Retail Sales Calendar 2026-2027: When to Track Prices

The 2026-2027 retail calendar runs 11.11 (11 November 2026), Black Friday (27 November), Cyber Monday (30 November), Christmas and Boxing Day, Ramadan (expected around 8 February 2027), then the US spring holidays, Prime Day (2027 date not announced) and Prime Big Deal Days in October. To judge a sale price, start recording prices 4-6 weeks before each event and check hourly to daily during it.

This page is the reference table for the whole cluster. Each event below has its date (exact when a calendar rule fixes it, otherwise "typically" plus how it gets announced), how early to start a baseline, how often to check during the event, and a link to the guide that covers it in detail. Every date was checked on 2026-10-20; the weekday arithmetic is computed in the script at the end.

Why a calendar matters for price tracking

A sale price means nothing without the price before the sale. If a retailer raises a product from 49.99 to 59.99 in October and "cuts" it to 49.99 on Black Friday, the banner says 17% off and the real change is zero. The only defence is your own record of what the product cost in the weeks before: a baseline. The calendar tells you when each baseline has to start, and when to switch from weekly to hourly checks.

Three rules apply to every event:

1. Baseline: at least four data points before the event. Weekly is enough. A 30-day median of those prices is a robust reference (one odd day doesn't move it).
2. Event window: check more often, but only while it matters. Hourly during short, deal-drop events (Prime Day, Cyber Monday). Daily during long ones (Ramadan, the January sales).
3. Keep going one week after. Post-sale rebounds tell you whether the "deal" was a real cut or a dip in a rising price.

The calendar: November 2026 to October 2027

Dates marked rule follow a fixed calendar rule. Dates marked typically are set by retailers each year; the column says how and when they are usually announced. "Baseline" is when to start weekly price records.

November and December 2026

January to October 2027

The 2026 October event has already happened (6-7 October 2026), so the next one in this window is October 2027.

How far ahead to start, event by event

The baseline lead in the table follows from two things: how many weekly data points you need (four is the minimum for a meaningful median), and how early retailers start moving prices.

• Black Friday, White Friday, 11.11: 4-6 weeks. Pre-event price moves happen in October and early November, and "early deals" start a week or more before the day. If you are reading this in late October 2026, start now.
• Christmas: from 1 November. December prices compete with shipping deadlines, so the useful question is "is this low enough to buy before the cut-off?", which needs a November reference.
• Boxing Day and January sales: from Black Friday week. The most useful comparison for a UK Boxing Day price is the same item's Black Friday price.
• Ramadan: 4-6 weeks before the pre-Ramadan sales, not before Ramadan itself. In 2026, Amazon UAE's Ramadan Sale ran from 27 January to 14 February and ended before the month began. If 2027 follows that pattern, sales start around mid-January, so start the baseline in mid-December 2026.
• Prime Day: 4 weeks before the announced date. Amazon has moved the event (July in 2025, June in 2026), so key the start off the announcement, not last year's date.
• US long weekends (Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day): 2-3 weeks.

Plan the windows in code

This script turns event windows into a schedule: when to start the weekly baseline, which cron expression to use during the event, and when to stop. The windows for 11.11 and Black Friday week are assumptions based on 2025's retailer dates; adjust them when the 2026 announcements land.

from datetime import date, timedelta

# event, assumed sale window (first day, last day), baseline lead in days, cadence inside the window
EVENTS = [
    ("11.11 (Noon / Amazon.ae)",        date(2026, 11, 7),  date(2026, 11, 12), 28, "every 6 h"),
    ("Black Friday week to Cyber Monday", date(2026, 11, 20), date(2026, 11, 30), 35, "hourly"),
    ("Christmas run-up",                date(2026, 12, 1),  date(2026, 12, 19), 30, "daily"),
    ("Boxing Day + January sales (UK)", date(2026, 12, 26), date(2027, 1, 10),  30, "daily"),
    ("Ramadan + Eid 2027 (approx.)",    date(2027, 1, 17),  date(2027, 3, 10),  28, "daily"),
]
CRON = {"hourly": "0 * * * *", "every 6 h": "0 */6 * * *", "daily": "0 7 * * *"}

for name, start, end, lead, cadence in EVENTS:
    baseline = start - timedelta(days=lead)
    stop = end + timedelta(days=7)  # one more week catches post-sale rebounds
    print(f"{name:<34} baseline {baseline} (weekly), {cadence:<9} {CRON[cadence]:<12} "
          f"{start}..{end}, stop {stop}")

Output (run 2026-10-20):

11.11 (Noon / Amazon.ae)           baseline 2026-10-10 (weekly), every 6 h 0 */6 * * *  2026-11-07..2026-11-12, stop 2026-11-19
Black Friday week to Cyber Monday  baseline 2026-10-16 (weekly), hourly    0 * * * *    2026-11-20..2026-11-30, stop 2026-12-07
Christmas run-up                   baseline 2026-11-01 (weekly), daily     0 7 * * *    2026-12-01..2026-12-19, stop 2026-12-26
Boxing Day + January sales (UK)    baseline 2026-11-26 (weekly), daily     0 7 * * *    2026-12-26..2027-01-10, stop 2027-01-17
Ramadan + Eid 2027 (approx.)       baseline 2026-12-20 (weekly), daily     0 7 * * *    2027-01-17..2027-03-10, stop 2027-03-17

The cron expressions work as-is in an Apify schedule, in GitHub Actions or in crontab. Cron runs in UTC unless your scheduler lets you set a timezone (Apify schedules do), so pick a time when the store's own day has started.

