Germany Notice Periods: The Kündigungsfrist Rules Under § 622 BGB

German employment law does not leave notice periods to negotiation. They are set by statute, they run on a fixed calendar logic rather than a plain number of days, and the rule for the employee is structurally different from the rule for the employer. Getting the date wrong by a single day can push a resignation or a dismissal back by two full weeks.

This page works through § 622 BGB, the provision that governs almost every German notice period, with the exact scale it sets, worked date examples, the probation and small-employer exceptions, and what happens when a notice names the wrong date. It also covers the separate, much faster route: the fristlose Kündigung under § 626 BGB.

Information last verified on 19 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

The core asymmetry

The single most important structural fact about German notice periods is that they are not symmetrical. An employee's notice period under § 622 Abs. 1 BGB is always four weeks, whether they started last month or thirty years ago. It never grows with service.

An employer's notice period under § 622 Abs. 2 BGB does grow with the employee's tenure, on a fixed statutory scale that reaches seven months after twenty years. So the longer someone has worked somewhere, the more protection the statute gives them against a short-notice dismissal, but the resignation notice they themselves owe stays flat at four weeks the entire time.

A contract can lengthen the employee's period, but § 622 Abs. 6 BGB caps that: if extended periods are agreed, the employee's notice period can never be made longer than the employer's for the same situation. The asymmetry runs one direction only, in the employee's favour.

Employee notice: four weeks to the 15th or month end

§ 622 Abs. 1 BGB sets the baseline for an employee who resigns: four weeks, ending on either the 15th of a calendar month or the last day of a calendar month. Both parts of that sentence matter. Four weeks is 28 days, not one calendar month, and the end date is not free to fall anywhere.

How the notice period is counted follows the general BGB rules on deadlines. Under § 187 Abs. 1 BGB, the day the notice is received does not count. The count starts the following day. Under § 188 Abs. 2 BGB, a period stated in weeks ends on the day, four weeks later, that corresponds by name to the day the notice was received.

Worked example one. An employee hands in a resignation letter and the employer receives it on Monday, 3 August 2026. Counting forward, the four week period expires on Monday, 31 August 2026, which also happens to be the end of a calendar month. Because the deadline and an allowed termination date coincide, 31 August 2026 is the earliest day the resignation can take effect.

Worked example two. The same employee instead hands the letter in one day later, and the employer receives it on Tuesday, 4 August 2026. Four weeks from that date expires on Tuesday, 1 September 2026, which is neither the 15th nor a month end. The resignation cannot take effect on 1 September. It moves to the next available date under § 622 Abs. 1 BGB, which is 15 September 2026.

One day's difference in when the letter arrived pushed the effective date back by two full weeks. This is the mechanic worth checking carefully before handing in or accepting a resignation letter: what matters is not simply counting four weeks forward, but finding the first 15th or month end that falls on or after that count is complete.

Employer notice: the graduated scale

§ 622 Abs. 2 BGB sets a different, longer scale for notice given by the employer, and every step on it runs only to the end of a calendar month. There is no 15th of the month option on the employer side.

Below two years of service, the employer's period is the same four weeks to the 15th or month end that applies to the employee under § 622 Abs. 1 BGB. Each threshold is a full year of completed service. Reaching the tenure figure during the notice period itself does not retroactively extend a notice already validly given, though it does raise the bar for any future notice once the anniversary has passed.

Tenure is counted from the date the employment relationship actually began with that employer, continuously. An older version of this rule, § 622 Abs. 2 Satz 2 BGB as it used to read, ignored any service completed before the employee turned 25. That exclusion is gone from the statute. The European Court of Justice held in Kucukdeveci v Swedex, decided 19 January 2010, that discounting pre-25 service breached the EU principle against age discrimination, and German courts have applied full actual tenure ever since. A source that still describes a pre-25 carve-out is describing law that no longer exists.

Worked example. An employee has worked continuously for the same employer since 2020, putting them in the five-to-eight year band, which carries a two month notice period. The employer's dismissal letter is received on 5 June 2026. Counting two full months forward from the day after receipt reaches 5 August 2026, and the first calendar month end on or after that date is 31 August 2026. That is the earliest date the dismissal can take effect, assuming the dismissal is otherwise valid.

Whether a dismissal is valid in the first place, meaning whether it is socially justified under the Kündigungsschutzgesetz once an employee has more than six months of service at a business with more than a handful of employees, is a separate question from the notice period itself. See unfair dismissal claims and termination by the employer for that side of it.

Notice during probation

§ 622 Abs. 3 BGB allows a shorter period during an agreed probationary period, or Probezeit, of up to six months: two weeks notice, on either side, and it can be given to any calendar day. There is no requirement to hit the 15th or a month end during probation.

