A brand new research of workplace utilisation tendencies all over the world suggests hybrid working patterns have largely settled, with common occupancy remaining effectively beneath pre-pandemic norms and peak attendance persevering with to cluster midweek. The Hybrid Occupancy Index 2025–2026 [registration] revealed by office analytics agency HubStar, attracts on knowledge from greater than 300 million sq. ft of workplace house throughout 173 buildings in 13 international locations, overlaying greater than 27,000 workspaces between January 2023 and December 2025.
The report finds that workplace attendance continues to focus on Tuesdays, which recorded the best world occupancy of any weekday at 58.6 % in 2025. Mondays averaged 46.4 %, whereas Fridays remained the quietest day at 34.5 %. The sample has remained broadly constant throughout three years of information, reinforcing the concept many organisations have defaulted to a casual three-day workplace week.
The authors of the report argue that this focus creates operational inefficiencies, with places of work experiencing congestion on peak days whereas nonetheless sitting largely empty the remainder of the week. The report estimates that the majority workplaces proceed to function with emptiness charges of 40 to 50 % on common.
Fairly than introducing blanket return-to-office mandates, the report recommends extra dynamic approaches to attendance, together with team-based anchor days and incentives to unfold demand extra evenly throughout the week. It additionally highlights the emergence of “intentional Fridays”, the place organisations experiment with meeting-free insurance policies, shorter days, seasonal closures, or designated remote-only guidelines.
The report additionally means that the aim of the workplace has shifted, with organisations more and more centered on why staff are available in fairly than how typically. The report argues that staff usually tend to commute when the office expertise helps collaboration, connection, and centered work, describing this as a brand new type of “incomes the commute”.
Assembly rooms outsized and underused
One of many report’s clearest findings is a mismatch between assembly room provide and precise assembly behaviour. the report discovered that 64 % of conferences happen in rooms designed for 4 individuals or fewer, whereas 78 % happen in rooms for six individuals or fewer.
In distinction, massive boardrooms seem like considerably underused. Rooms with a capability of greater than 17 individuals hosted fewer than 4 % of conferences booked and have been solely 11.6 % full on common when in use.
HubStar suggests many organisations may cut back wasted house by changing outsized boardrooms into a number of smaller assembly rooms, and by enhancing reserving techniques to advocate appropriately sized rooms based mostly on possible attendance.
The rise of the Zoom room
The report additionally identifies rising demand for small, enclosed rooms for solo work, with staff more and more utilizing assembly rooms as makeshift personal areas for video calls or centered work.
Rooms designed for one to 3 individuals have been discovered to be solely 43.8 % full on common when occupied, indicating that they’re sometimes being utilized by a single particular person. The report claims this has given rise to the “Zoom room” as a brand new casual workspace class.
On the similar time, the report notes that cellphone cubicles and cellphone rooms take up lower than 1 % of accessible house globally, leaving staff with restricted alternate options to open-plan desks.
The report additionally argues that organisations ought to spend money on purpose-built solo areas with higher acoustics, air flow and know-how, fairly than permitting assembly rooms to be consumed by particular person calls.
Shift in direction of enclosed workspaces and casual social zones
The report highlights delicate however important modifications in workplace layouts over the three-year interval. Desks nonetheless dominate, accounting for 71 % of all workspaces in 2025, however enclosed places of work have greater than doubled from 4 % in 2023 to 10 % in 2025.
Regardless of this enhance, HubStar notes that the majority desks stay in open-plan environments. In 2025, 77.9 % of desks have been in open-plan or bullpen-style layouts, whereas solely 20.1 % have been in cubicle-style or focus configurations. The report suggests this imbalance contributes to staff searching for privateness in assembly rooms.
In the meantime, the strongest progress in utilisation was recorded in casual “help areas” comparable to cafés, lounges, reception areas and barista hubs. HubStar describes these as areas that help ad-hoc collaboration and social interplay, arguing that staff are more and more coming into the workplace for “informal collisions” fairly than formal conferences.
The report notes rising utilisation in cafés and communal consuming areas, wellness and meditation areas, coaching and city corridor areas, and casual lounges, reinforcing a broader pattern in direction of hospitality-led office design.
Metropolis variations present commuting and tradition nonetheless matter
Whereas world tendencies have been constant, the report additionally factors to important variation between cities.
London, for instance, recorded a pointy enhance in midweek attendance, with Tuesday occupancy reaching 75 % in 2025, in contrast with 63 % in 2024. HubStar suggests this displays a compression of workplace attendance into core collaboration days.
Stockholm was the strongest performer within the dataset, reaching 92 % occupancy in March 2025, far above the worldwide common for a similar month. The report attributes this to robust public transport infrastructure and cultural norms favouring in-person working, though occupancy dropped sharply in July resulting from Sweden’s widespread summer season go away patterns.
Amsterdam, which beforehand outperformed world benchmarks, noticed occupancy fall throughout the second half of 2025, dropping to 43 % in August. HubStar suggests this will likely mirror a mature hybrid tradition through which staff are more and more exercising flexibility, probably together with shorter workplace visits or use of coworking hubs nearer to dwelling.
Stability, however no full places of work
HubStar concludes that hybrid work has advanced from a short lived adjustment right into a long-term working mannequin. With occupancy stabilising within the 50 to 60 % vary, the report suggests many organisations are nonetheless holding more room than they want and may concentrate on reconfiguring workplaces round actual behaviour fairly than coverage expectations.
As an alternative of making an attempt to fill desks, it argues, employers ought to take into account right-sizing their actual property portfolios and reinvesting financial savings into areas that help the combination of collaboration, privateness and casual interplay staff more and more worth.
