Oman Labour Law 2026: Employee Rights, Leave & End-of-Service Benefits
If you work in the Sultanate — on an oilfield roster in Fahud, a retail floor in Muscat, or a construction site in Sohar — the rules that protect your pay, your leave and your final settlement changed fundamentally with the new Labour Law issued by Royal Decree No. 53/2023. The decree repealed the twenty-year-old law (Royal Decree No. 35/2003) and rewrote everything from working hours to maternity leave to how your end-of-service gratuity is calculated.
This guide explains what Oman's Labour Law means for you in 2026: the 30-day annual leave system, the tiered 182-day sick leave, the 98-day maternity leave, notice and resignation rights, salary-payment rules, the midday summer heat ban, and — critically — the two-part gratuity regime that decides how much your employer owes you when you leave. Every figure below is traceable to the decree text or an official Ministry of Labour clarification, and wherever sources disagree, that is flagged.
What Royal Decree 53/2023 changed
The new Labour Law is a genuine overhaul, not a patch. Working hours were cut, sick leave was extended from 10 weeks to 182 days, maternity leave nearly doubled, paternity leave was introduced, expatriate gratuity moved to a full month's basic wage per year, and unfair-dismissal compensation got a cap. Employers were also given new tools — termination for poor performance after a six-month improvement window, and redundancy for genuine economic reasons — but each comes with procedural safeguards.
Here is the old law versus the new law at a glance:
| Rule | Old law (RD 35/2003) | New law (RD 53/2023) |
|---|---|---|
| Working hours | 9 hours/day, 45 hours/week | 8 hours/day, 40 hours/week (Art. 70) |
| Annual leave | 30 days with gross salary after 6 months | 30 days; carry-forward capped at 30 days; return ticket for non-Omanis (Arts. 78, 81) |
| Sick leave | 10 weeks/year (100%/75%/50%/25%) | 182 days/year: 100% (days 1–21), 75% (days 22–35), 50% (days 36–70), 35% (days 71–182) |
| Maternity leave | 50 days | 98 days (14 before + 84 after); 1 year unpaid child-care leave; 1-hour daily nursing break |
| Paternity leave | Not available | 7 days, to be taken within 98 days of birth |
| Expat end-of-service gratuity | 15 days' basic per year for first 3 years, then 1 month per year | 1 full month's basic wage per year (Art. 61); split regime for service spanning both laws |
| Notice (indefinite contract) | 30 days monthly-paid / 15 days others | Same: 30 days monthly-paid / 15 days others (Art. 38) |
| Unfair dismissal | Minimum 3 months' pay, no cap | Capped at 12 months' pay |
| Salary payment deadline | Within 7 days of pay period end | Within 3 days of pay period end |
| Fixed-term contracts | Renewal converted them to unlimited | No automatic conversion; become unlimited only after 5 years of service |
Sources: decree comparison tables published by Mondaq and Dentons; Ministry of Labour gratuity clarifications; Article 70 working-hours reporting.
Your contract: the rules before you start work
Oman requires written employment contracts, in Arabic. Bilingual versions are allowed, but the Arabic text prevails in any dispute — so an English-only contract can leave you unable to enforce your own terms before an Omani court. Check the Arabic side, or have it translated, before you sign.
Probation is short and strictly limited: 3 months for workers paid a monthly wage and 2 months for everyone else, with only one probation period per employer. If you complete it, it counts toward your total service. Either side can end the contract during probation with at least 7 days' notice. End-of-service gratuity does not accrue for service that ends within probation.
A distinctive feature of the new law: an employer may terminate for poor performance, but only after notifying you of the areas to improve and giving you six months to fix them. Termination can also follow redundancy for genuine economic reasons — new under this law — but a committee reviews the request and can propose alternatives such as reduced hours or sabbaticals. If you disagree with a performance-based dismissal, probation and notice timelines matter as much in Oman as anywhere: the General Federation of Oman Workers advises filing a complaint within 30 days of the termination decision.
Working hours, Ramadan and the midday heat ban
Standard working hours under the new law are 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week (Article 70). You are entitled to at least one hour of rest/meal break per day, and nobody may be made to work more than 6 continuous hours without a break. Employers must display the working-hours schedule visibly in the workplace. (Note: some older payroll guides still quote 9 hours/45 hours — those are old-law figures.)
During Ramadan, hours drop: for Ramadan 1447, the Ministry of Labour set private-sector hours for Muslim employees at a maximum of 6 hours per day and 30 hours per week. Public-sector units work 5 hours (9am–2pm), with flexibility for remote work where duties allow.
