Paid leave under a contract of mandate in Poland – the short answer
Paid leave under a contract of mandate in Poland is not a statutory right. If your organization engages contractors in Poland under a umowa zlecenie (contract of mandate), this civil law arrangement is governed by the Polish Civil Code, not the Polish Labour Code — and annual leave is strictly a Labour Code entitlement reserved for employees on an employment contract. For international HR teams used to statutory leave applying broadly across contract types, this distinction is one of the most common compliance traps when managing a Polish workforce.
What a contract of mandate actually is
A contract of mandate is a civil law service agreement, regulated under Articles 734–751 of the Polish Civil Code rather than the Labour Code. Under this framework, the contractor undertakes to perform a defined task diligently and in line with the agreement, and is entitled to remuneration and reimbursement of justified expenses — but the relationship does not create an employment relationship. This is exactly why the Civil Code does not attach the standard package of employee entitlements, including paid leave, to this type of contract.
Why contractors don't get automatic paid leave
Because a contract of mandate does not establish an employment relationship, none of the Labour Code's default employee protections apply automatically — no statutory annual leave, no on-demand leave, no paid overtime. If a contractor stops performing services (for example, to take time off) and the contract says nothing about it, they simply don't get paid for that period. Remuneration under a contract of mandate is, by default, tied to work actually performed, not to the passage of time.
There's also a compliance risk worth flagging to any HR or legal team drafting these contracts: using Labour Code terminology — words like "annual leave," "leave on demand," or "leave equivalent" — inside a contract of mandate can be read by the National Labour Inspectorate (PIP) as evidence that the parties actually intended an employment relationship. That exposes the company to reclassification risk under Article 22 §1 of the Labour Code. The safer wording is "a paid break in the performance of services," which keeps the civil law character of the agreement intact.
How companies can legally offer a paid break
Since paid leave under a contract of mandate in Poland isn't automatic, companies that still want to offer contractors time off with pay need to build it into the contract itself. A workable clause typically defines:
- the number of calendar days per year during which the contractor may pause services without losing pay,
- how remuneration for that period is calculated (for example, based on an average of recent months),
- how the contractor should notify the company before taking the break.
Without this kind of clause, every day the contractor doesn't work is simply unpaid — particularly under hourly-rate contracts, where hours not worked are recorded as zero.
Does the 2026 employment tenure reform change anything?
Starting 1 January 2026 for the public sector, and 1 May 2026 for private employers, Poland's amended Labour Code (enacted 26 September 2025, signed 15 October 2025) allows periods worked under a contract of mandate to count toward an employee's overall employment tenure — provided those periods were subject to social security contributions and are confirmed with a ZUS certificate.
This is a meaningful change for anyone who spent years working on mandate contracts before eventually moving to an employment contract, since it can push them past the 10-year tenure threshold that unlocks 26 days of annual leave instead of 20. It's important, though, to keep two things separate: the reform affects leave entitlement after someone becomes an employee under an employment contract. It does not create a right to paid leave while someone is still working exclusively under a contract of mandate. We cover the documentation side of this reform in more detail in Changes to employment tenure in Poland from 2026 – what employers must know.
The minimum hourly rate isn't a substitute for leave
Since 1 January 2026, the statutory minimum hourly rate for contracts of mandate in Poland is PLN 31.40 gross, set by the Council of Ministers' regulation of 11 September 2025 (Journal of Laws 2025, item 1242). This guarantee protects pay for hours actually worked — it has nothing to do with leave. If a contractor isn't performing services and the contract doesn't include a paid-break clause, there's simply no minimum rate to apply for that time, because there are no hours to pay for. This makes accurate time recording essential for contracts settled on an hourly basis, both to demonstrate compliance with the minimum rate and to correctly account for any agreed paid break.
How Time Harmony helps HR teams track contractor time
Time Harmony lets you record time worked under contracts of mandate alongside standard employment contracts, whether settlement is hourly or lump-sum. That gives HR and finance teams a single source of data to:
- demonstrate compliance with the statutory minimum hourly rate,
- generate cost reports for a specific contract or project,
- properly document any agreed paid break in the contract, without mislabeling it as statutory "leave" in the system.
The Activity Records module also gives the possibility of registering the time of activities performed by a given employee on a contract of mandate, which greatly facilitates the process of accepting the commissioned work. If your organization also needs a simple way to log hours per contract for cost settlement, our related article on work hours tracking for contractors walks through how that works in practice.
See the Activity and Productivity module →
Summary
Paid leave under a contract of mandate in Poland starts from a default of "no" — contractors don't get statutory annual leave, and the 2026 tenure reform doesn't change that while someone remains exclusively on a mandate contract. Companies that want to offer paid time off can do so through a precise contractual clause, kept clearly separate from Labour Code leave terminology. For HR teams managing a mixed workforce of employees and contractors in Poland, accurate, contract-level time tracking is what makes both compliance and cost control possible — which is exactly what Time Harmony is built for.
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