What happens if biweekly payroll has 27 paydays in a year instead of 26?
- Claire Baker
- Dec 28, 2025
- 1 min read
Heads-up: Half of the companies with biweekly payroll will have an extra paycheck in 2026.
Meaning that payroll costs will be 3.8% higher in 2026. Right?
WAIT!
Before you start planning how you’ll spend that “free” paycheck
before your finance department re-balances the budget for 2026
you need to know...
Your payroll provider is probably smart enough to anticipate this.
There are two methods that payroll providers use to solve the 27-paycheck problem:
“PRO RATA”
(annual salary) ÷ (number of paychecks per year)
Divides the annual salary by the number of paychecks in a year. Most salaried workers will see their biweekly gross pay go down by about $38.46 per $1000 next year to account for the extra paycheck.
“PAY AS USUAL”
ka-CHING!
Pays employees the same gross salary per paycheck in a 27-check year as in an ordinary 26-check year, resulting in a 3.8% pay increase over the course of the year.
If you have biweekly pay, check your payroll calendar to see if you’re in the 50% of companies who have 27 paychecks in 2026.
If you do, check your settings before rebalancing your budget. Chances are, there’s nothing you need to do.
Did thinking about this question make you think about payroll questions you'd never thought about before? Were they more complicated than you expected?
👋 I'm Claire. I know how the payroll gets made. If you keep running into weird payroll edge cases that you're not sure how to address, we can help.
Comments