2028 Biweekly Payroll Calendar

Biweekly employees will receive 26 paychecks across 2028, opening with Friday, January 14, 2028 (covering December 26, 2027 through January 8, 2028) and finishing the year on Friday, December 29, 2028 - which as a leap year adds one extra day to February, and matters more for hourly time-tracking than for the payday schedule itself.Need to reference last year? Review the biweekly payroll calendar 2027. Planning ahead? Check out the biweekly pay schedule 2029. If your organization uses a twice-a-month cycle instead, explore the semi-monthly payroll calendar 2028.

Leap years and biweekly pay periods

Because biweekly pay periods are simply 14-day blocks, the leap day (February 29) just becomes one more day inside whichever pay period it happens to fall in that year - it doesn't create a 27th paycheck or shift the overall structure. What it does affect is hourly timecard accuracy: any pay period spanning late February needs to correctly include the 29th if it's a scheduled workday, which is worth a quick manual check if your payroll system wasn't updated for the leap year.

The two three-paycheck months of 2028

Biweekly schedules produce two "bonus" paycheck months every year, since 26 two-week periods don't divide evenly into 12 calendar months. In 2028, those months are June and December. December's third paycheck is particularly useful for covering year-end and January expenses (insurance renewals, subscription charges, holiday-adjacent bills) rather than treating it as pure extra spending money.

Why the final 2028 paycheck lands on December 29, not the 31st

December 31, 2028 falls on a Sunday. Since biweekly paydays are locked to a specific weekday (Friday, in this schedule), the last payday of the year naturally falls on Friday, December 29, a few days before the calendar year technically ends. This isn't an adjustment or exception; it's simply where the 14-day cycle lands that year.