Black Friday 2026: dates, real discounts and the categories where waiting pays

Black Friday is the one day of the year when practically every retailer declares a discount at the same time — and therefore the day on which discounts are hardest to judge. When everything is reduced, "reduced" stops meaning anything. Here are the dates, and an honest assessment of which categories are worth the effort.

The 2026 dates

• Black Week: Monday 23 November to Sunday 29 November 2026
• Black Friday: Friday 27 November 2026
• Cyber Monday: Monday 30 November 2026

The distinction between the three dates is by now largely marketing. In practice most promotions start in the preceding week and run through to Cyber Monday; some retailers stretch them across the whole of November. For planning purposes that means the Friday itself is not a cut-off you can miss — but it is the day with the largest number of simultaneous promotions and therefore the highest hit rate.

Where the discount is genuine

Black Friday is a clearance event, not a charity event. What gets reduced most heavily is what retailers need to move anyway:

• End-of-line electronics. Televisions, headphones and laptops from the outgoing model year are the most reliable category. The successor has been announced and the warehouse is meant to be empty. Why the model change is the real price driver is explained in our guide to buying headphones.
• Own-brand and platform devices. Streaming sticks, smart speakers, e-readers — hardware that belongs to an ecosystem and is therefore subsidised aggressively.
• Large household appliances. Washing machines and fridges regularly see genuine promotions in November. But careful: for anything that draws power continuously, the efficiency class decides more about the total cost than the reduction does — we have done the maths.
• Robot vacuums and small appliances. The category with the steepest price staircase of all; details in our timing guide.

Where it is not

• New releases. What came to market in autumn does not get given away in November. A freshly launched flagship with five per cent off is not a Black Friday deal, it is a normal price with a badge.
• Consoles. The hardware price is a strategic price. What exists instead are bundles — the real discount sits in what comes with it, not in the percentage. Our gaming guide explains the mechanics.
• New LEGO sets. Current sets rarely move far below their usual market price even in November, and the percentage almost always refers to the RRP. Why that is particularly misleading in this category: our LEGO price guide.
• Anything that already oscillates in a sawtooth. Accessories, cables, consumables. The Black Friday price here is often simply the lower end of the normal swing.

The two preparations that make the difference

First: the shortlist before the discount. Write down what you want to buy before the promotions start, and note the current market price for each item. Without that list you will buy whatever is advertised hardest on Black Friday — and that is rarely the same thing as what you need.

Second: know your reference price. The best protection against the November flood is a realistic comparison price per product. How to read one from the price history, and how to spot an artificially raised reference price, is covered in our guides to price history and fake discounts.

Together those take half an hour and mark the difference between shopping and being shopped at.

How good are the discounts really?

Instead of an assertion: the actual distribution in the live offer feed of your marketplace. It shows from what percentage an offer in your market genuinely stands out from the crowd — a yardstick that is more useful in November than any advertising promise.

22 %

Median discount across all running offers

10 %

of offers reach 40% or more

100

discounted offers analysed

0–10 %

12 %

10–20 %

32 %

20–30 %

28 %

30–40 %

18 %

40–50 %

7 %

50 %+

3 %

Live sample of 100 current offers from your Amazon marketplace. The distribution shifts by the hour — which is why the ranking matters, not the individual percentage.

The rest of the calendar

Black Friday is not the only date, and for some categories it is not even the best one. Singles Day on 11 November falls a fortnight earlier and is often competitive for technology and fashion; the Prime events are spread across summer and October. We have put the full annual overview, with the strongest category per date, into our shopping calendar.

* Prices incl. VAT, plus shipping if applicable. Prices may have changed since the last update; the current price on the merchant’s site applies. Real-time updates are not technically possible.