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Is 45 days still the right seasonal lead time, or is everyone quietly moving to 90?

Questions & help 2,377
Aisha B.

I built my whole calendar around "publish 45 days before the moment" because that's what I read when I started in 2023. But the last two Q4s my stuff felt late — by the time my Thanksgiving pins had any traction, the searches were already past peak.

Pinterest's own 2026 planning material talks about seasonal searches growing months ahead, which is vaguer and earlier than 45 days. What are people actually running with in practice?

# planning # q4 # seasonal

3 replies

Ella B.

I run 90 for anything with a hard date (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's, back to school) and 45 for soft seasons ("fall recipes", "summer outfits"). The hard-date stuff needs the runway because people plan it. Nobody plans "cozy soup" in advance, they just want it when it's cold.

Olivia James

45 was never a rule, it was a blog post that got repeated until it became one. I've never found a source for it that wasn't someone else's blog post.

yuki.creates

Depends entirely on whether the pin is new or a repeat. A brand new pin on a brand new URL needs weeks just to find its footing. A URL that already performed last Christmas with a new image on it moves way faster — I've had those pick up in under a week. So my lead time isn't one number, it's 90 days for new content and about 3 weeks for proven content.

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