When Is Black Friday?

Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November 2026. It always falls on the day after US Thanksgiving, which is itself the fourth Thursday of November. Cyber Monday, the online-shopping companion event, falls on Monday 30 November 2026. In 2027 Black Friday is Friday 26 November and Cyber Monday is Monday 29 November.

Most major retailers in the UK, US and Europe now extend Black Friday into a week-long or fortnight-long event called 'Black Friday Week' or 'Black November', so the 27 November date is more accurately the centrepiece than a one-day-only sale. Amazon's 'Black Friday Sale' typically runs from around 21-22 November through to Cyber Monday.

The 'Black Friday' name has two origin stories. The earliest documented use is Philadelphia police in the 1960s, who used it to describe the chaotic Friday after Thanksgiving when suburban shoppers and football fans flooded into the city. The more popular retail explanation, that it's the day stores moved 'into the black' (profit) for the year, was a 1980s reframing by retailers who wanted to scrub the negative police-chaos meaning.

Cyber Monday was coined in 2005 by Shop.org to capture the spike in online shopping that occurred when people returned to their work computers (and faster broadband connections) on the Monday after Thanksgiving. With home broadband now universal, the original logic is dead, but the date stuck.

Mixed. Which? has run year-on-year price-tracking studies showing that around half of Black Friday 'deals' are at the same or higher price as some point in the previous six months. The genuinely sharp discounts tend to cluster on Amazon's own-brand devices (Echo, Fire, Kindle), specific tech models that are about to be replaced (last-gen iPhones, last-year-flagship TVs), and own-brand fashion lines.

The honest play is to know the price you'd pay normally before you start. Use price-tracking tools like CamelCamelCamel for Amazon, or Idealo for general UK retail, to confirm a genuine markdown rather than a marketed one. Pair with the [Discount Calculator](/discount-calculator) to work out what a stacked offer (e.g. '50% off plus extra 20%') actually saves you.

Tech and large appliances tend to drop most heavily on Black Friday Friday itself, especially Amazon flagship-device deals and TV manufacturer markdowns. Clothing and beauty often see better discounts in the Cyber Monday and Cyber Week stretch. Toys begin discounting in early November and tend to deepen as Christmas approaches, so Black Friday itself isn't always the toy-buying peak.

Avoid the in-store frenzy entirely; the days of 5am queues outside Currys are largely over since UK retailers shifted Black Friday almost entirely online. The 'doorbuster' culture that produced the famous American crowd-trampling videos never properly took hold in the UK and is fading even in the US.