A probationary period has to be agreed in the employment contract. If the contract is silent, the standard four week and graduated scales apply from day one, not the two week probation rule.

When a shorter period is allowed

§ 622 Abs. 5 BGB permits an individually agreed departure from the statutory periods in two defined situations, and the two are not equally generous.

The first is a temporary engagement expected to last no more than three months, where the actual employment does not go on to exceed that length. Here a period genuinely shorter than four weeks can be agreed.

The second is an employer with no more than twenty employees, counting part time staff proportionally. This one is widely misdescribed, including by sites that should know better. It lets a small employer escape the graduated tenure scale in § 622 Abs. 2 BGB, but it does not unlock a period below four weeks, because the provision itself ends with the condition that the agreed notice period must not fall below four weeks. A small employer can therefore hold the notice at four weeks however long the employee has been there, but cannot go under it.

Outside those two cases, an individually agreed period shorter than the statutory minimum is not effective. A longer period can always be agreed, and a Tarifvertrag can set an entirely different scale under § 622 Abs. 4 BGB, which then displaces the statutory one for employees within its scope.

Does a contract or Tarifvertrag change these periods

Many German employment contracts, and most collective agreements, do set their own notice periods rather than relying on § 622 BGB by default. Where a Tarifvertrag applies, its notice terms generally control instead of the statutory scale, and in some sectors that includes periods shorter than four weeks. That flexibility comes from § 622 Abs. 4 BGB, which is a separate route from the individually agreed exceptions in Abs. 5 and is not bound by the four week floor that constrains the small employer case.

Where an individual contract sets a period more generous to the employee than the statutory minimum, that more favourable term controls. Where a contract tries to shorten the employee's period below the statutory floor outside the two Abs. 5 cases, that term is not enforceable and the statutory period applies instead.

An alternative to litigating any of this is a negotiated exit. See termination agreements for how an Aufhebungsvertrag can set its own end date by mutual consent, sidestepping the notice period calculation entirely.

What if the notice names the wrong date

This is more nuanced than the common assumption that a wrong date simply gets fixed automatically. German courts apply a principle sometimes summarised as interpretation before conversion.

First, under the general interpretation rules of §§ 133 and 157 BGB, a notice is read in light of what the sender evidently intended. Where the wording leaves room for it, for example a notice phrased as ending the relationship at the next legally possible date rather than naming one fixed calendar day, courts will read it as intending the correct, legally compliant date even if that date is later than a specific day mentioned elsewhere in the letter.

Second, where the notice names one specific date without that kind of qualifying language, the Bestimmtheitsgebot, the requirement that a notice state clearly when the relationship ends, generally blocks reading it as meaning some other date. It is not the recipient's job to guess which later date the sender might have preferred.

Third, if the stated date turns out to be legally too early and the recipient wants to challenge that, the deadline to do so is short. Under § 4 KSchG, a claim contesting the notice generally has to reach the labour court within three weeks of receiving the written notice. If nobody files within that window, § 7 KSchG provides that the notice becomes effective as stated, including at the incorrect, earlier date, not automatically corrected to the later, legally proper one.

The Bundesarbeitsgericht addressed exactly this sequence in its decision of 1 September 2010, case 5 AZR 700/09, on a notice that named an unqualified, legally too-early date. The lesson for either side of a notice letter is the same: if a stated end date looks wrong, do not assume it will quietly self-correct to the right date. Get it checked against the three week clock, because inaction can lock in the date actually written on the page, not the one the statute would otherwise require.

Ordentliche Kündigung versus fristlose Kündigung

Everything above concerns the ordentliche Kündigung, the ordinary notice-based termination governed by § 622 BGB. German law has a separate, faster route: the außerordentliche fristlose Kündigung under § 626 BGB, meaning termination without any notice period at all.

§ 626 Abs. 1 BGB allows this only where facts exist that make continuing the employment relationship unreasonable for the terminating party, weighing all the circumstances of the individual case and both sides' interests. That is a high bar, reserved for serious breaches, not ordinary underperformance or a routine business need.

§ 626 Abs. 2 BGB then adds a strict procedural limit: the notice must be given within two weeks of the point the terminating party learned of the facts justifying it. Miss that two week window and the fristlose route is generally closed, even if the underlying facts were serious, though an ordinary notice-based termination may still be available separately.

Because a fristlose Kündigung ends the relationship immediately rather than after a calculated notice period, it is the tool most likely to end up disputed in court, and the same three week claim window under § 4 KSchG applies to challenging it.

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