Paternity Leave Entitlements 2026: A Guide for Employers

Paternity leave changed substantially on 6 April 2026. If your paternity policy still talks about 26 weeks of service, it is now out of date. The Employment Rights Act 2025 made paternity leave a day one right, removed the old restriction on taking it after shared parental leave and introduced an entirely new entitlement called Bereaved Partner’s Paternity Leave.

That is a lot landing on one date. This guide pulls it all together so you can check your policy, brief your managers and answer the questions you are about to start getting from new starters.

What is paternity leave?

Paternity leave is statutory time off work for an employee who is either the father of a baby, the partner of the mother or adopter or the second person in an adoption. It gives them up to two weeks of leave to support their partner and care for their child in the first year.

Two weeks is the full statutory entitlement and that has not changed. What has changed is who is eligible to take it, when they can take it and how it sits alongside other family leave.

Who is eligible for paternity leave from 6 April 2026?

This is the headline change. Paternity leave is now a day one right.

Before 6 April 2026, an employee had to have 26 weeks of continuous service by the end of the 15th week before the baby was due. That requirement has gone. An employee who started a job eight weeks before their baby is born is now entitled to paternity leave from that employer. So is an employee who started two weeks ago.

The other eligibility conditions still apply. The employee must be the biological father, the mother’s spouse or partner, the partner of the adopter or the intended parent in a surrogacy arrangement. They must have responsibility for the child’s upbringing. None of that has changed. What has gone is the service threshold.

What about paternity pay?

Here is where it gets a bit fiddly and where most of the confusion lives. The change to a day one right covers the leave, not the pay.

Statutory Paternity Pay still requires 26 weeks of continuous service by the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth. An employee who has not met that threshold can still take the leave but will not be paid for it.

In practice you will start to see a small number of new starters taking unpaid paternity leave. It is worth thinking about whether you want to offer enhanced paternity pay to cover this gap, particularly if you already enhance maternity pay. Treating one parent’s leave more generously than the other’s is increasingly something employers are being asked about.

How much leave can be taken and when?

Two weeks total. The employee can take it as a single block of two weeks or as two separate blocks of one week each. That flexibility came in back in April 2024 and continues.

The leave can be taken any time in the first 52 weeks after the birth or adoption placement. The old rule that paternity leave had to be taken within the first 8 weeks went two years ago.

So an employee can take one week when the baby is born and a second week six months later. Or two weeks at the time of birth. Or two separate weeks at any point in the first year. That is their choice.

Notice requirements

For employees who already meet the old eligibility rules, notice is 28 days before the block of leave begins. The 15 week pre-birth notice of intention to take paternity leave still applies.

For newly eligible employees under the day one right, a temporary 28 day notice rule applies for leave starting on or after 6 April 2026. From 18 February 2026 these employees have been able to give notice of leave starting from 6 April onwards. In practice this means an employee who started recently and whose baby is due imminently can give 28 days’ notice without falling foul of the 15 week rule.

If you have employees taking paternity leave in the early months of the day one right being in force, expect some short notice requests. This is the period the rules are designed for.

Paternity leave and shared parental leave

The old rule said paternity leave had to be taken before shared parental leave. If an employee took shared parental leave first they forfeited their right to paternity leave.

That restriction was removed on 6 April 2026.

An employee can now take paternity leave and shared parental leave in either order. They can take one week of paternity leave when the baby is born, take a period of shared parental leave then come back and take the second week of paternity leave. Your shared parental leave policy will need updating to reflect this. If your contracts or handbook still say paternity leave cannot be taken after shared parental leave, that wording is now wrong.

What is Bereaved Partner’s Paternity Leave?

This is a new statutory right that came into force on 6 April 2026. It is not part of the Employment Rights Act 2025 itself but it landed on the same date.

It gives the surviving partner of a person who dies in connection with childbirth or adoption up to 52 weeks of unpaid leave. The leave must be taken within 52 weeks of the child’s birth, the adoption placement or the child’s entry into Great Britain for overseas adoptions.

It is a day one right. There is no qualifying period. It applies regardless of how long the employee has worked for you.

The circumstances are mercifully rare but when they arise they are devastating and the existing two weeks of paternity leave is nowhere near enough. This new entitlement gives surviving partners proper time to grieve, care for a newborn and adjust without the additional pressure of returning to work after a fortnight.

You will need a policy for this. Most employers do not yet have one. The policy does not need to be long but it does need to exist and your line managers need to know how to handle a request, which will arrive in circumstances none of them will have dealt with before.

What employers need to do now

Most employers I am speaking to have not yet updated their paternity policy for these changes. That is the first thing to fix.

A compliant policy as of May 2026 needs to:

• Remove any reference to 26 weeks of continuous service for paternity leave
• Make clear that paternity leave is a day one right while paternity pay still requires 26 weeks of service
• Remove the restriction on taking paternity leave after shared parental leave
• Include or reference Bereaved Partner’s Paternity Leave (this can sit in your paternity policy or your bereavement policy, whichever fits your handbook structure better)
• Use the current statutory pay rate
• Reflect the temporary 28 day notice provision for newly eligible employees If your contracts of employment reference paternity leave entitlements, those may also need updating. Contracts that point to the policy by reference (rather than restating the rules) are easier to keep current.

Your line managers also need a brief. They are the ones who will get the first request from a new starter and they need to know the answer is now yes, not “you have not been here long enough”. Getting that wrong with a new joiner is the kind of thing that ends up at tribunal.