When do Black Friday 2026 deals start?
Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November. No US retailer has announced a 2026 start date as of 1 September. Discounting is already running: 3,087 of 5,640 US affiliate listings carrying both a list and a sale price were marked down on 1 September, 87 days out.
Method, in one sentence: the markdown figure counts deduplicated US affiliate listings whose sale price is below their list price, in a 16,283-row product-feed pull made on 1 September 2026.
The 2026 calendar, which is arithmetic and not a forecast
| Day | Date 2026 | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday | 26 November | Thanksgiving, the fourth Thursday in November |
| Friday | 27 November | Black Friday |
| Saturday | 28 November | Small Business Saturday |
| Monday | 30 November | Cyber Monday |
| Days from 1 September | 87 and 90 | To Black Friday and Cyber Monday respectively |
What the discounting looks like today
| Measure | Value on 1 September 2026 |
|---|---|
| Listings carrying both a list and a sale price | 5640 |
| Of those, already marked down | 3087 |
| Share already marked down | 54.7% |
| Already at 50% off or more | 1609 |
| Advertisers marking down 100% of their catalogue | 3 |
| Days before Black Friday | 87 |
That table is the honest answer to the question in the title. The sale does not start; it never stops. What changes in late November is the marketing, and in some categories the depth. If you want to know whether a November price is a real one, the only reliable test is a price you recorded yourself in September.
Where the date itself comes from
Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States and traditionally opens the Christmas shopping season. The term was used in the 1950s for workers calling in sick the day after Thanksgiving, and separately by police in Philadelphia and Rochester for the traffic. Philadelphia merchants tried to rebrand it Big Friday in 1961 and failed. The now-common explanation about retailers moving from red ink into black first appears in print in the Philadelphia Inquirer on 28 November 1981.
Last verified 1 September 2026. Dates are the Friday, Saturday and Monday following Thanksgiving 2026. Markdown figures computed from 5640 US listings carrying both a list and a sale price in an affiliate product feed pulled the same day. Price figures are computed from a CJ Affiliate product-feed pull of US advertisers made on 1 September 2026. Peer-to-peer marketplace asks of $500 or more are excluded as seller placeholders, as are repdigit asks such as $999 and $9,999 wherever they appear; retailer prices are used as published. Counts are deduplicated row counts, never a feed totalCount.
Frequently asked
When is Black Friday 2026?
Friday 27 November 2026. It is the Friday after Thanksgiving, which falls on Thursday 26 November. Small Business Saturday is 28 November and Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November.
When do Black Friday 2026 deals start?
No US retailer had announced a 2026 start date as of 1 September 2026. In practice discounting is continuous: 3,087 of 5,640 US affiliate listings carrying both a list and a sale price were already marked down on 1 September, 87 days before the event.
Is Cyber Monday a different sale from Black Friday?
It began as one. Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation coined the term in a press release on 28 November 2005, for the Monday when people returned to fast office connections after Thanksgiving. Retailers now generally run the two as a single period, often called Cyber Week.
Should I wait until Black Friday to buy?
It depends on how the item is priced today. Compare the November price to a dated September price rather than to a claimed discount: 1,609 listings in this survey were already at half off or more on 1 September, so a percentage-off figure alone proves nothing.
Why do some retailers show a discount on everything?
Because their list price and their sale price are the same field used differently. Three advertisers in this survey marked down 100 percent of their catalogue permanently, which makes a percentage computed from those two fields meaningless.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Black Friday (shopping) — Black Friday as the Friday after Thanksgiving; the 1951 Factory Management and Maintenance usage; the Philadelphia and Rochester police usage; the failed 1961 Big Friday rebrand; and the red-ink to black-ink explanation first published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on 28 November 1981
- Wikipedia, Cyber Monday — the term's coining by Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation on 28 November 2005 and its 26 November to 2 December date range
- CJ Affiliate product feeds, US advertisers, queried 1 September 2026 — the source of every count and price on this page
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