Playbook · Marketing that works
Black Friday 2026, decoded: what the UK's 2025 data tells you
Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November. What UK Black Friday 2025 statistics from 27 sources say, and 10 moves for retailers and brands this year.
Written with the team at Embryo as Black Friday, decoded (second edition, September 2026). Every figure is from a published source and linked to it. Where sources disagree we say which one we trust and why.
The short version
- Online Black Friday week 2025 was flat in the UK, down 1.2% on IMRG's index. What grew was the value of each order, not the number of people buying.
- The discount was already in the price. Between 83% and 90% of it was live before the week started, and Which? found no deal at its cheapest of the year on the day.
- Shoppers don't believe the number. 68% doubt the deals are real. The retailers who did well sold proof, like Currys' lowest-ever price guarantee, or held full price, like Next.
- The peak isn't Friday. The strongest revenue day was the Tuesday before, Cyber Monday cleared more orders than Friday on 2 networks, and January was the best month of the quarter.
- The customer you win on Black Friday mostly doesn't come back. Only 4% bought again within 12 months, and 3 in 4 of those waited for the next Black Friday.
What I mean by
- Black Friday week
- The eight days from the Monday before Black Friday to Cyber Monday, which in 2025 ran from 24 November to 1 December. It is the window IMRG uses for its UK online index, and the one most retailers mean when they report on the event. In 2026 it runs from Monday 23 November to Monday 30 November.
- Average order value (AOV)
- The total value of orders divided by the number of orders. If 100 people spend £10,000 between them, the average order value is £100. In 2025 it rose while the number of orders fell, which is why revenue could look healthy on an event where fewer people actually bought anything.
- Reference price
- The 'was' price shown next to a discount, the figure that makes £60 look like a saving on £100. UK law requires it to be genuine. After the July 2026 High Court ruling in the CMA's case against Emma Sleep, the test that survives is duration: the higher price must have been offered for at least as long as the discount runs.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- What you spend in marketing to win one new customer, usually total acquisition spend divided by new customers won. It only makes sense next to what that customer is worth over time. A cost that looks fine against one Black Friday order can be a loss if the customer never comes back.
Every headline about Black Friday 2025 said record. When we read the measured data for the UK, it said something else: the event didn’t grow, it moved. It moved from October into November, from Friday to the Tuesday before and the Monday after, from the number of things sold to the price of each one, and from the size of the discount to the proof behind it.
We read 27 published sources in full for this, from IMRG, the BRC, the ONS, Which?, Adobe, Salesforce, PwC, Barclays and others, and pulled 209 figures out of them word for word. This playbook is the short version, written for whoever owns online revenue at a retailer or a brand. Every figure links to where it came from, and where we give an opinion we say so.
When is Black Friday 2026 in the UK?
Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November, and Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November. On the 2025 pattern, the season is much wider than that weekend: the major UK retailers open their offers in the last week of October, the strongest day is the Tuesday before, 24 November, and the January sale runs to Blue Monday. Most of the decisions that will decide it are being made now.
How big was UK Black Friday 2025, really?
You will be shown 6 different totals for the same fortnight. They don’t conflict. They measure different things.
| Figure | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|
| £6.4bn, up 1.5% | What shoppers said they’d spend on the event, all channels | PwC, survey of 2,000 |
| £10.2bn | What shoppers said they’d spend from Black Friday to Christmas | Barclays, survey and card data |
| Over £6bn, up 3% | UK online sales across Cyber Week | Salesforce, platform data |
| Down 1.2% | UK online revenue over Black Friday week | IMRG, 278 retailers |
| Up 0.5% | UK online non-food sales in November | BRC-KPMG |
| £26.9bn, up 4.1% | UK online spend across November and December | Adobe |
The measured data all points the same way. IMRG, the broadest index of UK online retail, had the week down 1.2%. Salesforce had UK sales up 3%, on orders down 1% and selling prices up 6%. In real terms, UK online Black Friday did not grow. What grew was the value of each order, and the length of the season.
UK online revenue, Black Friday week 2025, year on year by day
The shopper changed too. PwC found interest in Black Friday down to 46% of people, but spend per shopper up 13% to £262. Signifyd, which handles fraud checks for online retailers, saw the same thing from the other side: orders worth 12% more, but 8% fewer of them.
Signifyd merchants, Black Friday 2025 against 2024
Our read. Plan on a bigger basket from a smaller crowd. You are not trying to win more shoppers on the day. You are trying to win a larger share of a careful buyer’s bigger basket, over a longer window, at a margin that survives the scrutiny of your “was” prices coming in 2026.
