How to talk about the weekend in English

Park afternoon

Everyone loves the weekend. Weekends are a huge topic of conversation. Starting on Wednesday or Thursday, people will ask you about your weekend plans. When you return to work or school, you'll be asked how your weekend went. So it's helpful to have a nice range of phrases to use for these conversations.

The upcoming weekend

If you want to ask someone about the upcoming weekend in English, here are some common questions:

What are you doing this weekend?

Do you have anything going on this weekend?

Do you have any big plans for the weekend?

Do you have anything planned for this weekend?

If you have plans, you can tell people about them:

I'm driving to Baltimore with a friend.

I've got a date lined up.

Francine and I are taking the kids to the zoo.

If you don't have any plans, here are some good phrases:

I don't have anything planned.

I'll probably just stay at home and relax.

I just want to sleep in!

Of course, you might not want to know about other people's weekend plans. In that case, just wish them a happy weekend:

Enjoy your weekend!

Have a great weekend!

See you next week.

The weekend past

After the weekend is over, you can ask about it with these expressions:

How was your weekend?

Did you do anything fun over the weekend?

What did you get up to this weekend?

Did you have a good weekend?

Here are some answers:

It was awesome!

It was pretty laid-back.

I went out with some friends on Saturday.

I just puttered around the house.

I had a pretty uneventful weekend.

Things to do on the weekend

Here are some of the activities that people like to do on the weekend:

go out to eat
go out (to a bar or club)
see a movie
binge watch TV shows
chill out at home
sleep in
catch up on sleep
sleep in
lay around the house
do some housework
do some yard work
spend time with your family
take a road trip
go to church
get together with friends
have a cookout
have a house party
have a dinner party
have a big family meal
go shopping
catch up on work

Bonus: Which weekend do you mean?

One difficult part of conversations about the weekend is knowing which weekend you mean. Here are some example sentences to help you figure out what "last weekend", "this weekend", and "next weekend" mean, depending on when you say them:

Monday- Tuesday

Last weekend I (did something).	8-10 days earlier
This weekend I (did something).	1-3 days earlier
This weekend I'm (doing something).	5-6 days later
Next weekend I'm (doing something).	5-6 days later

Wednesday-Friday

Last weekend I (did something).	4-5 days earlier (Probably)
This weekend I (did something).	(This would be confusing.)
This weekend I'm (doing something).	1-4 days later
Next weekend I'm (doing something).	8-11 days later

Saturday-Sunday

Last weekend I (did something).	6-8 days earlier (probably)
This weekend I (did something).	Yesterday or today (probably)
This weekend I'm (doing something).	Yesterday, today, or tomorrow
Next weekend I'm (doing something).	7-9 days later

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