Black Friday 2026 falls on Friday, November 27, the day after Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 26. Small Business Saturday follows on November 28, and Cyber Monday closes the long weekend on Monday, November 30. For most American shoppers, the real question is not the calendar. It is when Amazon's sale starts, because Amazon's Black Friday event has become the unofficial opening of the holiday shopping season — and this year, there is a twist. As of late October, Amazon had not announced the dates of its United States Black Friday Week event. Its Black Friday guide, published on October 30, confirms the calendar dates and tells shoppers to check back for the sale dates.
Last year is the best guide to what happens next. In 2025, Amazon's Black Friday event ran from Thursday, November 20, through Cyber Monday on December 1 — twelve days, starting a full week before Black Friday itself. If Amazon follows the same pattern this year, the sale would begin around Thursday, November 19. That is an educated guess, not an announcement, and Amazon could choose a different window. What is certain is that the deals do not wait for the official day. Early offers are already live in Amazon's Holiday Shop, and the company has been accepting Black Friday Week deal submissions from sellers since July. Lightning Deal and Best Deal submissions closed on October 20, while Prime Exclusive Discounts remain open.
The scale of the weekend is hard to overstate. Adobe's forecast, published September 28, expects 12.9 billion dollars in online sales on Black Friday and 15.1 billion dollars on Cyber Monday. Last year, Americans spent 6.4 billion dollars online on Thanksgiving, up 5.3 percent from the year before; 11.8 billion dollars on Black Friday, a record for the day; and 14.25 billion dollars on Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day ever recorded. The National Retail Federation forecasts that November and December retail sales will reach 1.013 trillion dollars this year, up 4.2 percent from 2025. Adobe's forecast also says where the best prices will be: Black Friday is the best day for televisions, toys, apparel, appliances and furniture, while Cyber Monday is the deepest day for electronics and computers.
Amazon's own devices are usually where the steepest cuts appear. Echo speakers, Fire tablets, Kindle e-readers and Ring doorbells have historically carried some of the deepest discounts of the event, with savings of up to 70 percent on select Amazon devices in past years. Beyond its own hardware, expect the familiar pattern: waves of deals rolled out through the week rather than dumped all at once, with new Lightning Deals appearing as often as every five minutes during peak hours. A Lightning Deal typically runs for a few hours or until it sells out, and Prime members get early access to them. Prime membership costs 14.99 dollars a month or 139 dollars a year, and it is the main way to see deals before everyone else.
There is one consumer protection built into the event that is worth knowing about. Every event deal and Prime Exclusive Discount has to clear two price checks: it must be at or below the lowest price of the past 60 days, and at least 5 percent below the lowest price of the past 30 days. That does not make every discount genuine — a product can still be a bad buy at a real discount — but it does mean the strikethrough prices are measured against recent reality rather than invented. The practical advice has not changed in years: make a short list before the sale starts, write down today's price for each item, and buy only when the sale price beats the number you wrote down.
The return window is generous this year. Eligible orders placed from November 1 through December 31 can be returned until January 31, 2027, with an earlier January 15 deadline for Apple products. That takes some of the risk out of buying early, which matters when the best deals may appear before Black Friday itself. The smartest approach is to treat the whole month as the sale: watch the Holiday Shop now, keep your list short, and let Cyber Monday be your second chance rather than your first look. We will update this page when Amazon announces its official sale dates.