What we’d do. Forecast the quarter on orders, not revenue. Every 2025 source that separated the two found the number of orders flat or down and prices up, so a revenue target that assumes more orders will be missed by the amount of inflation in it. From 1 October, track order value and number of orders as separate lines in the daily report.
When does Black Friday actually happen now?
Not on a Friday. 58 of the 278 retailers on IMRG’s panel had a live Black Friday campaign on the first working day of November, up from 12 in 2021. 60% launched earlier than the year before and half ran for longer.
Retailers with a live Black Friday campaign on the first working day of November
That moved demand rather than creating it. The ONS recorded the first monthly fall in retail volumes since May in October 2025, and retailers told it shoppers were waiting for Black Friday. The BRC recorded its weakest growth since May the same month. Then IMRG’s online index stayed negative for 3 straight weeks before the event. The demand wasn’t created in November. It was held from October.
Inside the week, the strongest revenue day was Tuesday 25 November, up 4.4%. Black Friday itself was up 1.3%. Cyber Monday was down 3.2% on revenue, but against a strong 2024, and it still cleared more orders: Scurri, which handles delivery for retailers, saw Cyber Monday orders around 70% higher than Black Friday’s, and Worldline, a payments company, saw a bigger transaction spike on the Monday than the Friday.
You will see a claim that Cyber Monday took 42% of Black Friday weekend orders. It is widely quoted as a 2025 finding. It is 2024 data: the busiest day in that analysis is Monday 2 December, which was Cyber Monday 2024.
The season also ran longer at the far end. December was drab, with non-food sales falling for the first time in the quarter, and January was the strongest month of the four.
Total UK retail sales, year on year, October 2025 to January 2026
Our read. Build for 9 days with 2 peaks, and stop planning around a Friday. The shopper browses from Amazon’s October Prime event, holds through October, buys on the Tuesday when the first real offers land, buys again on Friday, and finishes on Monday when the considered purchases clear. By Friday they have been in the market for a month and your advertising costs are at their highest of the year.
What we’d do. Open a real offer in the last week of October, not a teaser. Argos, Currys, John Lewis and Richer Sounds all opened between 29 and 31 October in 2025, and Genie Goals found late-October campaigns bought clicks 30% cheaper than Black Friday week. Put your second-best offer on Tuesday 24 November 2026. Give Cyber Monday its own creative and its own stock, and plan the January sale as a third peak with its own budget.
Is the Black Friday discount real?
Mostly, it was already there. DataWeave tracked 71,642 products on major UK retail sites. Before Black Friday week, apparel was already 17.2% off on average and beauty 14.4%. The week itself added between 1 and 6 points. By our arithmetic on those figures, 83% to 90% of the total discount was live before the week began.
Average discount by category, before and during Black Friday week 2025
Discount already live, 6 to 23 NovPoints added in Black Friday week
And it wasn’t the lowest price of the year. Which? tracked 175 home, tech and health products at 8 retailers for a full year around Black Friday 2024. Every one was the same price or cheaper at some point in the 6 months either side. Not one deal was at its cheapest of the year on the day.
Black Friday 2024 deals available at the same price or cheaper at other times of the year
Shoppers know. 68% told Barclays they are sceptical about the real value of the deals. 66% told research commissioned by Currys that Black Friday is a con.
How much British shoppers believe Black Friday
Currys is the one retailer that treated trust as the product. In 2024 it promised no Black Friday deal had been cheaper in the previous 6 months, and Which? checked and found the promise held. In 2025 it went further: every badged deal at its lowest ever price, with a refund of the difference if the price fell again before 2 December. Its own research found 46% of shoppers would trust Black Friday more with a guarantee like that, and it built the whole event on that number.
The legal ground has also moved. The CMA, the UK competition regulator, had tried to make a “was” price genuine by rule. On 30 July 2026 the High Court threw out the part that required one sale at the higher price for every two at the discount, calling it unworkable, and the CMA withdrew its guidance the same day. The rule that the higher price must have run for at least as long as the discount still stands. Ten days later the Prime Minister announced a consultation on misleading “was” prices for this autumn, which means your Q4 2026 prices will be set while the rules are being rewritten.
Our read. Price integrity is a revenue lever in 2026, and it’s the one your competitors aren’t pulling. A deeper discount buys you nothing if nobody believes it, and it may buy you a regulator. A lowest-price guarantee costs margin only on lines you’d have cut anyway, and it gives the sceptical 68% something they can act on. We’d expect 2 or 3 more major retailers to copy Currys by Black Friday 2026.
What we’d do. Audit every “was” price you plan to use in Q4 against the duration test, and drop the ones that fail. Put a lowest-price guarantee on your hero lines and make sure it would survive a year of Which? tracking. Hold the core range at full price and say so: Next grew full-price sales 10.6% through the season. Show a 90-day price history on the product page, because the shopper is checking anyway.
