Employment Rights in Lithuania — Contract, Hours, Leave, Sick Pay, Notice and Severance (2026)

What Has to Be in Writing

Article 43 of the Code requires an employment contract to be concluded in writing, in two copies, one for each side, and any later change to it to be in writing too. The Ministry of Social Security and Labour approves the model form. An oral agreement to work is not a lawful contract here; it is an employer's breach, and the work still counts as employment when the dispute is heard.

Article 34 fixes the three terms without which there is no contract at all: the work function, the pay and the place of work. Everything else is optional in the sense that its absence does not void the contract — and is not optional in the sense that the Code supplies a default the employer cannot go below.

A contract that promises more than the Code — thirty days of leave, three months of notice, a fixed bonus — is enforceable at the better figure. A contract that promises less is enforceable at the Code's figure. This is why reading a Lithuanian employment contract is a short exercise: the parts that matter are the ones that beat the statute.

The Contract Types

The Code recognises eight kinds of employment contract, and the type decides how long the job can last and how easily it ends. Six of the eight were introduced with the 2017 Code and are still unusual outside the sectors they were written for.

A fixed-term contract is not a cheaper open-ended one. When it ends because its term expired and the employment lasted more than 2 years, article 69 gives the employee severance of 1 average monthly wage. A fixed-term contract that runs past its own end date without either side objecting becomes open-ended, and so does one concluded for permanent work in the first place — the term has to be justified by the work, not by the employer's preference.

An apprenticeship contract lets the employer recover training costs, but only up to 20% of the employee's average wage as a deduction, and only under the conditions in articles 81 to 84. A clause demanding the full cost of a course back is not enforceable at that figure.

Probation

Probation, the išbandymas, is agreed in the contract or it does not exist. Article 36 puts a hard ceiling on it: 3 months, not counting days the employee was off sick, on leave or otherwise legitimately absent. Extending it by agreement is expressly prohibited, and on a fixed-term contract shorter than 6 months the probation has to be proportionately shorter than 3 months rather than the full period.

During probation either side can end the contract with 3 working days' written notice. The employer owes no severance where it terminates because the employee's results were unsatisfactory. The employee's own notice under article 36(4) may be withdrawn by the next working day; after that it stands and the employer must formalise the ending by the last working day.

Working Time and Overtime

The standard working week is 40 hours. Article 114 then imposes three separate ceilings that all apply at once, and the one people miss is the first.

Overtime is ordered, not volunteered. Article 119 lets the employer require it only with the employee's written consent, and without consent only in the narrow cases the article lists: preventing or dealing with an accident or emergency, and finishing work or repairing a breakdown whose failure would stop a large number of other people working. A collective agreement can add cases. An employee with a disability may work overtime only with a doctor's approval and their own consent.

Sixty hours is not a licence to work sixty hours. The 60-hour figure in article 114(2) is an absolute weekly ceiling for one exceptional week, not a working pattern. Article 114(1) still requires the average over the whole accounting period to stay at or under 48 hours a week, and the annual overtime allowance of 180 hours runs out long before a regular 60-hour week could be sustained. Both are checked by the State Labour Inspectorate against the employer's own time records, which article 120 requires it to keep.

Article 144 prices work outside normal conditions, and the multipliers stack rather than substitute:

Annual Leave

Article 126 sets the minimum at 20 working days for an employee on a five-day week and 24 working days for one on a six-day week — the same 4 weeks, counted against a different denominator. Anyone working a pattern that is neither gets at least 4 weeks. Public holidays falling inside a leave period are not counted as leave days.

Four categories get more: employees under 18, lone parents raising a child under 14 or a disabled child under 18, and employees with a disability. Their minimum is 25 working days on a five-day week, 30 on a six-day week, or 5 weeks.

1. It accrues from the first day

   Article 127 grounds the right to take leave in having accrued at least one working day of it, and the leave year runs from the date the employment contract started rather than from January.

2. Some non-working time still counts

   Article 127 lists eleven categories of period that count towards the leave year — actual work, business trips, temporary incapacity, maternity and paternity leave, study leave, and up to 10 working days a year of unpaid leave taken with the employer's agreement.

3. In the first year, half the working days first

   Article 128 lets the employer defer leave in the first working year until the employee has worked at least half the working days of that period — with named exceptions the employer must grant on request, including pregnant employees before or after maternity leave and teachers during the school holidays.

