6 on 4 off is a ten day cycle: six shifts, then four rest days. On the police version the six are not six of the same thing. They are two earlies, two lates and two nights, in that order, which is why the same rota is also written 2-2-2-4. One crew covers the whole clock without handing over to a second rota.
We make Lumical, an app that scans work rosters into your calendar, so read this with that in mind. Everything below is cycle math, and you can check it on our free shift pattern visualizer.
The shape
Six worked days in every ten means you are on duty 60 percent of the calendar. There is no drift trap here: ten days against a seven day week does not divide, so the block walks through the weekdays and comes back to where it started after ten cycles. Every crew on the rota gets a similar year. That is the opposite of a locked rotation like 2-2-3, where one crew can hold every other weekend for good.
The hours question
This is where published figures disagree, and the reason is real: shift lengths differ by force. Rotas in the public domain run anywhere from 8 to 10 hours, and some security and ambulance versions of 6 on 4 off run 12s.
The arithmetic is simple once you fix the length. Six shifts per ten days, scaled to a seven day week:
- 8 hour shifts: 33.6 hours a week
- 10 hour shifts: 42 hours a week
- 12 hour shifts: 50.4 hours a week
Our 6 on 4 off calendar uses 10 hours, because that is the length that lands on the 42 hour week a 40 hour contract plus rest day working actually comes to. If your force runs 8s, take the hours figures on that page as the shape rather than the total, and check your own rota.
Why the nights come last
Forward rotation. Moving earlies to lates to nights pushes your body clock later each time, in the same direction it drifts naturally, which is easier to adapt to than jumping backwards. Putting the two nights at the end of the block also means the rest days start immediately after them.
That last part is a mixed blessing. Your final night ends on the morning of your first rest day, so you sleep through most of it. Four rest days on paper is closer to three usable ones. The calendar page counts those separately as recovery days, on the same definition used across this site: the first day off after a night shift is not a day off. The Friday night rule has the longer version.
Weekends
Because the cycle drifts, weekends land wherever they land. Over a year every crew ends up near the same count, and the count is low: two of your six shifts run overnight, and any block that touches a Friday night takes that weekend out. The calendar pages for 2026, 2027 and 2028 give the exact figure for each year, including the spread across crews.
Where it sits against 4 on 4 off
Most UK response policing has moved to 4 on 4 off with 12 hour shifts. Compared with that, 6 on 4 off gives shorter individual shifts and a shorter break, more shifts a year but fewer hours in each one, and a harder sleep problem because you change start times three times inside one block instead of never. Which is better depends entirely on whether you would rather absorb the fatigue in long days or in constant switching.
Put the rota in your calendar
The 6 on 4 off calendar draws the whole year on real dates, with a printable sheet and a file that imports every shift in one go. There are pages for 2027 and 2028 as well.
A published rota is a starting point. Real duty sheets carry aid, courts, rest day working and swaps that no pattern predicts. Get Lumical on the App Store and photograph the sheet you were actually given; every shift lands in Apple Calendar.