September 2026
Audience movement trends across the UK
Year-over-year increase across matched locations. Audiences built week by week after the return to school, and Saturdays were the month’s biggest days.
Why like-for-like?
We compare only locations that were active in both September 2025 and September 2026: same venues, same measurement zones. This isolates genuine audience growth from network expansion, giving you the true market signal. The matched locations in this report represent a consistent, comparable set across both years.
Daily Movement
September 2026 vs 2025, with event overlays
Chart shows 1–30 September 2026 against the same dates in 2025.
What Drove Movement
Day of Week
Average daily impressions by day of week: like-for-like, same weekday in each year
Every day of the week grew. Monday led September at +25.6% YoY, Saturday stayed the biggest day by volume at 15.2M average, and Thursday, the gentlest riser at +17.1%, was still comfortably ahead.
Time of Day
Average impressions per hour, September 2026: weekdays against weekends
Once schools went back, the weekday pattern changed: a lunchtime peak, a dip mid-afternoon, then the biggest hour of the day at 6pm as school and work finish. Weekends keep one broad peak around 2pm.
What September means for your bookings
Audiences built through the month after the return to school: the last week of September delivered 2M more impressions a weekday than the first.
On weekdays, 5pm to 7pm is the biggest window of the day, as school and work finish.
Saturday is the biggest day, averaging 15.2M impressions, with its peak from 1pm to 3pm.
Methodology
Data sourced from Data Jam's UK measurement network across retail, leisure, entertainment, transport, and hospitality venues. Like-for-like comparison uses only locations active in both September 2025 and September 2026. All impressions are raw audience counts; the only estimates are any incomplete collection dates noted below. Year-over-year figures compare all 30 dates. Collection was incomplete on 7–8 September 2026, so those two days are estimated from the average of the same weekday that month. Day-of-week averages compare the same weekday in each year. 2026 outperformed 2025 on 28 of the 30 matched date pairings; the two exceptions (13 and 27 September) reflect calendar alignment, as those dates fell on Saturdays in 2025. Temperature series: London daily maxima (Open-Meteo archive). Time-of-day averages use complete days only.