The key Black Friday statistics for 2026: Bain expects US retail sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday to top $85 billion, up 8.75% on 2025 and almost double the 4.5% growth forecast for the whole holiday season. Adobe forecasts $275.1 billion in US online holiday spending (up 6.7%), with $47.5 billion during Cyber Week, $12.9 billion on Black Friday and $15.1 billion on Cyber Monday, still the biggest online shopping day of the season.
For e-commerce teams, that means more parcels in fewer days. Every extra order has to be picked, labelled, handed to a carrier, tracked and often returned. Below, we read this year's most reliable Black Friday stats from a logistics point of view, with links to tools that help, like a multi-carrier shipping platform and AI shipping automation.
Connect your carriers and stores in one place before the Black Friday rush.
Two forecasts set the tone for this year. Adobe measures online transactions only, based on more than one trillion visits to US retail sites. Bain looks at total US retail sales (in-store and online, excluding cars, fuel and restaurants) using Census Bureau and card data. Read them side by side and you get both the online picture and the overall size of Black Friday weekend.
Black Friday 2026 in numbers
Switch between Adobe's online-only forecast and Bain's total retail forecast.
Sources: Adobe Digital Insights, 2026 Holiday Forecast and Adobe press release (September 28, 2026, US online spend); Bain & Company, Black Friday 2026 Sales Forecast (October 2026, US retail sales excluding autos, gas and restaurants).
| Metric (US, 2026 forecast) | Value | Change vs 2025 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online holiday spend (Nov 1 to Dec 31) | $275.1B | +6.7% | Adobe |
| Cyber Week online spend (Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday) | $47.5B | +7.4% | Adobe |
| Retail sales, Black Friday to Cyber Monday | $85B+ | +8.75% | Bain |
| Online spend in October | $95.8B | +8% | Adobe |
| Buy now, pay later online spend (Nov to Dec) | $21.3B | +6.6% | Adobe |
| Consumers planning to shop a major sales event | 90%+ | n/a | Bain |
If you sell in Europe, keep in mind that both forecasts cover the US market. They are still the best early signal for global peak season. Whatever the market, more orders arrive in a shorter window, so connecting your stores and marketplaces and tracking every parcel in one place is what keeps the extra volume manageable.
Bain's headline is clear: the five-day window from Black Friday to Cyber Monday will generate more than $85 billion in US retail sales, or 8.5% of everything spent during the holiday season. Sales in those five days are expected to grow 8.75%, compared with 4.5% for the season as a whole. In other words, the peak is getting sharper. More of the season's growth is landing in the same handful of days.
Online, Cyber Monday still wins on volume: Adobe forecasts $15.1 billion, up 6.2%. Black Friday comes second at $12.9 billion, but grows faster at 9.2%. Thanksgiving Day adds $6.9 billion (+8.5%). Looking at card spending across retail, Bain notes Black Friday has been the number one sales day in five of the past six years, and expects Cyber Monday to break into the top five sales days this year.
Cyber Week 2026, day by day
US online spend forecast. Hover a bar for details.
Sources: Adobe Digital Insights, 2026 Holiday Forecast and Adobe press release (September 28, 2026). Weekend figure derived by subtracting Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday from Adobe's $47.5B Cyber Week total. AI traffic figures are from the press release; Adobe's report page lists +141% for Thanksgiving.
Bain's consumer survey explains part of the jump. 64% of US consumers say they will shop Black Friday this year, up from 55% in 2025, and only 10% say they will skip promotional days altogether, down from 25%. More than half of shoppers plan to change their holiday spending this year, with higher prices among the top reasons. When budgets are tight, people wait for the best deal, and that concentrates demand on the days when discounts peak.
Yes. "Black Friday" is now a season, not a day. Adobe expects $95.8 billion in US online spending in October (+8%), with $9.9 billion during Amazon's October 6 to 7 event alone. Adobe describes it as a Black Friday's worth of spending moving into October as shoppers grab early deals.
Which sales events will shoppers use?
% of US consumers who say they will shop each event during the holiday season.
Source: Bain & Company, Black Friday 2026 Sales Forecast; Bain Consumer Lab Holiday Survey 2025 (n=1,000) and 2026 (n=1,105), in partnership with ROI Rocket. Other retailers' October promotions were not included in 2025.
60% of consumers plan to shop Amazon Prime Big Deal Days and other October promotions (52% last year), and 47% plan to shop other retailers' October events. For your warehouse, that means the first wave of peak volume arrives four to six weeks before Black Friday. It's a useful dress rehearsal: if pick times, label printing or carrier pickups struggle in October, they will break in late November.
Bain found that in 2025, six of the top ten sales days fell in the final two weeks before Christmas, mostly on Fridays and Saturdays. This year Christmas falls on a Friday, so Bain expects weekdays in that final week to be stronger than usual. That is exactly when carrier cut-off dates bite, so your delivery promises at checkout need to be accurate.
$95.8B in US online spend (+8%), including $9.9B during Prime Day (Oct 6 to 7), when discounts peak at 19%. Use this wave to test carrier capacity, packing flows and shipping rules.
