The thirteenth edition of our Canadian Leisure & Reading Study is now available! Learn about the reading behaviours of Canadians and find out what’s changed compared to previous years. What formats are getting more traction among readers? How much time are Canadians dedicating to reading? How many books do they read per year? We tell you all about it in this free study. To jump right in, find the full report here. You can also find some of the top-level highlights below.
About the data
This survey was fielded in January 2026 to 1,278 Canadians over the age of 18 until we had responses from 1,005 respondents who had read or listened to a book or part of a book at least a few times a year in the past year.
When we mention “buying”, we’re referring to buying books from an online retailer (or retailing app for ebooks and audiobooks), a physical bookstore that primarily sells new books, a used bookstore or thrift store, a general retailer, or a subscription service. Borrowing refers to getting books for free from a public library, another person (gifting or lending), a free internet site, or an illegal file-sharing site.
Leisure time
In 2025, 28% of Canadians reported having more than enough leisure time, 52% had enough, and 20% had less than enough.
Readers reported similar perceptions, 53% said they had enough leisure time, 27% said they had more than enough, and 20% said less than enough.
How did Canadians use their leisure time? The most popular weekly activities were watching videos/tv/movies (90%), cooking (87%), browsing social media/web (86%), listening to music (84%), and spending time with family (71%).
Reading as a leisure activity
Overall, 50% of Canadians said they read or listened to books weekly and 31% said daily. For readers, reading and listening to books came in eighth place on a list of activities they do weekly (63%), and seventh place on a list of activities they do daily (39%).
In 2025, just under half (47%) of readers read or listened to 1 to 5 books, 29% read or listened to 6 to 11 books, 19% read or listened to 12 to 49 books, and 6% were heavy readers and read or listened to 50 or more books.
For the third year in a row, readers across all formats were acquiring books from free sources more than from paid sources. In 2025, 49% of print readers bought their books. As for audiobook and ebook readers, they purchased 39% of their ebooks and 45% of their audiobooks in 2025.
In 2025, more Canadian readers said they had no restrictions on buying books (27%) than in 2024. The largest share of readers still bought books within their budget (43%) and those who borrowed or got books for free remained unchanged from 2024 (31%).
How did Canadians discover the books they read? The most popular method was word of mouth (36%), however, this has been dropping over the past few years. Other popular methods of discovery were at bookstores (27%), public libraries (26%), social media (23%), and online book retailers (18%).
Other things we learned
- 79% of Canadians read a book in 2025.
- The top three reasons readers gave for reading were for enjoyment/entertainment (56%), to relax or for comfort (54%), or to become immersed in another world or to escape reality (29%).
- The public library was the top place, across free and paid sources, for acquiring print books in 2025 at 24%.
- In 2025, fewer Canadian readers spent $0 in a typical month than they did in 2024 and more spent between $150 and $249.
- 93% of readers read a print book at least once in 2025 and the majority prefer to read print books (58%).
- The romance genre is up for ebook readers over the last five years. In 2021, 28% of readers identified romance as a genre they read in ebook format, and that has steadily climbed to 36% in 2025.
- Reading books by or about Canadians/locals is up year over year, from 30% in 2024 to 35% in 2025.
As mentioned earlier, this is just a sample of the insights included in the study. Find the full report here and feel free to share widely!