The rule-based dates in the tables above come from this check, which you can re-run for any year:

from datetime import date, timedelta

def nth_weekday(year, month, weekday, n):
    """n-th weekday (Mon=0) of a month; n=-1 means the last one."""
    if n > 0:
        d = date(year, month, 1)
        d += timedelta((weekday - d.weekday()) % 7)
        return d + timedelta(weeks=n - 1)
    d = date(year, month + 1, 1) - timedelta(1) if month < 12 else date(year, 12, 31)
    return d - timedelta((d.weekday() - weekday) % 7)

MON, THU, SAT = 0, 3, 5
thanksgiving = nth_weekday(2026, 11, THU, 4)
xmas = date(2026, 12, 25)
events = {
    "Singles' Day / 11.11": date(2026, 11, 11),
    "Thanksgiving (US)": thanksgiving,
    "Black Friday": thanksgiving + timedelta(1),
    "Small Business Saturday": thanksgiving + timedelta(2),
    "Cyber Monday": thanksgiving + timedelta(4),
    "Green Monday (2nd Mon of Dec)": nth_weekday(2026, 12, MON, 2),
    "Super Saturday (last Sat before Christmas)": xmas - timedelta((xmas.weekday() - SAT) % 7 or 7),
    "Christmas Day": xmas,
    "Boxing Day": date(2026, 12, 26),
    "Presidents' Day 2027": nth_weekday(2027, 2, MON, 3),
    "Memorial Day 2027": nth_weekday(2027, 5, MON, -1),
    "Labor Day 2027": nth_weekday(2027, 9, MON, 1),
}
for name, d in events.items():
    print(f"{d:%a %Y-%m-%d}  {name}")

Wed 2026-11-11  Singles' Day / 11.11
Thu 2026-11-26  Thanksgiving (US)
Fri 2026-11-27  Black Friday
Sat 2026-11-28  Small Business Saturday
Mon 2026-11-30  Cyber Monday
Mon 2026-12-14  Green Monday (2nd Mon of Dec)
Sat 2026-12-19  Super Saturday (last Sat before Christmas)
Fri 2026-12-25  Christmas Day
Sat 2026-12-26  Boxing Day
Mon 2027-02-15  Presidents' Day 2027
Mon 2027-05-31  Memorial Day 2027
Mon 2027-09-06  Labor Day 2027

What to record at each check

Whatever tool you use, each snapshot should hold the same fields so you can compare runs:

Doing this at scale

For a handful of products, a spreadsheet and a weekly check by hand works. Past that, schedule a scraper. The E-commerce Product Scraper Pro actor on Apify returns exactly those fields (price, currency, originalPrice, inStock, scrapedAt) and has a monitor mode that compares each run with the previous one and labels every product price-down, price-up, back-in-stock, out-of-stock or unchanged. Coverage differs by market, and the actor's README lists it per site:

• US: Amazon, Walmart and Target are supported; Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe's, Costco and eBay are not.
• UK: John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Aldi are supported; amazon.co.uk and the other grocers are best-effort; Argos, Next, Boots and AO are not supported.
• Gulf: Noon and Amazon UAE / Saudi Arabia are best-effort. In our tests on 2026-10-20, Noon UAE delivered, while Noon Saudi Arabia search pages were blocked on every route.
• Anywhere: any Shopify or WooCommerce store is supported.

Pricing is pay per event. On the FREE tier a product row is $0.0048, an unchanged product in monitor mode is $0.0012 and each run has a $0.005 start fee (GOLD: $0.0008, $0.0002, $0.005). Residential traffic and browser renders cost extra on the sites that need them; the README has the full table. Apify's free plan gives $5 of usage every month, no credit card required. The actor itself has no free trial.

Worked example: a weekly baseline of 100 Walmart products for 6 weeks on the FREE tier is 6 × (100 × $0.0048 + $0.005) = 6 × $0.485 = $2.91.

To build the input without code, use the free e-commerce price tracker query builder. It builds a ready-to-run input and shows a fixed example of the output shape, not live prices.

Related guides

• Black Friday price tracker and how to spot fake Black Friday discounts.
• Christmas price tracker and Boxing Day sales tracker (UK).
• White Friday and 11.11 prices on Noon and Amazon UAE and Ramadan and Eid sale tracking.
• Prime Day price tracker and back-to-school price tracker.
• Price drop alerts by email or Slack.

Disclosure: I built the Apify actor and this site. The calendar and the scripts above work without either.

Sources: Amazon: Prime Day 2026 dates and countries, Amazon: Prime Day 2025 (8-11 July), NBC News: October Prime Day 2026 (6-7 October), Amazon UK: Black Friday Week 2025 (20 Nov - 1 Dec), Khaleej Times: 11.11 sales 2025, Khaleej Times: Black, White, Yellow and Green Friday explained (2025), TradeArabia: Dubai Shopping Festival 2026-27, USPS: 2026 holiday shipping dates, GOV.UK bank holidays, The National: expected Ramadan 2027 and Eid al-Fitr dates, Gulf News: UAE Ramadan 2026 sales, Federation of Tax Administrators: 2026 sales tax holidays, Wikipedia: Green Monday.