Paternity leave in Colombia: what the employer pays and what the EPS reimburses

A foreign company that hires in Colombia usually learns about paternity leave when the first employee announces a birth. Two questions follow at once: how much salary the company pays during the absence, and what it gets back from the Colombian health system. The answers depend on the current length of the leave, the weeks the worker contributed and how the claim reaches the EPS.

At Soulbit Academy we read paternity leave from the employer's side: how many weeks apply today, who pays, what the EPS asks for and how it shows up in the cash plan of a company with a small team in Colombia. It does not cover maternity leave or the shared and flexible parental leave that Law 2114 of 2021 also created. The monthly contribution that sits underneath this scheme is explained in PILA social security contributions in Colombia: an employer guide.

Paternity leave in Colombia: how many weeks apply in 2026

Paternity leave in Colombia lasts two paid weeks as of October 2026. Its legal basis is paragraph 2 of article 2 of Law 2114 of 2021, which amended the Labor Code regime and has applied since its promulgation in July 2021.

The same law provides for a gradual extension. The text adds one week for each percentage point that structural unemployment falls below the level it had when the law took effect, capped at five weeks. The Ministry of Finance, the central bank and the national planning department jointly set the measurement method, and the rate is published each December as the basis for deciding whether next year's leave grows.

Did the 2025 labor reform change the weeks of paternity leave?

No change to the length of paternity leave by Law 2466 of 2025 was identified. Specialist commentary consulted agrees that the reform widened the list of paid leaves in article 57 of the Labor Code but left the maternity and paternity regime untouched. If your payroll already absorbed the working-hours changes of that law, review the rest in our employer checklist for the Colombian labor reform.

Three points should stay marked as pending confirmation before each payroll run.

The first is that no official publication consulted confirms an effective extension through structural unemployment. The second is that bills in Congress propose longer leave, and a bill is not law. The third is that the primary source is the consolidated legal text and Ministry of Labor notices, not third-party payroll guides.

Who pays paternity leave: the EPS recognizes it and the employer fronts it

The EPS funds paternity leave, not the employer, under Law 2114 of 2021. The text says the insurer bears the paid leave and recognizes it in proportion to the weeks the father contributed during the pregnancy.

That rule coexists with an operational fact: the worker is still employed, expects salary on the usual dates and payroll does not pause. So many companies keep paying the full salary for the two weeks and then ask the EPS to recognize the economic benefit. Decree 1427 of 2022 governs the requirements and procedures for recognizing these benefits in the health system and replaced the matching title of Decree 780 of 2016, according to the Decree 1427 of 2022 compilation.

What happens if the employer never asks the EPS for recognition?

If the employer does not file, it absorbs entirely a cost that the law assigns to the health system. The worker is paid either way, but the company loses the chance to recover it. Appoint one person to own the filing and keep an internal follow-up calendar for each leave.

The worker depends on the employer to register the leave correctly. The employer must report the event in the monthly contribution form and keep the civil birth registry, the only supporting document the law names for recognition.

For a foreign company, the first practical question is who the employer of record is. A subsidiary or branch registered in Colombia enrolls staff and files with the EPS directly. Outsourced arrangements shift the paperwork to the provider, as discussed in employer of record vs contractor, but the cash still has to be reconciled between the two parties.

Contribution requirements: how the EPS recognizes paternity leave

The EPS recognizes paternity leave in proportion to the weeks the father contributed during the pregnancy. The verified paragraph of Law 2114 of 2021 sets that proportionality and requires the civil birth registry as the only support, filed with the EPS no later than 30 days after the birth.

Table 1 shows how the scenario changes with the worker's contribution record. The situations are illustrative and must be confirmed with the EPS.

Worker situation	What the EPS recognizes	Effect for the employer
Contributed throughout the pregnancy without gaps	The full value of the two weeks	Recovers the advanced salary if it files for recognition
Contributed only part of the pregnancy	A value proportional to the weeks contributed	Must decide, with advice, how to treat the gap
Contributed on a base below the real salary	A value computed on what was contributed	Risks recovering less than it paid and a UGPP audit
Late or unpaid contributions in the period	Recognition may be disputed	Should regularize the contribution form before filing

Proportionality ties this leave to the quality of the monthly contribution form. A badly computed contribution base exposes the company to an audit by the UGPP, the social security enforcement agency, which looks back five years, and it also lowers what the EPS recognizes when the leave arrives.

What salary is used to compute the value of the leave?

