How intense is yoursummer?

'Back in September.' If you've ever emailed a European colleague in August, you'll know the auto-reply.

I've always wondered how much of that is reputation and how much is real. So I asked a simple question: when summer arrives, how much do people in each country actually step back from planning meetings, events and get-togethers?

Every week, people use Doodle to organize everything from team meetings to family get-togethers. That gives us a rare view of how summer really lands, country by country, week by week. Here's what we found.

Spain, Sweden, Norway and France switch off the most: in July and August 2025, the number of people organizing plans on Doodle fell by 47% to 55% compared with spring. The United States dipped by just 7%, and Australia, in the middle of its winter, didn't dip at all.

Summer dip = average weekly organizers in July and August 2025 (ISO weeks 27 to 35) compared with a spring baseline (21 April to 15 June 2025). The full ranking of all 23 countries is in the heatmap below.

The quiet weeks follow each country's holidays. The Nordics go first: Finland and Norway reach their quietest point in the week of 14 July. Belgium, Denmark and Sweden follow in the week of 21 July. Then, in the week of 11 August, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and five more countries hit their low together, around the 15 August holiday.

At that low point, Norway, Finland, Spain and Italy fall to between 14% and 18% of their spring level. Most of Europe is back to normal by the first week of September. Germany takes until October, because its school holidays are staggered by state.

Each cell shows weekly organizers as a percentage of that country's spring 2025 level. Weeks run from 26 May to 29 September 2025 and are labeled by their Monday.

Not in any simple way. Some of the countries with the fewest hours worked per year, like Norway, Sweden and Denmark, also switch off the hardest. Others with long working years, like Czechia, Poland and Portugal, still slow down by around 40% in summer. The United States pairs long hours with almost no summer dip.

Hours: OECD average annual hours actually worked per worker, 2025. The OECD notes these figures are “unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources”, and they include part-time workers, so treat the horizontal position as a rough guide. Dashed lines mark the median of these 20 countries. Greece, Hungary and Brazil are not shown because no comparable OECD annual figure was used.

Further ahead than for July. In Denmark, the median group poll for an August date went out 39 days before that date, against 17 days for July. Belgium and France show the same pattern. Spain and Italy stay short-notice all summer, at 7 to 11 days.

1. 1.Denmark: 39 days ahead for August dates, 17 for July.
2. 2.Belgium: 27 days for August, 15 for July.
3. 3.France: 25 days for August, 13 for July.
4. 4.Germany, Switzerland and Sweden: 22 days for August, against 14 to 16 for July.
5. 5.United Kingdom and Netherlands: 17 days for August, 15 and 12 for July.
6. 6.United States: 11 days for August, 12 for July.
7. 7.Italy and Spain: 11 and 9 days for August, 7 and 8 for July.

Median days between a group poll being created and its earliest proposed date, summer 2025, from a 10% sample of group polls. Country is the time zone set on the poll.

Plan August early, protect the time you're away, and make it easy for people to find you when you're back. Three small habits cover most of it.

1. 1.Send the poll in June. For an August trip or a summer get-together, send a group poll early. Friends, family and colleagues vote on the dates, and nobody needs an account to join in.
2. 2.Let your calendar say no. Add your vacation as out-of-office with auto-decline, so invites for those weeks get a polite reply while you're on the beach.
3. 3.Book September before you go. Share a booking page for your return, so catch-ups land in the times you choose, spread across your first weeks back.

How we did it

Doodle data counts weekly active organizers: people who ran a group poll that got at least one response, or received a booking, in a given week of summer 2025. Country is where the organizer was when they organized, based on their device, so someone on vacation abroad counts where they are.

The baseline is the average of eight spring weeks, 21 April to 15 June 2025. Some spring public holidays fall inside it, so the dips are slightly conservative. We include 23 countries with at least 500 weekly organizers in spring, and show percentages, not counts.