Oman's summer heat gets its own legal protection. Every year from 1 June to 31 August, outdoor work in exposed areas is banned between 12:30pm and 3:30pm. The Ministry of Labour warns companies of strict penalties each year — violators face fines of OMR 100 to OMR 500, and imprisonment of up to one month is possible depending on severity and recurrence. If you do outdoor work in the summer months, know this ban; it is one of the most actively enforced rules in the country.
Annual leave: the 30-day system
Oman gives one of the most generous statutory annual-leave entitlements in the Gulf: 30 days of paid leave per year, with full gross salary, available from six months of continuous service (Article 78). Your employer schedules leave around business needs but must give you adequate rest time. Key rules:
- Carry forward: up to 30 days of unused leave can be carried into the next year; if work demands prevented you from taking leave, the balance beyond 30 days can also be carried.
- No waiver: you cannot give up your statutory leave, and your employer cannot require you to forfeit it.
- Return ticket: for non-Omani employees, the employer must bear the cost of a round-trip air ticket to your home country during annual leave, including the return to resume work.
- Cash on exit: accrued unused annual leave must be paid out in cash when your employment ends.
Leave can be split into separate periods by the employer to meet operational needs, and postponed up to six months where business requires it. Compared with the UAE's 30-day annual leave rules, Oman's standout features are the six-month (rather than one-year) eligibility and the statutory return ticket for expatriates.
Sick leave: a 182-day tiered safety net
The new law massively extended sick leave. You are entitled to up to 182 days per year, paid on a sliding scale:
| Sick leave days | Pay rate |
|---|---|
| Days 1–21 | 100% of gross salary |
| Days 22–35 | 75% of gross salary |
| Days 36–70 | 50% of gross salary |
| Days 71–182 | 35% of gross salary |
You cannot be dismissed for illness until you have exhausted the full 182-day entitlement and your regular leave, and then only where absence reaches three months in a year (Article 42). The tiered sick-leave framework has been reported as extended to non-Omani workers since July 2025 — previously such protections sat mainly in the Omani social-insurance framework — so expatriates are advised to keep their medical certificates in order.
Maternity, paternity and special leave
The new law nearly doubled maternity leave and created several new leave types. The full picture:
| Leave type | Entitlement |
|---|---|
| Annual leave | 30 days paid per year (from 6 months' service) |
| Sick leave | 182 days/year, tiered pay (see above) |
| Maternity leave | 98 days paid (14 before + 84 after birth); + up to 1 year unpaid child-care leave; 1-hour daily nursing break |
| Paternity leave | 7 days paid, within 98 days of the child's birth |
| Caregiver leave | 15 days to accompany a sick person |
| Marriage leave | 3 days |
| Hajj leave | 15 days, once per service period (Muslim employees) |
| Bereavement leave | 3 days (parent/grandparent/sibling); 2 days (aunt/uncle); 10 days (wife or child); 130 days for a Muslim wife on her husband's death; 14 days for a non-Muslim wife |
Maternity leave cannot be counted as sick leave, and dismissal during maternity leave is prohibited. Dismissal because of pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding counts as arbitrary dismissal. Establishments with more than 25 female workers must provide a designated rest place for women. The 98-day maternity benefit is among the longest in the Gulf — longer than the Qatar rules and the Kuwait rules we covered in this series.
End-of-service benefits: the two-part gratuity regime
This is the section most expatriates get wrong. Under Article 61 of the new law, workers not covered by the Social Protection Law (i.e. expatriates) are entitled to a gratuity based on their last basic wage, and the Ministry of Labour's August 2026 circular settled exactly how the new-law formula works:
- Contracts concluded under the NEW law (after 31 July 2023): not less than one month's basic wage for each year of service — and this includes fractions of years, not just completed years. No minimum-service threshold is stated.
- Contracts concluded under the OLD law: 15 days' basic wage per year for the first 3 years, then one month's wage per subsequent year.
- Service spanning both laws: calculated in two parts — the old formula for service before the new law's effective date, the new one-month formula for service after.
Worked example (from the Ministry's own clarification): an expatriate who started on 1 August 2021 with a basic salary of RO500 and worked past 31 July 2023 accrues RO250 (half a month) per year for the 2021–2023 service, and a full RO500 per year for every year of service after 31 July 2023.
| Service period | Formula (RO500 basic wage) | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 2021 – Jul 2023 (old law) | 15 days' basic wage per year | RO250 |
| Aug 2023 onwards (new law) | 1 month's basic wage per year, fractions included | RO500 |
| Example: 5 years total (Aug 2021 – Jul 2026) | (2 × 250) + (3 × 500) | RO2,000 |
One more thing on the horizon: the Savings System under the Social Protection Law (Royal Decree 52/2023) will eventually replace this gratuity with a provident-fund model — employers contributing 9% of the expatriate's monthly basic wage into a personal savings account. Implementation is scheduled for July 2027; until then, employers keep paying gratuity under Article 61 of the Labour Law.