Where did the traffic come from?
The mix that delivered Black Friday 2025 traffic looked different from the one most media plans were built on. Paid search got dearer. Paid social got cheaper for brands that spread their budget. Affiliates doubled their share, and traffic from AI assistants more than tripled.
Paid media costs around Black Friday 2025
Search ads cost 12% more per click than the year before. Brands that spread their Meta budget across 3 social platforms saw costs per thousand views and per click fall 13%. Across 160 retailers’ analytics data, affiliate sites went from 4% of revenue in a normal quarter to 8% on Black Friday, with the growth in price-comparison and content partners rather than voucher sites. SMS and app notifications went from almost nothing to 2% of revenue each.
Then AI. Adobe measured traffic to UK retail sites from AI assistants up 329% on the year before. Signifyd saw conversions from AI search up close to 900%. Yet only 8% of shoppers told Barclays they’d use AI to find deals.
Our read. The gap between 329% and 8% is measurement, not disagreement. A click from an AI Overview is AI traffic that the shopper thinks of as Google. Most analytics setups file it as direct or referral and read it as brand strength. If you can’t see it, you can’t price it, and an offer that lives in an image or behind a login is invisible to the assistant doing the comparing. I’ve written more about this in the checkout is leaving your website.
What we’d do. Hold brand search, cut generic search in the event week, and spend the difference before it. Rebalance to 3 social platforms before November and measure the cost difference yourself. Renegotiate affiliate commission by partner type. Tag AI referrers in your analytics now, and put your Black Friday price in plain, readable text on every product page.
What made people buy more?
Two things moved revenue that had nothing to do with the discount: what went in the basket, and what the checkout promised about delivery.
Ometria’s retailers grew revenue 14% on 8% more orders, 5% higher order value and 8% more items per basket, against industry forecasts of 1.5% to 4%. RevLifter’s reading of the winners was brands that made each order bigger through bundles, spend thresholds and cross-sells rather than chasing conversions with deeper cuts.
On delivery, European carriers averaged 1.54 days during peak, while many retailers still promised 5 days or more at checkout. Retailers that used live data to promise 2 to 3 days converted better than those padding their estimates. Akeneo found 69% of shoppers had returned a deal-day purchase, mostly because of poor product information or misleading images.
Our read. The cheapest conversion gains of 2026 are an honest delivery date and a complete product page. Nobody in this evidence won by discounting harder. A retailer promising 5 days when the carrier delivers in 2 is paying a conversion tax to protect a metric.
What we’d do. Check promised against delivered times for October and close the gap before November. Build the event around thresholds and bundles, not percentages. Fix the product pages on your top 200 lines before you spend another pound on media. Take the countdown timers off: the CMA obtained a consent order against them in May 2026, and the careful buyer doesn’t respond to them.
Which categories won, and did the discount decide it?
Category decided more than the headline numbers show. The same event produced growth of nearly 9% and a fall of more than 7% depending on what you sold.
UK online revenue by category, Black Friday week 2025, year on year
Set that against the discounts. Apparel carried the deepest discount going into the week, 17.2%, with activewear at 26.7%, and clothing still fell. Beauty carried the biggest step in the week itself, 6.1 points, and grew fastest. Ometria’s retailers saw gifting up 29%, sports and activewear up 27% and luxury fashion up 18%.
Our read. Depth did not buy growth. The category that held something back for the week won. The category that had spent its discount in October lost. If you’re in fashion, the lesson isn’t to cut deeper. It’s that a 17% November baseline leaves you nothing to say on the day, and that the shopper who wanted a coat bought it when the weather turned, not when the banner did.
What we’d do. Split your range into gift-shaped lines and everyday replenishment, and run 2 Black Fridays: a guaranteed hero price on the giftable lines, and a full-price hold with a bundle on the rest. If your baseline is already 17% off in October, you have already had your Black Friday.
Does the Black Friday customer come back?
The owned channels produced the sharpest numbers of the season and the most uncomfortable one.
Ometria’s retailers sent 21% more email, SMS and app messages, and unsubscribes rose 42%. Automated messages, the ones triggered by what someone did, like abandoning a basket, were 2% of what was sent and 28% of the revenue.
Automated messages against broadcasts
AutomatedBroadcast
Then the customers. Of people first acquired on Black Friday 2024, 4% bought again within 12 months, and 75% of those did it on Black Friday 2025. They were 6 times less likely to come back than a typical new customer. New customers were 45% of Black Friday revenue.
What became of customers acquired on Black Friday 2024
Our read. Price your November acquisition at a 4% repeat rate and most of it stops making sense. Then fix the repeat rate. A customer acquisition cost that looks fine on the first order is a loss on a customer who comes back once a year for the next discount.
