When is the next weekend?

Sometimes even a rather simple question, such as asking to meet "next weekend", can be confusing — especially if it's Friday when you ask.

To me, "next weekend" means the very next weekend to come, and I understand the "weekend" to consist of Saturday and Sunday. So, if someone talks about "next weekend" on a Friday, I assume they mean the following day (Saturday) and the Sunday immediately after it. However, when a couchsurfer once asked to be hosted "next weekend", it occurred to me that she might actually have meant the weekend of the following week — what I would describe as "the next week weekend".

Things become even more complicated when you take into account that different countries define the beginning of the week differently. In some countries, Sunday is considered the first day of the week, while in others it is Monday. In Finland, the week begins on Monday, so the weekend naturally consists of the last two days of the week: Saturday and Sunday. On the other hand, if you come from a country where the week starts on Sunday, you may not think of Sunday as part of the weekend at all, since it is the beginning. And if the "weekend" consisted only of Saturday, the term would hardly be necessary, so perhaps Friday has to be included instead.

I asked a few people (here in Finland) how they define the "weekend". Most agreed with me that it means Saturday and Sunday, but two people said that Friday evening should also count as part of the weekend. One of them even gave me a biblical explanation: according to her, the weekend starts on Friday evening because that is when Jesus was crucified.

If that is the case, then talking about "next weekend" on a Friday becomes even more ambiguous — it depends on what time of day you ask.

Nevertheless, even if everybody more or less agreed about the definition (Saturday and Sunday, plus Friday evening according to some), almost everybody seemed to think that "next weekend" — if asked on Friday — means the end of the following week, not literally the weekend that is coming next. That's puzzling. Would it still be the next week one if asked on Tuesday?

Coming back to couchsurfing, this is one of the reasons why I prefer people to send me a hosting request rather than just a message. A request requires you to specify the dates, so this sort of ambiguity is avoided. Even if you don't yet know your exact travel dates, entering approximate ones at least ensures that we're talking about the same week (and the same month).

P.S. The couchsurfer mentioned in this story is not the one in the photo above nor the one who took the author image below.

• Post 10: When is the next weekend?
• Published 14 Jul 2026 by Niko Lipsanen
• No major updates

The author may sometimes interpret too literally what others say or write and but often genuinely doesn't understand what they mean if they use very ambiguous wording.

• Author image: Justyna Ciupka (Alcalá, 2024)
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