November 2025: five Saturdays, five Sundays
November 2025 was honest about itself from the first square of the grid: it started on a Saturday and finished on a Sunday. Saturdays turned up five times, and so did Sundays, for ten weekend days in all. That left 20 business days, and only February matched that low count, despite being two days shorter. A month that announces its terms up front is doing you a favour. The grid showed it plainly: weekend squares at both ends, weekdays squeezed between.
All frame, little fill
The month ran from Saturday 1 November to Sunday 30 November across ISO weeks 44 to 48, and it ended exactly on a week boundary. Sunday 30 November closed week 48, and Monday 1 December opened week 49. Months rarely finish that neatly; most spill a day or two into the next week's territory.
The moon played along. The full moon on Wednesday 5 November was the closest supermoon of 2025, which made it the year's largest and brightest. Its traditional name was the Beaver moon. Last quarter came on Wednesday 12 November, new moon on Thursday 20, first quarter on Friday 28.
What the working days held
British media had its own November moment. The BBC's director-general Tim Davie resigned on Sunday 9 November, alongside the news chief Deborah Turness, after a row over an edition of Panorama. Across the Atlantic, the record American shutdown that had begun on Wednesday 1 October ended on Wednesday 12 November, after 43 days. Its funding only ran to 30 January 2026.
Cinema took the month's biggest numbers. Wicked: For Good opened on Friday 21 November and took about $147 million in North America. No film from a stage musical had ever opened bigger.
Zootopia 2 followed on Wednesday 26 November with a $156 million opening over five days. The final run of Stranger Things arrived the same day, its closing episodes held back for 31 December.
Baseball opened the month with a decider. The Los Angeles Dodgers took the World Series on Saturday 1 November, 5-4 over the Toronto Blue Jays in game seven.
The month's hardest weather
From Monday 3 November, Typhoon Kalmaegi drowned the central Philippines in its worst floods for decades. More than 200 people died around Cebu before the storm went on to Vietnam. On Monday 17 November, in the DR Congo, a makeshift bridge gave way at a Lualaba copper mine, killing more than 30 people. The month's diplomacy gathered in Johannesburg, where the G20 met on Saturday 22 November, the first such summit held on African soil.
December 2025 began on a Monday, which felt like the year clearing its throat.