and every one of those six happens between 1 January and 17 May. After Whit Monday there are 228 days with no free weekday at all. This planner draws the whole year first, with the weekends, the ten holidays and the Berlin school holiday bands already in place, so the shape of the problem is visible before you make a single choice. Then you type the number of leave days you really have, add the breaks you are weighing up, and each one paints its leave days and the days off it wins onto the calendar while a running total tracks what is left in the bank. The school holiday band matters more than it looks: section 7 of the Bundesurlaubsgesetz gives colleagues with school-age children priority on social grounds, so a window that sits inside a Berlin school holiday is contested before you ask for it.
What this planner draws
The complete 2027 calendar, twelve month rows of day cells, before you interact with it at all. Weekends are shaded, the ten Berlin public holidays are marked in yellow, and a thin band under a cell means a Berlin school holiday. That alone answers the first question most people have, which is why 2027 feels thin: 1 May is a Saturday, 3 October is a Sunday, and both Christmas holidays fall on the weekend.
How the running total works
Type the leave days your contract gives you, then add any of the eight named breaks. Each one paints the leave days you spend in dark green and the days off you win in pale green, and the counters show days spent, days still in the bank, total days off and the ratio between them. Adding two overlapping Easter weeks does not double count: the calendar shows the union, which is exactly why taking both weeks is a worse rate than taking one.
Why the school holiday band is on the calendar
Section 7 of the Bundesurlaubsgesetz says your employer must take your leave wishes into account unless urgent operational needs or the wishes of colleagues who deserve priority on social grounds get in the way, and in practice that usually means colleagues with school-age children. In 2027, five of the six good windows sit inside a Berlin school holiday. The exception is the week of 9 to 12 March, and the planner flags each collision so you can see which requests will be argued over.
What it cannot do
It assumes a Monday to Friday week, so part-time, shift and four-day patterns need their own arithmetic. It does not know your company shutdown, your team rota or whether someone already booked the same days. Holiday dates are set by Berlin law and the school dates by the Senate holiday order, but both can be amended, so check them again before a request that matters.