The value is computed on the income the worker had on file as contribution base, not on a salary the company states later. For a worker earning the minimum wage, the 2026 monthly minimum is 1,750,905 Colombian pesos, set temporarily by Decree 0159 of 2026. Ask the EPS which exact base it uses to settle the recognition.

How a foreign employer recovers what it advances: steps and owners

The employer recovers the leave by asking the EPS to recognize the economic benefit with the required support. The exact procedure, forms and filing channel are set by each EPS within the framework of Decree 1427 of 2022, so the first step is to ask for them before the birth, not after.

Table 2 sets out the minimum flow a small company can adopt. The steps are an operating proposal, not an official procedure.

Step	Owner	Key document or data
Notice of the birth	Worker	Civil birth registry
Confirm weeks contributed in the pregnancy	Payroll or accounting	History of paid contribution forms
File with the EPS within 30 days of birth	Employer	Civil registry and the EPS form
Pay salary during the leave	Payroll	Two-week settlement
Report the leave event in the period's contribution form	Payroll	Form with the leave event
Reconcile the EPS reimbursement against the advance	Treasury	Statement and EPS voucher

Reconciliation is where small teams lose track. A reimbursement that arrives months later with no reference to the worker or the period sits in the books as unexplained income. Record the advance and the recovery in the same receivable, tagged with the worker's name and the leave period.

The underlying payroll mechanics and the benefits that accrue during leave are covered in how to pay payroll in Colombia and in the vacation and benefit accruals that run in parallel.

Cash effect of paternity leave: an example with assumptions

The cash effect of paternity leave is the gap between the salary the company pays now and the reimbursement it receives later. The case below is hypothetical, uses labeled assumptions and does not represent Soulbit prices or results.

Assumptions: a worker with a monthly salary of 4,000,000 Colombian pesos, a two-week leave (14 days) and a daily rate of salary divided by 30. The daily rate is 133,333 pesos and the two weeks total 1,866,667 pesos. If the worker contributed every week of the pregnancy, the EPS recognizes that full amount. In an alternative scenario with 36 of 40 weeks contributed, the proportion would be 90 percent: 1,680,000 pesos, leaving a gap of 186,667 pesos that the company must treat on advice.

At the 2026 minimum wage the figure is smaller: 1,750,905 times 14 divided by 30 gives 817,089 pesos for the two weeks. For a foreign company with 15 people in Colombia, one case does not threaten cash, but several births in a quarter can pile up advances. If, as an assumption, reimbursement takes 60 days and three leaves of 4,000,000 pesos run at once, the advance outstanding is 5,600,000 pesos funded by the company.

For a company that budgets in dollars, the peso amount also moves with the exchange rate between the advance and the reimbursement. That is a separate treasury risk to include when sizing the buffer.

How can a company keep leave advances from straining treasury?

Reserve a monthly line in the budget for benefit advances the EPS reimburses, and reconcile them as a separate receivable. That lets finance tell a recoverable advance from a final expense. Monthly reviews of that receivable are enough for most small teams.

What Soulbit's V1 delivers and what it does not

Soulbit Salaries is the planned payroll disbursement module, not a leave settlement system. V1 scope includes USDC and USDT balances, fiat in USD, EUR and GBP, recurring and batch payments through Colombian local rails, institutional custody, KYB and AML/KYT monitoring.

What Soulbit does not do matters here. It does not compute the value of a leave, does not settle the monthly contribution form, does not determine the contribution base and does not file recognition requests or reimbursements with an EPS. It does not file with the UGPP and does not replace payroll software. That responsibility stays with the company or its payroll provider.

Its intended role begins after the calculation. Once payroll has set the net pay for the two weeks, Soulbit Salaries is designed to include that payment in a batch disbursement. The flow is described in batch payroll: from file to disbursement. A company holding its treasury in stablecoins could request an OTC conversion into pesos to fund the payment, without changing its labor or social security duties.

Common employer mistakes with paternity leave

The three most common employer mistakes with paternity leave are all preventable with a written procedure. The first is not filing the civil registry on time. The second is not reporting the leave event in the period's contribution form. The third is not reconciling the EPS reimbursement against the advance.

What penalties does an employer face for settling the leave wrongly?

The larger risk is not a fine for the leave itself but an inconsistent settlement that triggers a contribution audit. The UGPP reviews contributions of the previous five years and can claim differences with interest. The leave event, the contribution base and the electronic payroll record should therefore match, as explained in electronic payroll and DIAN.

Keep one file per worker with the civil registry, the period's form, the two-week settlement and the reimbursement voucher. That file answers a request from the EPS, the UGPP or an auditor without rebuilding the facts months later.