Out of everything cancer forced me to deal with, sick pay is the part I spent the least energy on. In Norway it’s called sykepenger (literally “sick money”), and I had heard the system works smoothly. It did. It never added one more stress to my life at a time when I had plenty to choose from. And that is exactly why I want to write about it properly, because when something works this quietly, nobody explains it to you. You just hear “don’t worry, you get sick pay” and that’s it.
So how does it actually work? And what do I wish more foreigners knew before they need it? Let me go through it, with my own 50 weeks as the example.
I wrote a shorter version of this inside my post about all the financial support I got during cancer treatment. This is the full picture.
The basics
If you are employed in Norway and you get too sick to work, this is the deal:
- Your employer pays your full salary for the first 16 days.
- From day 17, NAV (Norway’s welfare authority) takes over and pays 100% of your salary, but only up to a ceiling of 6G. G is a base amount the whole welfare system is built around (the “grunnbeløp”), and it gets adjusted every May. Right now (2026) 6G is 819,294 kroner per year. Earn more than that, and NAV’s part stops at the ceiling (more about this trap later).
- You can get sick pay for a maximum of 52 weeks. Not 52 weeks per year, 52 weeks total for the same sickness, and then the counter needs 26 weeks of you back at work before you earn a new round.
- To qualify at all, you need to have worked at least 4 weeks before you got sick, and earn at least 0.5G per year.
One thing worth knowing if you freelance or run your own company: the rules are less generous. Self-employed people get 80% and only from day 17, unless they buy extra insurance from NAV. As an employee you are in the comfortable seat here.
And a small honest disclaimer: my situation was the simple one, one employer and one salary. If you have more than one employer when you get sick, or business income on top of your normal salary, the calculation gets more complicated than what I describe here. I won’t pretend to know those combinations, but NAV can explain all of it, so ask them directly instead of guessing.
My timeline: from 50% to 100%, not in the order you’d expect
The cancer came so suddenly, and treatment had to start right away. Logically I understood it, but somehow I found it difficult to “integrate” cancer into my schedule. So at the beginning I was only on 50% sick leave, while I was halfway through egg freezing with hormone injections on a strict clock. I remember being out with colleagues at an after-work thing and having to rush home to take my injection on time. My doctor wondered a bit why I wasn’t on full sick leave yet, treatment should be prioritized. I knew that. It just came too suddenly for my head to catch up.
Then the appointments got intense, and at some point I realized that being sick had become my full-time job. So I went on 100% sick leave. Honestly, the biggest thing I bought with that was peace of mind: when you are officially 100% sykemeldt (the Norwegian word for being on sick leave), nobody from work expects anything from you. That silence is worth a lot when your calendar is full of hospital appointments.
The thing nobody told me: 100% sick leave is a ceiling, not a floor
Here is the practical detail I find genuinely smart about the system. Being on 100% sick leave does not mean you are forbidden to work. It means nobody can expect you to. I could still work as much as I felt like in a good week, and then I simply reported the real percentage in the application I sent to NAV at the end of each period. You can even choose whether to answer in percent or in hours.
The rhythm goes like this: the doctor writes a sykmelding, the official sick note, about 4 weeks at a time. When a period ends, you get an SMS from NAV, you log in, answer a few simple questions (how much did you actually work, did you take vacation, that kind of thing), and send it. Then your employer and NAV sort out the money between themselves. Getting a new sick note every 4 weeks sounds like admin, but I had to see my GP (fastlege) all the time anyway, so it cost me nothing extra.
The 6G trap: read your work contract now, not later
This is the part I most want foreigners to hear, because even I missed it, and I had lived here 13 years and read more NAV regulations than any healthy person should.
I assumed NAV pays 100% of your salary, full stop. It doesn’t. It pays 100% up to 6G (in my sick leave year, 2024, that ceiling was around 744,000 kroner). If you earn above that, the part over the ceiling is not covered by NAV at all. Whether you still get your full salary depends on one thing: your employment contract.
Mine said full pay during sickness. I knew that line was in the contract when I signed it, but I didn’t understand what it actually meant, because I didn’t know about the ceiling. What it means is: my employer paid my normal salary the whole 50 weeks, claimed the NAV part back for themselves (this is called refusjon), and covered the gap above 6G from their own pocket. For me, nothing changed at all. Same salary on the same date, same tax, same holiday pay. Being seriously sick made zero difference to my economy, and I only later understood that this is not automatic, it’s a benefit.
So my advice: open your contract today and look for what it says about pay during sickness (“lønn under sykdom” if your contract is in Norwegian). Many employers in Norway top up to full salary, but not all. If you earn over 6G and your contract is silent about it, that is a question worth asking while you are healthy.
The 52-week clock
You get 52 weeks, and here is the detail that surprises people: partial sick leave burns the weeks at the same speed. A week at 20% sick leave costs one week of the 52, same as a week at 100%. I knew this from the start, and honestly it was easy to keep track, my page on nav.no showed the overview the whole time.
As I got close to the end, both NAV and my GP warned me. NAV wanted to set up a meeting with my employer and my doctor (this is standard follow-up), but my doctor wrote that it wasn’t necessary, the diagnosis was clear and the treatment was simply hard. NAV agreed, and that was that. The system has checkpoints, but it also has common sense.
I went back to work 100% after 50 weeks. Partly because I felt OK enough, and partly on purpose: I wanted to save 2 weeks in case I got sick again after coming back. Luckily I never needed them.
And I have to be honest about one thing here. I managed to come back full time because I have an office job. I could work from home, stretch my hours, rest in between when I needed. If my work had been physical, or the kind where you must show up somewhere every single day, I don’t think I would have made it. Fatigue after treatment is real, and it doesn’t care that your papers say you are healthy enough to work.
What if the 52 weeks run out?
If you are still too sick to work when sick pay ends, the next step is called AAP (arbeidsavklaringspenger, or “work assessment allowance” in English). The short version: it’s about 66% of your previous income (still capped at 6G), while you and NAV figure out whether and how you can get back to work.
Did the clock stress me? Actually no, and my logic was simple: if the treatment went badly and I ran out of weeks, I would go on AAP with much less money, and I would just have to live with that. No choice, so no point stressing. But I did sit down and read the regulations myself, because I wanted to know exactly what I would deal with if everything got worse. I recommend that. It’s easier to carry a plan B you understand than a vague fear.
Traveling while on sick pay
One thing many people don’t know: you can travel while on sick leave, but there are rules. Inside the EU/EEA it’s fairly simple, but if you want to travel outside the EU/EEA (in my case, to visit family), you must apply to NAV before you go, and the limit today is up to 4 weeks per 12 months. I told the story of my paper application adventure in the financial support post, so I won’t repeat it here, but the rule itself is worth knowing before you book anything.
The quiet safety net
When I look back at the whole treatment year, sick pay is almost invisible in my memories, and I mean that as the biggest compliment. The money came, the forms took five minutes, the system left me alone to be sick. In a year where so much was uncertain, my economy simply wasn’t.
If you live in Norway and you’re healthy right now, do the two boring things: check what your contract says about sick pay, and remember that the NAV ceiling exists. Future you might be very grateful.
Have you dealt with sykepenger yourself, as a foreigner or a Norwegian? Did the system treat you as gently as it treated me? I’d love to hear how it went for you.
A note on the numbers: everything here describes the rules as I experienced them and as they are in July 2026. These things change (the G amount changes every single May), so always check nav.no for the current rules.
I’m not a doctor and I won’t give any medical advice. All I share is my personal experience based on my own treatment plan.