How many weeks of maternity leave do you get in Singapore?

16 weeks of Government-Paid Maternity Leave, if your child is a Singapore citizen and you have served your employer for a continuous period of at least 3 months before the birth. For a first or second child your employer pays the first 8 weeks at your gross rate and the government reimburses the last 8 weeks, capped at S$10,000 per 4 weeks or S$20,000 in total. For a third or subsequent child the government funds all 16 weeks, capped at S$10,000 per 4 weeks or S$40,000 in total.

How many weeks of paternity leave do fathers get in Singapore?

4 weeks of Government-Paid Paternity Leave for children born on or after 1 April 2025. Your child must be a Singapore citizen, you must be lawfully married to the child's mother between conception and birth or within 12 months of the birth, and you must have served your employer for a continuous period of at least 3 months before the birth. Reimbursement is capped at S$2,500 per week or S$10,000 in total.

What is Shared Parental Leave in Singapore?

Shared Parental Leave is leave the parents divide between them, on top of maternity and paternity leave. It is 6 weeks for children born between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026, and 10 weeks for children born from 1 April 2026 onwards. It must be taken within 12 months of the birth, and employer reimbursement is capped at S$2,500 per week.

How much notice do you have to give your employer before parental leave in Singapore?

At least 4 weeks. Mothers must give at least 4 weeks' notice before going on Government-Paid Maternity Leave, or inform the employer as soon as possible of the delivery, to receive full payment. From 1 April 2025 fathers must give 4 weeks' notice before Government-Paid Paternity Leave, and 4 weeks' notice applies to Shared Parental Leave too.

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Maternity, paternity and shared parental leave in Singapore

16 weeks maternity leave, 4 weeks paternity leave, and shared parental leave that rises to 10 weeks for babies born from 1 April 2026. Every figure below is quoted from the Ministry of Manpower, read on 4 August 2026. Check the current page before you rely on it, because these rules have changed twice recently.

The short version

Leave	How long	Who it is for
Maternity	16 weeks	Working mothers
Paternity	4 weeks	Working fathers, child born on or after 1 April 2025
Shared parental	6 weeks, or 10 weeks from 1 April 2026	Split between both parents

Three conditions run through all of them: the child must be a Singapore citizen, you must have served your employer for a continuous period of at least 3 months before the birth, and you owe at least 4 weeks of notice.

Maternity leave: 16 weeks

You are eligible for 16 weeks of Government-Paid Maternity Leave if your child is a Singapore citizen and you have served your employer for a continuous period of at least 3 months before the birth.

Who pays for which weeks depends on birth order, and this is the part people get wrong:

Birth order	Employer pays	Government reimburses	Cap
First or second child	First 8 weeks, at your gross rate of pay	Last 8 weeks	S$10,000 per 4 weeks, or S$20,000 per child order
Third or subsequent child	Nothing beyond administering it	All 16 weeks	S$10,000 per 4 weeks, or S$40,000 per child order

Give at least 4 weeks of notice before going on leave, or tell your employer as soon as possible after delivery. That notice is what protects full payment.

Paternity leave: 4 weeks

For a child born on or after 1 April 2025 you are entitled to 4 weeks of Government-Paid Paternity Leave. For a child born before that date it was 2 weeks, with an additional 2 weeks available.

Three conditions, and the marriage one is the one that surprises people:

Your child is a Singapore citizen.
You are lawfully married to the child's mother between conception and the birth, or within 12 months of the birth.
You have served your employer for a continuous period of at least 3 months before the birth.

Reimbursement to your employer is capped at S$2,500 per week, or S$10,000 in total. From 1 April 2025 you must give your employer 4 weeks of notice.

Fathers of a stillborn child receive 2 weeks of paternity leave, subject to the same employment, marriage and citizenship conditions.

Shared parental leave: 6 weeks now, 10 weeks from April 2026

This is the newest of the three and the one worth checking your dates against.

6 weeks for children born from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026.
10 weeks for children born from 1 April 2026 onwards.

It has to be taken within 12 months of the birth. Employer reimbursement is capped at S$2,500 per week, and 4 weeks of notice applies here too. Self-employed parents need the same 3 month engagement period and have to show income lost during the leave.

The date that decides everything is your baby's birth date, not your due date. If you are due around the end of March 2026, the difference between a baby born on 31 March and one born on 1 April is 4 weeks of shared parental leave. Nobody can control that, and it is not worth worrying about. It is worth knowing, so that whichever side of the line you land on, you are not finding out from a colleague afterwards.

What to actually do with this

Write down your three dates: your due date, the date you started with your current employer, and today. The three month service condition is measured against the birth, so if you are close to that line it is worth knowing now.
Tell your employer in writing, at least 4 weeks ahead. A message you can find again later beats a conversation in a corridor.
Decide the shared parental weeks with your partner before the birth, not after. It has to be used within 12 months and the months disappear faster than anyone expects.
Read the current figures on mom.gov.sg yourself before you rely on them. These rules changed in April 2025 and change again in April 2026. Any blog quoting them, including this one, is a snapshot.

Where these numbers come from

Everything on this page is quoted from the Ministry of Manpower's own pages on maternity leave, paternity leave and shared parental leave, read on 4 August 2026. We have not rounded anything, added anything, or averaged anything. Where we were not certain, we left it out rather than guess.

One thing worth knowing if you go looking yourself: the MOM landing pages carry almost none of the figures. They live one level deeper, on the eligibility and entitlement pages. Plenty of articles are written from the landing page, which is exactly how wrong numbers spread.

The dates are the hard part, not the rules

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