People We Meet on Vacation arrived on Netflix on January 9, 2026, at midnight PT / 3 a.m. ET. It is a Netflix original, so there is no theatrical window and no waiting — it is included with any subscription tier.
Where and when
| Platform | Netflix |
|---|---|
| Released | January 9, 2026 |
| Time | Midnight PT / 3 a.m. ET |
| Cost | Included with any tier |
| Director | Brett Haley |
| Starring | Emily Bader, Tom Blyth |
Netflix drops originals at midnight Pacific, which is 3 a.m. on the East Coast — worth knowing if you planned to watch the moment it landed.
The story
Poppy wants to see the world. Alex would rather stay home with a book. They become best friends anyway, after sharing a car from Boston back to their small Ohio hometown.
They live far apart, so for a decade they carve out one week of summer together — the same week, every year. The film is built on that structure: ten summers, and everything the two of them decline to say across them.
The source
It is adapted from Emily Henry‘s bestselling novel, one of the books that made her a fixture of contemporary romance. The screenplay is by Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo.
Henry adaptations arrive with a built-in audience and a built-in risk: her novels run on interiority, and interiority is the hardest thing to move onto a screen. The decade-spanning structure is the film’s answer to that — it externalises the passage of time that the book handles in a character’s head.
Frequently asked
- Is it on Netflix? Yes, it is a Netflix original.
- Was it in theaters? No.
- Do I need a specific plan? No, any tier includes it.
- Is it based on a book? Yes, Emily Henry’s novel of the same name.
