Which rotation gives you the most weekends off?

What counts as a weekend off

On this page a weekend is off only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. A Saturday off with a Sunday night shift attached is not a weekend, and anyone who has tried to go anywhere on one knows it.

It is a strict definition and it is deliberately the strict one. Count Saturdays alone and almost every rotation looks generous.

The thing that decides it is not the pattern

Roughly half of these rotations run on a cycle whose length divides by seven — fourteen days, twenty-eight, seven. Those never drift. They land on the same weekdays for ever, which means the pattern does not decide whether you get weekends. Your squad does.

On a 5 on 2 off, one squad has every Saturday and Sunday of the year and another has none, and both are working the same rotation. Quoting a single figure for those would be worse than useless.

The rest run on cycles that do not divide by seven. Those drift through the week, everybody takes a turn, and the yearly total comes out much the same wherever you sit in the cycle.

Rotations where everyone gets much the same

Pick one of these and the weekend answer is the same whichever squad you land on.

Rotations where it depends on your squad

These lock to the weekdays. The figures below are the outcomes across the squads — ask which one you are being offered before you accept a post on any of them.

How these were worked out

Each rotation is walked out day by day across fifty-two weeks, from every possible starting position in the cycle, and the weekends where both days are free are counted. Nothing is estimated.

What the arithmetic cannot know is your agency. Bid rotations, relief lines, shift swaps, holidays and overtime all move real weekends around, and a collective agreement can override any of this. Treat these as the shape of the rotation, not a promise about your year.

The part that matters more than the number

A rotation that gives you twenty weekends is worth little if you cannot see which twenty until the roster comes out. The weekends are already decided — they are sitting in a pattern that repeats. The question is whether anyone at home can see them.