The present study is one of the first to test how the number of persons an individual is staying with in isolation, along with age, gender, marital status, the number of children, and culture (i.e. individualism vs. collectivism) is associated with experienced stress levels in a large sample from 27 countries and areas. Furthermore, we want to investigate the link between stress levels and educational background and the severity of the COVID‐19 situation in each country or area. Based on the literature review, our pre‐registered hypotheses (see https://osf.io/xf4mj) were as follows: