Rest periods at events: the 11 hours, the exceptions, and the 4 am strike
§ 5 of the German Working Hours Act (ArbZG) requires 11 hours of uninterrupted rest (Ruhezeit) between two shifts. Exceptions: 10 hours in hospitality and catering, down to 9 hours under a collective agreement, deviations in emergencies. What applies to build, show day, and strike, where the shift plan breaks, and what about volunteers.
In short
- Under § 5 Abs. 1 ArbZG there must be 11 hours of uninterrupted rest (Ruhezeit) between the end and the start of work. In restaurants and other hospitality and accommodation businesses it may be shortened to 10 hours if each shortfall is compensated with a rest period of 12 hours within one month.
- Further exceptions are narrow: down to 9 hours only under a collective agreement, deviations under § 14 ArbZG only in emergencies and exceptional cases, approvals by the authority under § 15 ArbZG hardly ever for a private festival. A tight schedule is not an exception.
- The typical festival violation isn't the long show day — it's the strike running until 4 am followed by a shift starting at 10 am. That's a shift-planning problem, not a payroll one.
- § 3 ArbZG
- § 4 ArbZG
- § 5 ArbZG
- § 6 ArbZG
- § 7 ArbZG
- § 10 Abs. 1 Nr. 4 ArbZG
- § 11 Abs. 3 ArbZG
- § 14 ArbZG
- § 15 ArbZG
- § 22 ArbZG
Under § 5 Abs. 1 ArbZG, employees must have an uninterrupted rest period (Ruhezeit) of at least 11 hours after the end of the daily working time. For hospitals and care, restaurants and other hospitality and accommodation businesses, transport operations, broadcasting, and agriculture and animal husbandry, § 5 Abs. 2 ArbZG allows a shortening to 10 hours, if every shortfall is compensated within one calendar month, or within four weeks, by extending another rest period to at least 12 hours. For organizers, the rest period is the rule that breaks most often in the shift plan, because it spans two days that are usually planned separately.
The 11-hour rest period under § 5 ArbZG: what exactly applies
- Uninterrupted. The 11 hours have to be in one piece. If the person is called in to work during the rest period, say because the truck arrives early, the prevailing view is that the rest period starts again afterwards.
- From the end of work. It counts from the actual end of work, not the planned one. A strike that ends at 4 am instead of 2 am pushes the next shift back by two hours.
- Per person, not per area. Someone working the bar in the evening and the entrance in the morning has one rest period, not two.
- For Minijob and short-term staff too. The Working Hours Act has no exception by employment type. A casual worker for three festival days has the same 11 hours as a permanent employee.
The calculation is a subtraction: if the strike ends at 4 am, the next shift starts at 3 pm at the earliest. With the hospitality exception it would be 2 pm, and another rest period in the same month has to grow to 12 hours.
The 11 hours aren't only in German law. The EU Working Time Directive also requires a minimum daily rest of 11 consecutive hours (Art. 3 Directive 2003/88/EC). The planned reform of the Working Hours Act, which would replace the daily limit with a weekly maximum of 48 hours and make electronic time recording mandatory, so far exists only as a ministry draft (Referentenentwurf) from June 2026 and has not been passed. Until it is, current law as described here applies.
Exceptions to the 11-hour rest period
| Exception | Legal basis | Rest period | Condition | At a festival |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurants, catering, accommodation | § 5 Abs. 2 ArbZG | 10 hours | Compensation to at least 12 hours within one calendar month or four weeks | Usable for bar and catering, not for stage and build crew: the provision doesn't name event operations |
| Collective agreement | § 7 Abs. 1 Nr. 3 ArbZG | down to 9 hours | The nature of the work requires it, compensation within a defined period | Only with a collective agreement, or a works agreement based on one |
| Emergencies and exceptional cases | § 14 Abs. 1 ArbZG | deviation possible | Independent of the employer's will, consequences can't be remedied otherwise | A storm that delays the strike can be such a case. A tight schedule is not |
| Few people, work that can't wait | § 14 Abs. 2 ArbZG | deviation possible | Temporary, a relatively small number of employees, other precautions not reasonable | Not a planning tool for the whole strike crew |
| Approval by the supervisory authority | § 15 ArbZG | different rest period | Only for specific cases, such as a regular weekly shift change, or where urgently needed in the public interest | Rarely attainable for a private festival, and only before the event |
Anyone using the § 14 ArbZG exceptions still has to stay within an average of 48 hours a week over six calendar months or 24 weeks (§ 14 Abs. 3 ArbZG). And if a collective agreement extends daily working time beyond 12 hours, 11 hours of rest must follow immediately afterwards (§ 7 Abs. 9 ArbZG).