4. One block of at least ten days

   Leave may be split, but article 128 requires at least one part to be no shorter than 10 working days, 12 on a six-day week, or two weeks on any other pattern.

5. After three years it is gone

   Article 127(5) extinguishes the right to use annual leave 3 years after the end of the calendar year in which the full entitlement accrued, unless the employee genuinely could not take it.

Leave cannot be bought out while the employment continues. Article 127 permits money in place of leave in one case only — on termination, when the employer must pay compensation for every unused day still within the 3-year window. That payment is part of the final settlement and is subject to the same deadline and the same penalty as unpaid wages.

Sick Pay

A Lithuanian sick note splits in two. The employer pays the first 2 days of incapacity that fall on the employee's own working schedule, at no less than 62.06% and no more than 100% of the employee's average wage — the exact percentage inside that band is the employer's choice, and a generous employer that pays the full wage for two days is doing something the law permits rather than requires. Sodra pays from day 3 onwards, at 62.06% of compensated earnings.

Two rates sit above the standard one. Caring for a sick family member or child is paid at 65.94%, and incapacity following the donation of an organ or tissue at 77.58% — and from the first day, with no employer-paid opening at all. The benefit has a floor of 11.64% of the country's average monthly wage for the quarter before last, which for 2026 works out at €13.45 a day; compensated earnings are capped at 2 average wages, which puts the 2026 ceiling at €2,998.37 a month for your own illness and €3,185.83 for family care.

Each employer pays its own first two days. The rule is written per employer, not per illness: someone holding two jobs has the opening 2 days paid twice, once by each. The insurance record works the other way — 3 months of sickness contributions in the last 12, or 6 in the last 24, counted across every employer together. A first job in Lithuania therefore usually has to run a full quarter before Sodra will pay anything at all.

Notice, Grounds and Severance

There is no dismissal at will in Lithuania except at a price. Every route out of a contract has its own article, its own notice and its own severance, and the money follows the ground rather than the wording of the letter.

Article 57 — the employer, without the employee's fault. Five grounds, and the first is redundancy: the employee's work function becomes superfluous because of a change in the organisation of work or other reasons on the employer's side. The other four are failure to reach agreed results under an improvement plan, refusal to work on changed essential conditions, objection to the transfer of the business, and a decision that ends the employer's existence.

Article 59 is the expensive door. It lets an employer end a contract for a reason that is not the employee's fault and not one of article 57's grounds, on 3 working days' notice — and charges at least 6 average monthly wages for the privilege. It is closed to state and municipal institutions, budget-funded bodies, state enterprises and the Bank of Lithuania, and it may not be used against someone for whistleblowing, for taking part in proceedings against the employer, or for complaining about discrimination.

Article 56 is the employee's exit with money. An employee may end an open-ended contract on 5 working days' notice, with severance of 2 average monthly wages, where work has been suspended through no fault of theirs for more than 30 consecutive days or 45 days in twelve months; where the employer has failed to pay the full wage for 2 consecutive months or has breached its health-and-safety duties; where the employee cannot work for reasons of illness, disability or caring for a family member who needs continuous care; or where the employee reaches pension age. Two months of short payslips is therefore not only a claim for the arrears — it is a route out with two months' pay.

Article 55 is the ordinary resignation. 20 calendar days in writing, no reason required, and no severance. The notice may be withdrawn within 3 working days of giving it; after that the employer has to agree.

On top of article 57's severance, article 57(9) points at a separate payment from Sodra's Long-term Employment Fund for employees with an unbroken record with the same employer, which the unemployment benefits page sets out alongside the unemployment benefit itself.

Wages and the Final Settlement

Article 146 requires wages to be paid at least 2 times a month, or once a month if the employee asks for that in writing, and in either case no later than 10 working days after the end of the month worked unless a collective agreement or the contract sets a different date. The employer must give the employee the figures behind the payment on request.

When the employment ends, article 146 requires everything owed to be paid by the last day of the employment relationship. The two sides may agree to settle within 10 working days instead — but even then, the part of the wage and related payments not exceeding one month's average pay has to be in the employee's account on the last day. Unused annual leave is paid out in the same settlement.