How does this compare with neighbours? The UAE pays 21 days for the first 5 years and Saudi scales from half a month. Oman's one-month-per-year rate from year one — for contracts under the new law — is the most generous flat rate in the Gulf-neighbours series we have published so far.
Notice periods, resignation and walking out for cause
For indefinite contracts, Article 38 sets the minimum notice at 30 days for monthly-paid workers and 15 days for workers paid otherwise (a longer period may be agreed in the contract). Notice served while you are on leave only takes effect the day after your leave ends, and during the notice period your employer must let you take 10 paid hours per week to look for a new job. Terminate without serving the required notice, and you owe compensation equal to the notice period or its remaining part, calculated on your last comprehensive wage. The same framework applies to resignations as well as employer terminations — a different design from the UAE's 30–90 day notice bands, and worth checking against your contract.
Article 41 gives workers a powerful exit right: you may leave without notice — keeping your gratuity and your right to compensation — where the employer committed fraud in contracting, failed to pay wages for more than two consecutive months, committed acts against public morals toward you, assaulted you, or left a serious danger to your safety unaddressed.
Note one more protective detail: your employer may not keep your passport or personal documents without your written consent, and non-compete clauses are valid for at most two years, only in the area where the employer operates, and only where you had access to confidential information or clients.
Minimum wage and salary payment
Oman's official minimum wage stands at OMR 325 per month — a figure set in 2013 and still in effect. It is the widely cited national floor (about USD 845), established for Omani private-sector workers; expatriate minima are typically set per occupation in the work-permit contract, so your offer letter's figure is what binds. Wages must be stated and paid in Omani Rials.
Salary must reach you within 3 days of the end of the pay period — the new law shortened this from 7 days. If your employer does not pay you for more than two consecutive months, you may terminate with full rights (see above). Oman also operates a Wage Protection System (WPS) monitored by the Ministry of Labour as a transparent tracking tool for wage transfers in the private sector; the Ministry credits it with a noticeable decline in salary-related complaints, mirroring the UAE's WPS experience. There is no mandatory 13th-month salary in Oman — annual bonuses are contractual, not statutory.
Omanisation: what expatriates should know
Oman runs an active nationalisation policy. Private companies must meet Omanisation quotas — minimum percentages of Omani nationals that vary by sector, from around 15% in technology and hospitality to about 90% in banking — monitored through quarterly Ministry of Labour reporting. Non-compliance restricts new work-permit approvals and can draw fines.
The direct consequence for expatriates: under the new law, your services can be terminated if an Omani worker is available to replace you in the same position. This is an Oman-specific risk worth understanding alongside the normal notice and gratuity rules. When your work relationship ends, your employer must repatriate you to your country (or another agreed destination) within 60 days of termination — unless your sponsorship transfers to another employer. If you file a lawsuit claiming your dues, you have the right to remain in Oman until the claim is decided, at no financial cost to the employer.
How to file a labour complaint in Oman
If you have a grievance — unpaid wages, denied leave, arbitrary dismissal — the path is clear and, importantly, free:
- Raise it with your employer first (firms with 50+ workers must have and display a grievance system). Many disputes settle here.
- Complain to the Ministry of Labour's labour welfare departments, which exist in every governorate — electronic complaint platforms are available for online filing.
- Escalation to court: if the department cannot settle the dispute within the statutory window (roughly two weeks to a month), it refers the case to the Court of First Instance.
Workers are exempt from filing fees and court fees in labour disputes (Article 13), and labour suits are heard as summary matters. Free interpretation of court proceedings is provided for non-Arabic speakers. One deadline to remember: labour lawsuits filed more than one year after the end of the work contract are not heard (Article 144). MoL data shows the system works — 1,277 labour disputes were settled amicably in early 2026 — though dismissal-related complaints carry the tighter 30-day complaint window noted above.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum wage in Oman in 2026?
Oman's official minimum wage is OMR 325 per month, set in 2013 and still in effect. It was established as the floor for Omani private-sector workers (about USD 845). Expatriate workers generally have minima set per occupation in their work-permit contracts, so the figure in your offer letter is what matters most.
How is end-of-service gratuity calculated in Oman now?
