OK26
OK26: Here's what the 2026 collective bargaining is about
Public sector employee - how collective bargaining affects you
When you are employed by the Danish state, a municipality or a region, your collective agreement determines how much you get in salary and pension, your terms for holiday, parental leave, etc. Collective bargaining affects many of the most important things in your employment, and therefore they are important to you.
Voting - why is it important that I vote?
Once the negotiations are over, IDA members covered by the collective agreements subject to possible changes will vote yes or no to the result of the agreement.
With your and your colleagues' votes, we show employers that our pay and employment conditions are important to us. The more people who support the agreement, the stronger the signal we send.
The Danish model - what is it about?
In Denmark, we do not legislate on what your salary and pension should be, how many hours you should work, and whether you get full pay when you go on parental leave. Instead, it is stipulated in the collective agreements that employers and unions negotiate every year. In short, that is the Danish model.
Learn more about the Danish model and how it works
Improvements and changes - will there be changes to my salary, pension, working hours and conditions for parental leave, holiday, etc.?
Yes. In principle, everything described in the collective agreement can come into play in the negotiations. However, only those areas for which either employers or employees make collective agreement demands are negotiated and can thus be changed. All areas of the collective agreement for which neither employers nor employees make demands will be continued unchanged in the new collective agreement. In other words, you will keep your existing employment terms in these areas.
Negotiation results and voting - how will I be notified?
The negotiations will take place in January - February 2026. You will receive an email from IDA when the parties have agreed on a negotiation result, also called a settlement. Here we describe the content of the result and what it means for you.
In addition, you will also receive a separate email with a personal link to vote - that is, whether you want to say yes or no to the new collective agreement. The vote is indicative, as it is still up to the political bodies in IDA, IDA Public Sector and The Council of Employees, to recommend to the Board of Akademikerne, the umbrella organisation for academic unions, to accept or reject the result.
We expect the vote to take place in early spring 2026, so it is important that you keep an eye on your emails from IDA.
The unions negotiate on behalf of their members - that is, the employee side to the negotiations. The counterpart in the negotiations is the employers in the state, municipalities and regions.
The unions choose to negotiate together in communities, as we are stronger in numbers. IDA negotiates together with the other academic unions in Akademikerne (AC). In the state sector, Akademikerne also negotiates through the cooperation organisation CFU - Centralorganisationernes Fælles Udvalg.
The state
The Danish Ministry of Finance's Employee and Competence Agency is the employer in the government sector, with whom IDA negotiates collective agreements and contracts via the umbrella organisation Akademikerne (AC) and the collaborative organisation Centralorganisationernes Fælles Udvalg (CFU).
Municipalities
The Danish Association of Local Authorities (KL) is an employer in the municipal sector, with which IDA negotiates collective agreements and contracts via the umbrella organisation Akademikerne (AC).
Regions
Danish Regions is an employer in the regional area, with whom IDA negotiates collective agreements and contracts via the umbrella organisation Akademikerne (AC).
Demands - what does IDA bring to the negotiating table?
The negotiations on new collective agreements are based on the demands that trade unions and employers have each raised.
We formulate IDA's demands based on the input we receive from IDA's public sector employees. In OK26, members can provide input via two online questionnaires and a webinar in the period August 2024 - March 2025.
IDA then coordinates with the other academic unions, and in December 2025 we formally exchange demands with the employers before negotiations begin.
General demands
The general demands include members of more than one organisation. For example, they can be general salary increases, holiday and parental leave, which include all public employees. They can also be pensions and scale steps, which only concern all academics under collective agreements.
When general demands are negotiated, it is said that the negotiations take place at the “big table”.
Special demands
The special demands only affect members of one organisation, e.g. IDA's.
Member involvement - as an IDA member, do I have influence on collective bargaining negotiations?
Yes. As a public employee member of IDA, you have the opportunity to provide your input to OK26 via two member surveys:
- In August 2024, we sent the member survey "OK26 - what should we fight for" by email to all public sector members of IDA. Here we asked about pay and personnel conditions and what is most important for the individual member to include in the collective bargaining negotiations.
- February 25 - March 11, 2025, IDA has sent another survey to all public sector members about which demands IDA should prioritise the most in the OK26 negotiations.
Subsequently, the members' input is processed and prioritised by IDA Public Sector and then approved by the Council of Employees as IDA's final requirements for OK26.
New collective agreement - when does it come into force?
The new collective agreements for the state, municipalities and regions will initially come into force on April 1, 2026.
We can only say when you will see a possible salary increase on your paycheck once we have a negotiation result. General salary adjustments and when they will be implemented are something that the parties agree on during the collective bargaining negotiations.
The regulatory system - what is it?
The regulation scheme is intended to ensure that wage developments in the public sector follow those in the private sector. Wages are regulated by 80 percent of the difference between public and private wage developments – both upwards and downwards.
Example: If private wages increase by 4 percent and public wages only increase by 2 percent, the regulation scheme ensures an additional increase to the public sector of 1.6 percent.
If, on the other hand, the public sector has had a higher wage development than the private sector, 80 percent of the difference is deducted from the agreed wage increases for public sector employees.
The changes from the adjustment scheme are implemented in addition to the general wage adjustments during the collective agreement period, which the parties agree on during the collective agreement negotiations.
Statistics Denmark calculates each year how large the wage increases have been in the state, municipalities, regions and in the private sector.
State, municipality, region - is it the same collective agreement or are they different?
The state, municipalities and regions are three different areas of negotiation, and therefore both the employer and employee sides may have prioritised different demands. The results in the three areas may therefore be different.