Article 147 attaches a price to getting this wrong. Where the employer fails without good reason to settle with a departing employee, it owes netesybos — a penalty equal to the employee's average monthly wage multiplied by the number of months of delay, up to 6 months, and calculated proportionately for a delay shorter than a month. That is the single largest number an employee can put in front of a labour disputes commission, and it accrues without the employee doing anything except waiting.

The Labour Disputes Commission

Nearly every individual employment dispute in Lithuania starts at a labour disputes commission, the darbo ginčų komisija, and not in court. The commissions sit at the territorial divisions of the State Labour Inspectorate, each with a neutral chair and one member each from the employers' and the trade unions' side, and article 213 makes them the compulsory pre-trial stage for a dispute about rights. Applying costs nothing.

1. Apply in writing, within the deadline

   Article 223 lets the application be filed on paper or electronically, and lists what it must contain: both parties' details, the claim itself, the facts and evidence relied on, and the documents attached. Several employees of the same employer whose disputes share a legal basis may apply together.

2. Fix any deficiencies in five working days

   An application that does not meet article 223's requirements is returned with a list and 5 working days to correct it. Uncorrected, it is treated as never filed.

3. The commission hears it within a month

   The application is examined within 1 month of its receipt.

4. The decision becomes enforceable after a month

   Under articles 229 and 231 either side may bring a claim in court within 1 month of the decision. If neither does, the decision takes effect and becomes an enforceable instrument a bailiff can act on.

One month for a dismissal, three for everything else. Article 220 gives 3 months from the day the employee learned, or should have learned, of the breach — but only 1 month where the dispute is about an unlawful dismissal, an unlawful suspension from work or a breach of a collective agreement. The commission may restore a missed deadline where the reasons for missing it were important, and the request has to explain the circumstances; where it refuses, the applicant has 1 month from that decision to go to court instead.

The State Labour Inspectorate itself is a separate route and answers a different question. It inspects and fines employers over working time, safety and undeclared work; it does not award an individual employee unpaid wages. Money claims go to the commission.

When Your Permit Is Tied to the Employer

A temporary residence permit issued on the basis of work rests on a specific employer and a specific job. Losing the job does not end the permit on the day the contract does, but it starts two clocks, and the Migration Information Centre states both.

The permission to change employer, once granted, holds for 1 month — long enough to sign, not long enough to shop around. Where the Migration Department decides to withdraw a permit, it takes the decision within 14 days of learning of the circumstances, and the permit becomes invalid once the period for appealing that decision has run.

A dispute about the dismissal and the immigration consequence run on different timetables and neither waits for the other. The labour disputes commission's 1-month deadline for a dismissal claim and the 10 working days for the MIGRIS notification both start from the same date, and winning the first months later does not undo a permit lost in the meantime.

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Common Mistakes

Treating the contract as the whole of the deal. The Code's minimums apply whether or not the contract repeats them, and a clause below a minimum is void to the extent it falls short. The parts of a contract worth negotiating are the ones that beat the statute — more leave, longer notice, a fixed bonus.

Reading the sixty-hour ceiling as a permitted schedule. Article 114(2)'s 60 hours is the outer limit for an exceptional week. The average across the accounting period still has to sit at or under 48 hours, and the 180-hour annual overtime allowance runs out first.

Assuming overtime is compulsory. Article 119 requires written consent except in the emergencies it names. Consent to 12 hours a week rather than 8 is a separate consent again.

Saving up leave. Article 127(5) extinguishes it 3 years after the end of the calendar year in which it accrued, and the compensation paid on termination is limited to what is still inside that window.

Expecting Sodra to pay from day one. The first 2 days are the employer's, and Sodra pays nothing at all until 3 months of sickness contributions in the last 12 have accumulated — which a first job in Lithuania does not have.

Missing the one-month dismissal deadline. Article 220's general deadline is 3 months, and the deadline for the claim most people bring is 1. Waiting to see whether the employer pays the settlement is how the shorter one is missed.

Signing a resignation letter when article 57 applies. An employee who resigns under article 55 gets no severance; the same departure handled as a redundancy under article 57 carries 2 average monthly wages and a month's notice. Employers ask, and the difference is the whole of the money.

Waiting for a new job offer before notifying MIGRIS. The 10 working days run from the end of the employment, not from the offer.

Frequently Asked Questions