What we’d do. Take last November’s new customers and count their repeat purchases up to 30 September 2026. Compare it with 4%, and set this November’s acquisition ceiling from it. Cap broadcast emails in the event week and move the effort to automated flows. Build a December second-purchase journey for the Black Friday customer with a reason to come back that isn’t another discount.
What are the 10 moves for Black Friday 2026?
These are recommendations, not observations. Each rests on the evidence above, in the order we would make them.
- Forecast orders and order value separately, and expect flat orders. A revenue target with unit growth in it is an inflation forecast.
- Open a real offer in the last week of October, and a second-best one on Tuesday 24 November. The cheap clicks and the strongest revenue day were both before the event.
- Guarantee the price on hero lines and hold the core at full price. The shopper doubts the number; Currys made the guarantee the event; Next grew at full price.
- Audit every “was” price against the duration test before the consultation reports. The court kept the duration rule and the government wants more.
- Hold the in-week step back and spend it on gift-shaped lines. Beauty added the most in the week and grew the most.
- Rebalance media. Less generic search in the week, 3 social platforms, content affiliates, and AI referrers tagged so you can see them.
- Promise the delivery date the carrier hits and fix the top 200 product pages.
- Cut broadcast volume and build the December second-purchase journey.
- Give Cyber Monday its own stock and creative, and plan the January sale as the third peak.
- Report the Black Friday customer on their own payback line, judged against a 4% repeat rate, and let that set next year’s ceiling.
What does the 2026 calendar look like?
| 2026 date | Moment | What 2025 says |
|---|---|---|
| October | The hold | ONS and BRC both recorded the weakest month since May as shoppers waited. Clicks 30% cheaper than event week. |
| 29 to 31 October | The majors open | Currys, Richer Sounds, John Lewis and Argos all opened in this window in 2025. |
| 2 to 22 November | Black November | 3 negative weeks online. Discounts already 5.7% to 17.2%. |
| Tuesday 24 November | The unnamed peak | Strongest revenue day of the week in 2025, up 4.4%. |
| Friday 27 November | Black Friday | Online up 1.3%, footfall down 1.5%, search costs at their peak. |
| 28 to 29 November | The weekend | Fastest growth, from a low base. Restock for Monday. |
| Monday 30 November | Cyber Monday | More orders than Friday on 2 networks; down on 2024 in revenue. |
| December | The drab month | Non-food down 0.3%, gifting worse than expected, shoppers waiting for the sale. |
| 27 December to 18 January | The third peak | January was the strongest month of the quarter. |
If you only change one thing this year, stop treating Black Friday as a Friday. The retailers who did well in 2025 planned for a 4-month season with 3 peaks, priced so the shopper could believe it, and counted what each new customer was actually worth. The ones who didn’t spent the most on the most expensive day of the year, to win a customer who won’t be back until next November.
The full report has all 209 figures, every source and the notes on where they disagree. If you’d like a copy, ask me at Embryo.
Questions people ask
- When is Black Friday 2026?
- Friday 27 November 2026. Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November. On 2025's pattern, the days that matter are wider: the last week of October, when the major retailers opened their offers, Tuesday 24 November, which was the strongest revenue day of the week in 2025, and the January sale, which ran to Blue Monday.
- Did UK Black Friday 2025 grow?
- Not in real terms. IMRG's index of UK online retail had the eight-day week down 1.2%. Salesforce had UK sales up 3%, but on 1% fewer orders and selling prices up 6%. The survey totals you'll see, £6.4bn from PwC and £10.2bn from Barclays, measure different things and are not evidence of growth on their own.
- Should I discount deeper for Black Friday 2026?
- The 2025 evidence says no. Retailers raised the share of items at 15% or more off from 45% to 50% and most categories still declined. Clothing had the deepest discount going into the week and fell 7.3%. Beauty held more back for the week itself and grew 8.9%. The proof behind a price did more than its depth.
- Is Cyber Monday still worth planning for in the UK?
- Yes. IMRG had Cyber Monday revenue down 3.2% on a strong 2024, but Scurri saw around 70% more orders than on Black Friday and Worldline saw a bigger transaction spike on the Monday than the Friday. The widely quoted figure of Cyber Monday taking 42% of weekend orders is 2024 data, not 2025.
- What changed in the law on 'was' prices?
- On 30 July 2026 the High Court rejected the CMA's rule that one item must sell at the higher price for every two sold at the discount, and the CMA withdrew its guidance. The rule that the higher price must have run at least as long as the discount still stands. On 9 August the government announced a consultation on misleading 'was' prices for this autumn.