$47.5B in five days, with discounts up to 30%. Order volume, "where is my order" questions and carrier delays all peak here, so automation matters most.
Discounts settle at 10 to 15%. Late shoppers depend on cut-off dates, and returns from November orders start arriving. Clear tracking and an easy returns flow protect repeat sales.
Adobe's category forecast shows where the parcels will come from. Electronics and apparel together account for over 40% of online holiday spend, while grocery, toys and cosmetics are growing fastest.
Online holiday spend by category, 2026 forecast
US, November 1 to December 31. Switch to see which categories grow fastest.
Sources: Adobe Digital Insights, 2026 Holiday Forecast and Adobe press release (September 28, 2026), based on Adobe Analytics data from over 1 trillion visits to US retail sites across 18 product categories.
Electronics ($63.3B) and apparel ($51.3B) are the two biggest online categories. Electronics means high-value parcels where insurance and carrier reliability matter; apparel means many small parcels and lots of returns.
Grocery online spend is forecast to grow 10.3%, toys 9.6% and cosmetics 9.5%. Toys are especially time-sensitive: a gift that arrives on December 26 is a refund request. Furniture (+7.3%) brings bulky items, where dimensional weight can quietly eat into margin if you don't check what each carrier charges before you ship (see ShippyPro Optimizer).
Adobe expects discounts to build through November: up to 14% off listed prices in early November, up to 21% just before Thanksgiving and up to 30% during Cyber Week, the deepest of the season. Through December, discounts settle back to 10 to 15%.
Peak discount by category
Maximum % off listed price. Compare this year's forecast with last year's actual peak.
Sources: Adobe Digital Insights, 2026 Holiday Forecast and Adobe press release (September 28, 2026). 2025 figures are Adobe's reported peak discounts for the 2025 season.
Adobe also expects shoppers to use Cyber Week to stock up on basics. Compared with average September sales, it forecasts online sales of clothing basics up 210%, personal hygiene products up 150%, baby products up 113%, pet products up 93% and household cleaning supplies up 49%. These are often lower-value orders, so cost per parcel matters.
| Period | Peak discount (Adobe forecast) | What it means for shipping |
|---|---|---|
| Early November | Up to 14% | Steady volume. Last chance to finalise carrier contracts and rules. |
| Just before Thanksgiving | Up to 21% | Volume ramps up. Watch carrier pickup capacity and label print times. |
| Cyber Week (Nov 26 to 30) | Up to 30% | Season peak. Expect delays, exceptions and the most tracking questions. |
| December | 10% to 15% | Cut-off dates decide sales. November returns start arriving. |
A 30% discount plus free shipping on a low-value order can turn a sale into a loss, especially on bulky items charged by dimensional weight. Before the promotion goes live, check what each carrier will actually charge for your top-selling products, and set a free-shipping threshold that still leaves margin after the discount.
Most Black Friday orders will be placed on a phone, and a growing share will be paid in instalments, so tracking links and emails need to work well on a small screen.
Mobile and buy now, pay later in 2026
US online holiday season forecast, with 2025 for comparison.
Sources: Adobe Digital Insights, 2026 Holiday Forecast and Adobe press release (September 28, 2026), US online spend, November 1 to December 31.
Adobe forecasts that 57.4% of online holiday spend will happen on smartphones, up from 56.4% in 2025, and a record 63% on Thanksgiving Day, worth $4.4 billion (+11%). Your shipping confirmation and tracking emails will be read on a phone, often minutes after checkout.
BNPL online spend is forecast to reach $21.3 billion over November and December, $1.3 billion more than last year, which Adobe notes is more than an extra Cyber Monday's worth of BNPL spending. Cyber Monday alone should see $1.09 billion in BNPL purchases, the second year in a row above $1 billion.
AI assistants are becoming a real source of store traffic. Adobe forecasts that visits to US retail sites coming from AI chat and AI browser services will grow 130% over the holiday season, with the biggest jump on Thanksgiving (+159%). AI traffic grew 127% year over year in August 2026 alone.
In Adobe's July 2026 survey of 5,000 consumers, 77% of people who shop with AI said they feel more confident in their purchases, and 69% said they are less likely to return an item they bought with an AI assistant's help. Fewer returns mean fewer reverse shipments to pay for, which is good news in a season where return volume is usually the hidden cost of Black Friday.
Enthusiasm is not universal. In Sinch's 2026 BFCM survey of 2,501 consumers across eight countries, only 43% said AI will make shopping easier, down 5 points from 2025, and 43% named privacy as their top concern. Yet 81% are confident AI can handle order tracking, more than any other task in the survey. Use automation for practical jobs like delivery updates, not as a replacement for good service.
Product & Resources
Connect your own carrier contracts and marketplaces, import orders and create shipping labels from one account.
Explore the platform →Send automatic email updates when a parcel is in transit, out for delivery, delayed or delivered.
See Track & Trace →Set return rules and give customers a self-service return portal for the post-Black Friday wave.
Discover Easy Return →More ShippyPro guides and resources to help you plan for peak season.
Browse resources →Try ShippyPro free for 14 days and set up your carriers, rules and tracking emails before Cyber Week.