For employment contracts concluded under the new law (Royal Decree 53/2023), expatriates receive not less than one month's basic wage per year of service, based on the last basic wage and including fractions of years (Article 61; Ministry of Labour circular, August 2026). Service before 31 July 2023 follows the old formula: 15 days' basic wage per year for the first three years, then one month per year. This gratuity applies until the expatriate Savings System takes effect, scheduled for July 2027.
How many days of annual leave do employees get in Oman?
30 days of paid annual leave per year, available after six months of continuous service, paid at the full gross salary. Up to 30 days of unused leave can be carried forward, you cannot waive the right, and non-Omani employees are entitled to a return air ticket to their home country for annual leave at the employer's cost.
What is the notice period in Oman for resignation?
For indefinite contracts: 30 days' written notice for monthly-paid workers, 15 days for other workers (Article 38), unless your contract sets a longer period. Skipping the notice means paying compensation equal to the notice period based on your last comprehensive wage. You may leave without any notice, keeping all rights, where the employer has not paid wages for over two months, committed fraud or assault, or ignored a serious safety danger (Article 41).
Does Oman have a Wage Protection System?
Yes. Oman operates a Wage Protection System that the Ministry of Labour uses as a transparent monitoring tool for wage transfers in the private sector. The Ministry credits it with a noticeable decline in salary-related complaints, and compliance has been strongest among large and medium enterprises.
How long is maternity leave in Oman?
98 days of paid maternity leave under the new law (14 days before and 84 days after birth), with no prerequisite service — nearly double the old 50 days. Mothers can also take up to one year of unpaid child-care leave, get a one-hour daily nursing break for a year after maternity leave ends, and cannot be dismissed during maternity leave. Fathers get 7 days of paid paternity leave.
What is the Oman midday work ban?
From 1 June to 31 August each year, outdoor work in exposed areas is prohibited between 12:30pm and 3:30pm to protect workers from extreme summer heat. Violators face fines of OMR 100 to OMR 500, with possible imprisonment of up to one month depending on severity and recurrence.
What are the working hours in Oman during Ramadan?
For Ramadan 1447, the Ministry of Labour set private-sector hours for Muslim employees at a maximum of 6 hours per day and 30 hours per week. Normal hours under the new law are 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week, with at least one hour of rest/meal break and no more than six continuous hours without a break.
Can my employer fire me to hire an Omani instead?
Yes — this is the Omanisation provision. An expatriate employee's services can be terminated if an Omani worker is available to replace them in the same position. Standard notice periods and end-of-service gratuity still apply, and your employer must repatriate you within 60 days unless your sponsorship transfers.
Is it free to file a labour complaint in Oman?
Yes. Workers are exempt from filing fees and court fees in labour disputes (Article 13), and free interpretation of court proceedings is provided for non-Arabic speakers. Start with your employer's grievance system, then the Ministry of Labour's labour welfare department (in person or via the electronic complaint platforms); unresolved cases go to the Court of First Instance. Note the deadlines: within 30 days of a termination decision for dismissal complaints, and no later than one year after the contract ends for lawsuits.
The bottom line
Oman's Labour Law of 2023 is one of the most worker-friendly statutes in the Gulf for expatriates: 30 days of annual leave from six months, 182 days of tiered sick leave, 98 days of maternity leave, a one-month-per-year gratuity rate for new contracts, free access to labour courts, and an actively enforced summer heat ban. The trade-off is real too — Omanisation can end an expatriate's contract, and the gratuity's two-part calculation means your settlement depends on when your contract began.
Keep your contract (in Arabic), your payslips, and your leave records. And if your employer owes you wages or a gratuity and will not pay, the Ministry of Labour's complaint system costs you nothing — use it within the deadlines above.
Sources: Royal Decree No. 53/2023 (Labour Law) English text; Royal Decree No. 52/2023 (Social Protection Law); Ministry of Labour clarifications reported by Muscat Daily (Oct 2024) and Oman Observer (Aug 2026); Oman Human Rights Commission Guide to Labour Rights; Dentons and Mondaq analyses of the new law; Al Tamimi & Company presentation (Sep 2023); Crowe Oman Labour Law deck; General Federation of Oman Workers guidance reported by Oman Observer (Aug 2026).
Related guides
- Saudi Labour Law 2026: Employee Rights, Qiwa & End-of-Service Award
- Qatar Labour Law 2026: Employee Rights, NOC-Free Job Changes & Gratuity
- Kuwait Labour Law 2026: Employee Rights, Leave, Gratuity & End-of-Service
- UAE Labour Law 2026: Complete Guide to Employee Rights
- UAE Minimum Wage 2026: What the Law Actually Says
- UAE Overtime Pay 2026: How to Calculate It
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