# State of Meetings 2026

## What we’ve learned from 50 million hours of meetings

Based on an analysis of meetings captured between 2023 and 2025.

We analyzed data from meetings captured with the Supernormal browser and desktop app between 2023 and 2025 to understand how the way we work together is evolving.

This report examines meeting volume, duration, structure, and scheduling patterns—plus early signals from AI-assisted meetings that hint at where things are headed.

**Meetings are getting shorter, but not fewer.** Average duration dropped from 51 to 47 minutes, while volume held steady.

**Friday is fading.** Just 16% of meetings now happen on Friday, and that share keeps shrinking.

**External collaboration is up.** 46% of meetings now include someone outside your company.

**1-on-1s are growing.** Direct conversations now make up nearly a quarter of all meetings.

**AI is shifting meetings from discussion to execution.** Early data shows 69% of AI-assisted meetings now generate actionable artifacts, with a median time-to-first-draft of zero minutes.

## The scale of modern meetings (2023-2025)

**Value:** 50.9 million hours

Over the past three years, Supernormal's products have captured more than 50 million hours of meetings. Based on average attendee time valued at $48/hour, those meetings represent $17.3B in economic value. How we meet and what we get out of meetings is a major consideration for businesses, and even entire economies.

### Total meeting hours per year

**49.8M Total hours (2023-2025)**

**$17.3B Estimated economic cost**

**Value:** $1 trillion per year

American knowledge workers spend an estimated $1 trillion worth of time in meetings each year. See the [Methodology](https://www.supernormal.com/state-of-meetings#methodology) section for how we calculated this.

### Average and median hours per week spent in meetings per year (2023-2025)

## How meeting structure has changed

Shorter meetings

Larger meetings

1-1 meetings

External meetings

Recurring vs. ad hoc

### Meetings are getting shorter

Average meeting duration dropped from 51 minutes in 2023 to 47 minutes in 2025.

### Percentage of 60+ minute meetings per year

## When the world meets

### Meetings by day of week

Tuesday remains the most popular meeting day (21% of weekly meetings), followed closely by Monday and Wednesday.

### Decline of Friday meetings

Friday meetings now account for just 16% of the weekly total. After peaking in 2024, Friday's share has started to slip as teams protect the end of the week for focused work.

### Meetings outside standard business hours

Nearly 30% of meetings occur in the evening (after 6pm UTC), while 12% start before 9am.

## Fastest-growing meeting names

### Most common meeting names

1. Standup
2. All Hands / Town Hall
3. 1:1
4. Sprint / Agile
5. Interview

### What meeting names reveal about work

Sync/check-in meetings are the most common type in our dataset, followed by Standups. These two categories alone account for more meetings than all other named types combined.

### Meeting size by name

**1-on-1:** 2.0  
**Interview:** 3.7  
**Sync:** 7.3  
**Standup:** 12.4  
**Sprint:** 13.2  
**All Hands:** 15.7

## The shift toward intentional meetings

People aren't meeting less, they're meeting smarter. For years, calendars trended in one direction: fuller. In 2024, that started to change. But this isn't a rejection of meetings, it's a sign that teams are getting more deliberate about when a meeting is the right tool.

### Year-over-year meeting volume change - user distribution

## What's driving the shift?

It's not that meetings stopped being valuable, it's that people are choosing them more carefully. Hybrid policies have matured. Async-first cultures are taking hold. And teams are learning to ask "does this need a meeting?" before defaulting to one.

## AI-assisted meetings

### Growth of AI-assisted meetings

AI-powered meeting tools went from novelty to necessity between 2023 and 2025.

### Early signals (July-Nov 2025)

In mid-2025 we launched our desktop app, and early usage patterns began to show how meetings might evolve beyond documentation and toward execution.

### What this means for meetings in 2026

1. Meeting volume stabilizes
2. Meetings continue to get shorter and more outcome-focused
3. External collaboration keeps rising
4. Fewer follow-up syncs
5. AI execution becomes expected, not novel

## Methodology

### Data sources

### Time period covered

### Known anomalies and exclusions

### App data window disclaimer

## Report resources

Supernormal. "State of Meetings 2026: What We've Learned from 50 Million Hours of Meetings." Supernormal, January 2026. [https://www.supernormal.com/state-of-meetings](https://www.supernormal.com/state-of-meetings)