Until the parcel arrives, post-purchase messages are the brand experience. That's where shipping teams win or lose repeat customers.
| Post-purchase expectation (2026) | Share of shoppers | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Say shipping update messages are important | 93% | Sinch |
| Expect an order confirmation within five minutes | 75% | Sinch |
| Prefer email for order and shipping updates | 72% | Sinch |
| Prefer SMS for order and shipping updates | 39% | Sinch |
| Confident AI can handle order tracking | 81% | Sinch |
According to Sinch, 93% of shoppers say shipping updates are important and 64% say they are very important. Email is the preferred channel for transactional messages (72%), followed by SMS (39%) and WhatsApp (28%). If a parcel is delayed during Cyber Week, a proactive message prevents a support ticket.
Deloitte's 2025 holiday research, as reported by Hostinger's Black Friday statistics roundup, found that slow or delayed shipping (37%) and out-of-stock items (36%) were the top frustrations with online holiday shopping. You can't control transit times when every network is stretched, but you can control how accurately you promise them and how fast you tell customers when something changes.
Statistics only help if they change what you do in the next six weeks. Here is a simple plan based on the numbers above.
Take your 2025 Cyber Week orders and apply realistic growth (Adobe forecasts +7.4% online for Cyber Week). Plan for October to bring an earlier first wave.
Ask each carrier about peak surcharges, pickup limits and cut-off dates. ShippyPro connects to your own carrier contracts, and you can connect more than one carrier (up to your plan's limit), so you can switch when one network is overloaded.
In ShippyPro, shipping rules filter orders by conditions like destination country, weight, order value or SKU and limit them to the carriers you choose. You can then filter your orders by rule and ship all matching orders at once (Support activates this bulk option on request).
Set up shipping notifications for key statuses. ShippyPro's email conditions can notify customers when a parcel is in transit, out for delivery, delayed by an exception, after a failed attempt and when it is delivered, in the language of the destination country.
Publish your holiday returns window early. With Easy Return, you can set eligibility rules (purchase date, price range, shipping region) and decide who pays for the return. Customers submit requests through a return portal on your site, and with automatic approval the return label and instructions are emailed to them.
Peak season is when fuel surcharges, remote-area fees and oversize charges slip through. Set aside time in early December to compare your carrier invoices with your contracted rates. ShippyPro Invoice Analysis does this comparison for supported carriers and highlights shipments where you paid more than expected, so you can export them and request a refund from the carrier.
The Bain and Adobe forecasts are US-only. Sinch's survey covered the UK, France, Germany and Spain: 23% of European shoppers plan to spend more this year, while 42% of UK shoppers plan to cut back compared with 25% in France. 72% of European shoppers want order updates by email, and 54% want promotions by email.
For European merchants selling into the US, the US calendar matters directly: Thanksgiving falls on November 26 and Cyber Monday on November 30 this year, and cross-border parcels need extra lead time before the December cut-offs. For merchants selling only in Europe, the US data is still a useful preview: the shipping basics (more than one carrier, accurate delivery promises, proactive tracking and easy returns) don't change. Our shipping tools are a good place to start before you commit to a Black Friday offer.
Adobe forecasts $12.9 billion in US online sales on Black Friday 2026, up 9.2% on 2025. Including in-store sales, Bain expects US retail sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday to top $85 billion.
Cyber Monday is still the biggest online shopping day, with $15.1 billion forecast by Adobe for 2026 (+6.2%). Black Friday is smaller online at $12.9 billion but growing faster (+9.2%), and Bain's card data shows it was the top retail sales day in five of the past six years.
Black Friday 2026 is on Friday, November 27, the day after Thanksgiving (November 26). Cyber Monday follows on November 30, closing the five-day Cyber Week.
Bain expects the Black Friday to Cyber Monday window to account for 8.5% of total US holiday retail spending in 2026. Online, Adobe forecasts Cyber Week will make up 17.3% of holiday season spend.
In Bain's 2026 Consumer Lab survey, 64% of US consumers said they will shop Black Friday, up from 55% in 2025. More than 90% plan to shop at least one major sales event, and only 10% plan to skip promotional days entirely.
The main trends are earlier shopping (60% plan to shop October promotions), deeper Cyber Week discounts of up to 30%, record mobile shopping (63% of Thanksgiving spend), record buy now, pay later spend ($21.3 billion) and a 130% rise in AI-referred traffic to retail sites.
Adobe expects electronics ($63.3 billion) and apparel ($51.3 billion) to lead online holiday spend in 2026, followed by furniture ($33.4 billion) and grocery ($26.1 billion). Grocery, toys and cosmetics are the fastest-growing categories.
Adobe forecasts discounts of up to 30% off listed prices during Cyber Week, the deepest of the season. Electronics (30%) and toys (29%) should see the biggest discounts, followed by TVs, computers and apparel at around 23%.
Start by forecasting your peak from last year's orders, confirm capacity and cut-off dates with more than one carrier, automate carrier selection with shipping rules, switch on proactive tracking notifications, and publish a clear holiday returns policy before November.
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Read the guide →Connect your carriers, set up shipping rules and keep customers updated. Start your free 14-day trial today.