In practice: the exception you can actually plan with is the hospitality rule for the bar. Everything else is a reserve for emergencies, not shift planning.
The four limits in the Working Hours Act
| Rule | Limit | Compensation |
|---|---|---|
| Daily working time, § 3 | 8 hours, up to 10 hours | averaging 8 hours over 6 months or 24 weeks |
| Breaks, § 4 | 30 minutes above 6 hours, 45 minutes above 9 hours | by the latest after 6 hours, splittable into segments of 15 minutes |
| Rest period, § 5 | 11 hours; 10 hours in hospitality and catering | 12 hours within one month |
| Night work, § 6 | 8 hours, up to 10 hours | averaging 8 hours over one month or 4 weeks |
Night time is 11 pm to 6 am. Night-shift workers (Nachtarbeitnehmer) are entitled to occupational health screening and to compensation through time off or a premium, § 6 Abs. 5 ArbZG.
Where the festival plan breaks
A 12-hour show day is usually justifiable if breaks and the half-year compensation add up. The violations happen at the transitions:
- Strike after the last show. End at 4 am, next shift at 10 am. Six hours of rest. This is the most common case, and the first thing the occupational safety authority (Gewerbeaufsicht) checks.
- Build week. Ten days in a row at 10 hours, with no compensation to 8 hours on average planned anywhere in the half-year.
- Two areas, one person. Bar until 2 am, entrance from 9 am. The bar plan and the entrance plan are two separate tables, and the person is in both.
- Breaks in the tent. 12 hours without a documented 45-minute break. The break has to be fixed in advance, and the person has to be genuinely free to use the time. Standby at the bar is not a break.
- Sunday without a substitute rest day. Sunday work is allowed, but the substitute rest day (Ersatzruhetag) within two weeks gets forgotten.
Volunteers and freelancers
The Working Hours Act applies to employees. Volunteer helpers aren't covered, and neither are genuinely self-employed freelancers, as long as they're truly independent. Neither is an invitation to ignore the limits: for volunteers, the organizer's accident insurance is engaged, and a helper who has an accident with a forklift after 16 hours is a liability case. For freelancers who appear in the shift plan and receive instructions, genuine independence is the real question.
Documentation
§ 16 Abs. 2 ArbZG obliges the employer to record working time exceeding 8 hours and to retain it for two years. For Minijob workers and in the industries covered by the undeclared-work law (Schwarzarbeitsbekämpfungsgesetz), § 17 MiLoG requires start, end, and duration of daily working time, recorded by the latest on the seventh day after. Since the Federal Labor Court's (Bundesarbeitsgericht) ruling of September 13, 2022, there is in any case a general obligation to record the entire working time. A shift plan is not proof; a check-in time with a check-out is. What that requires at a festival in detail is covered in the article on the time-recording obligation at festivals and the handbook entry on working-time documentation.
What that means for planning
The rest period is a rule spanning two shifts, so the tool that assigns shifts has to check it. When assigning the early shift, the same person's night shift has to be visible, regardless of which area it was in. Breaks belong in time tracking as a rule, and the substitute rest day belongs in the plan for the next two weeks as a blocked day. If open shifts are filled with suggestions, make sure the rest period is checked as a rule before the suggestion, not estimated by the model: the article on AI shift planning for events explains why.
See also: ArbZG in the documentation glossary and shift planning in EVENTRA.