The Defense Department adjusted its special leave policy, limiting service members to 90 days of accrued leave. Changes include a 60-day cap on regular leave and a reduction in special accrual to 30 days. Leave days will have to be used within two years of completion of the relevant duty. (Dylan Bowyer/U.S. Marine Corps)

A new Defense Department regulation update cuts the time off from work that service members can collect, according to a recent Pentagon statement.

Under normal circumstances, service members are allowed to save up a maximum of 60 days of annual leave from one fiscal year to the next.

However, when deployments or critical duty assignments prevent them from taking time off, regulations permit special leave accrual.

Under the revised leave and liberty policy announced Friday, service members are limited to 90 days total. Accrual of regular leave is capped at 60 days, while special accrual leave is limited to 30 days.

Before the change, troops could squirrel away 120 days of leave, with an allotment of 60 days of regular leave and 60 days of special leave accrual allowed for when duty calls and prevents regular annual leave.

In addition, special leave accrual days now must be used within two years of completion of the duty that generated them.

Not all duty assignments linked to designated contingency operations qualify for special leave accrual, though.

Service members engaged in SLA qualifying duty, such as being assigned to a deployable ship, can hold onto a maximum of 90 days of earned leave, if provided with written authorization from the first general officer in their chain of command, the Defense Department said Friday.

Service members who saved up SLA days before 2023 will not lose their accrued time immediately and can retain it in accordance with the guidelines established by the services — for now at least.

“Any SLA leave that exceeds 90 days on or before Sept. 30, 2026 will be forfeited,” the Pentagon said Friday.

Enlisted personnel who prefer cash to days off are in luck, as up to 30 days of their SLA leave can be converted into cash. But this option can only be used once in a service member’s career.

Service members can check their special leave accrual balance in the “remarks” section of their leave and earnings statement, the DOD statement said.