Best Time to Send a Press Release in 2026 (Study of 178,863 Releases)

Introduction

When is the best time to send a press release? Which words show up in nearly every announcement? And how many press releases are now being written by AI? To find out, PR Gun analyzed 178,863 press releases distributed across 9 newswire services, 99.7% of them published between May 1 and September 29, 2026. This is the updated 2026 edition of the study. An earlier June 2026 edition analysed 56,606 releases.

This is original data drawn from real, published press releases, not a survey of opinions. Below are the findings, the charts, and what they mean for anyone trying to get their announcement noticed. You are welcome to cite or republish any statistic on this page with a link back to this study.

Key findings at a glance

• Tuesday is the most popular day to issue a press release (23.4%), ahead of Thursday (21.2%). 83.4% of all releases go out Monday through Thursday.
• The 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern hour is the single most common send time (14.0% of releases with a recorded send time), and 34.4% are sent between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. Eastern.
• The average press release runs 845 words (median 706), far longer than most journalists say they will read.
• 18.3% of press releases call something "innovative."
• 2.1% of releases (3,795) show classic AI generated phrasing such as "delve," "tapestry," "ever evolving" and "a testament to."

The best day to send a press release

Across all 178,863 dated releases in our sample, distribution clusters hard in the first half of the work week. Tuesday (23.4%) and Thursday (21.2%) are the two busiest days, with Wednesday (20.3%) and Monday (18.5%) close behind. Friday carries 12.9%, which makes it 45.0% quieter than Tuesday. The weekend is nearly dead, as Saturday and Sunday combined account for 3.7% of all releases.

The takeaway is twofold. If you want to ride the natural news cycle when reporters are actively working, Tuesday through Thursday is the consensus window. If you want to stand out in a less crowded inbox, a Monday or a Friday release faces noticeably less competition, and almost nobody is competing on the weekend.

The best time of day to send a press release

Timing within the day is even more concentrated. The 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern hour is the single most popular hour to cross the wire (14.0% of releases with a recorded send time), followed by 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. (10.8%). About 34.4% of all timed releases go out between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. Eastern. There is a smaller secondary bump in the 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. hour (5.8%), around the 4 p.m. close of US stock markets.

Most PR guidance recommends sending in the morning so your news is waiting when reporters start their day, and the industry follows that advice almost to the letter. The morning is therefore the most crowded part of the day. The noon hour carries only 5.9% of timed releases, and the whole afternoon from noon to 6 p.m. carries 27.4%, so an early afternoon release lands in a much thinner stream.

How long is the average press release?

The average press release in our sample is 845 words, with a median of 706 words and an average headline of 96.9 characters (about 14 words). For comparison, most editors and PR coaches recommend keeping a release to 300 to 500 words, which means the typical release is well beyond the recommended length.

Longer is not better. A tighter release that leads with the news, supports it with one strong quote and a single data point, and links out for detail is far more likely to be read to the end than a long block of background and boilerplate.

The most overused words in press releases

We scanned every release for the clichés that PR writers reach for most. The runaway winner is "innovative," which appears in 18.3% of all press releases. "Seamless" appears in 6.8%, "proud to" in 6.2%, and "robust" in 6.1%.

None of these words carry information. They are the verbal equivalent of throat clearing. When nearly one in five releases describes itself as "innovative," the word stops meaning anything. The releases that get picked up tend to replace the adjective with the evidence, meaning the number, the customer, or the result that makes the claim for you.

The rise of AI-written press releases

2026 is the first year in which AI generated language is measurable on the wires at scale. Searching for the tell tale phrasing of large language models, such as delve, tapestry, ever evolving, navigating the and a testament to, we found that 2.1% of press releases (3,795 in all) carry at least one of these classic AI fingerprints. Individually, "furthermore" appears in 2.4% of releases, "underscores" in 2.2%, and "pivotal" in 2.1%.

This is a conservative floor, not a ceiling. It only counts the most obvious tells, and well edited AI drafts leave no trace. The practical lesson is to edit the robotic phrasing out before you publish. Reporters increasingly recognize these patterns, and a release that reads like a chatbot wrote it is a fast way to be ignored.

What this means for your next press release

Put the data together and a clear playbook emerges.

• Send Tuesday through Thursday to ride the news cycle, or on Monday or Friday to dodge the crowd.
• Avoid the 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Eastern rush if you want less competition, or file just before it if you need to be in the morning read.
• Keep it under 500 words. Lead with the news.
• Cut the clichés. Replace "innovative" and "seamless" with a number or a result.
• Edit out AI phrasing before it goes live.

A great press release still needs to reach the right outlets. PR Gun distributes your release to 500+ news sites, including Google News and AP News, starting at $49, with free professional writing included. Write it well, time it right, and put it in front of the audiences that matter.

Methodology

This updated study analyzes 178,863 press releases distributed across 9 newswire services, with 99.7% published between May 1 and September 29, 2026. Releases with an empty body, a body under 50 words, or no usable date were excluded. Where a release had no stored publish date, its date was taken from the dateline at the top of the release (93,221 releases) and checked against the day the record was stored. Day of week analysis uses all 178,863 releases. The hour of day breakdown uses only the 77,773 releases with a recorded send time, converted from UTC to US Eastern time with daylight saving time applied, and 90.5% of those come from a single wire, so the hour figures mostly describe that wire. Word and phrase analysis is case insensitive and measures the share of releases in which a term appears at least once (not total frequency). The earlier June 2026 edition read send hours as stored, without converting them to Eastern time. Read the same way, this sample also peaks at noon (14.0%), with 40.8% between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on that clock, so the change in the peak hour reflects the time zone conversion rather than a change in sending behavior. Because the sample is a 2026 snapshot rather than a multi year panel, we report distributions within the period and make no claims about year over year change. Figures may not sum to 100% due to rounding.

Cite or republish this study

Journalists, bloggers and researchers are free to use these statistics. Please credit PR Gun and link to this page (https://prgun.com/article/75/best-time-to-send-a-press-release). Suggested citation.

"Best Time to Send a Press Release in 2026," PR Gun analysis of 178,863 press releases. https://prgun.com/article/75/best-time-to-send-a-press-release

More from this study

Every figure from this study appears in Press Release Statistics (2026). There are also benchmarks and fill-in templates for funding announcements, product launches, partnerships, acquisitions and executive appointments.