Adobe today republished its 2026 US holiday shopping forecast through Business Wire under a "CORRECTING and REPLACING" header, fixing a single historical reference in the original September 28 release while leaving every forecast figure untouched, including the headline $275.1 billion in online spending for November and December.

In Short

Adobe fixed one small mistake in its holiday shopping forecast: it had said Amazon's October sale started in 2021, and now says it became a yearly event in 2022. None of the money figures changed, so Adobe still expects Americans to spend $275.1 billion online between November 1 and December 31. The only part of the forecast that can already be checked, Amazon's October 6-7 sale, landed close to Adobe's prediction in dollars but below it in growth.

What the correction changed

The corrected release carries a timestamp of October 16, 2026, 12:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time. According to Adobe, the "First parenthetical note in the 'Pre-season shopping in October continues to accelerate' section of release dated Sept. 28, 2026 should read 'which became an annual tradition in 2022' (instead of 'which began in 2021')."

That is the whole of the correction. The sentence in question describes "The Prime Day event in October," which Adobe's release does not name further. The original wording placed its start in 2021. The replacement wording moves it to 2022 and changes the verb, from an event that "began" to one that "became an annual tradition." Amazon introduced Prime Big Deal Days in October 2022 as a second members-only sales event, as PPC Land reported when Amazon set the 2026 edition for October 6-7 across 22 countries.

The discrepancy had already been flagged. PPC Land's September 29 coverage of the forecast noted that Adobe dated the October event to 2021, which did not match the event's recorded history. Adobe's correction notice does not say what prompted the change, and no causal link between that article and the correction can be drawn from the release.

Several things were not corrected. The body of the release still opens with "Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) released today its online shopping forecast for the 2026 holiday season." On a Business Wire page dated October 16, that "today" now reads as October 16, although the forecast itself was first published on September 28. The October section also remains written in the future tense. Adobe still "expects $95.8 billion will be spent online in October 2026" and says "Nearly $10 billion will be spent during the Prime Day event from October 6 to 7." By the time the corrected version went out, that event had been over for nine days.

The 2024 revision noted in PPC Land's earlier coverage also stands without comment. Adobe's topline chart puts the 2024 season at $241.4 billion, up 8.7%, while Adobe's earlier 2024 results gave $240.8 billion, up 8.4%. The correction notice is silent on that difference.

The forecast, unchanged

Every figure in the corrected release matches the September version. According to Adobe, US online sales will reach $275.1 billion between November 1 and December 31, 2026, up 6.7% year-over-year. The forecast is "based on over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories," according to the company.

Adobe's chart of holiday season topline spending, one of four images distributed with the release, traces the series back to 2019. Read from the chart, the season totals were $142.5 billion in 2019 (up 13.1%), $188.2 billion in 2020 (up 32.1%), $204.5 billion in 2021 (up 8.7%), $211.7 billion in 2022 (up 3.5%), $222.1 billion in 2023 (up 4.9%), $241.4 billion in 2024 (up 8.7%) and $257.8 billion in 2025 (up 6.8%). The 2026 bar, shaded as a forecast, sits at $275.1 billion and 6.7%. Applying 6.7% to the 2025 figure gives roughly $275.1 billion, so the chart and text agree. If the forecast holds, 2026 would be the third season in a row with growth between 6% and 9%, and the slowest of those three by a tenth of a percentage point.

Cyber Week and the big days

Cyber Week, which Adobe defines as "the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday," is forecast at $47.5 billion, up 7.4%, or 17.3% of the full season. Cyber Monday, on November 30, is expected to produce $15.1 billion, up 6.2%. Black Friday follows at $12.9 billion, up 9.2%, and Thanksgiving at $6.9 billion, up 8.5%.

The Cyber Week chart shows seven days rather than five, adding the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the Tuesday after Cyber Monday. Only the three highlighted days carry labels. Reading the unlabeled bars by eye gives about $6.1 billion for Saturday and $6.3 billion for Sunday, which, with the three labeled days, totals roughly $47.3 billion. That is within the margin of reading a bar chart without values and does not amount to a conflict with the $47.5 billion figure. The chart puts the Wednesday at around $4.2 billion and the Tuesday at around $6.6 billion, with growth for both under 5%.

Black Friday is set to grow faster than Cyber Monday "driven in part by having the biggest discounts for categories such as TVs, apparel and appliances," according to Adobe.

Mobile

Mobile devices are forecast to account for 57.4% of season spending, up from 56.4% in 2025, and a record 63% on Thanksgiving, up from 61.6%. Adobe's mobile share chart, covering January 2019 to the December 2026 forecast, shows a line that sat near 34% at the start of 2019, crossed 50% briefly in late 2023, dipped back below it in early 2025, and has stayed above it since spring 2025. The 2025 holiday months peak near 57%, and the dotted forecast segment for late 2026 rises to the labeled 57.4%.

Categories and discounts

Electronics is forecast at $63.3 billion, up 5.9%, and apparel at $51.3 billion, up 4.7%. Faster growth is expected in furniture ($33.4 billion, up 7.3%), grocery ($26.1 billion, up 10.3%), toys ($9.6 billion, up 9.6%) and cosmetics ($9.2 billion, up 9.5%).

On pricing, Adobe forecasts discounts "up to 30% off listed price (during Cyber Week)," with deals of up to 14% in early November, up to 21% just before Thanksgiving, and "up to 10-15% throughout December." Category peaks named in the release are electronics at 30% (vs. 30.1% in 2025), toys at 29% (vs. 28%), TVs at 23% (vs. 24.2%), computers at 23% (vs. 22.8%), apparel at 23% (vs. 23.2%), sporting goods at 19% (vs. 19.5%), appliances at 18% (vs. 19.2%) and furniture at 18% (vs. 19%). Discounts are measured against listed price, which makes the reference price a retailer sets part of what is being counted.

Where the discount chart and the text part ways

The deepest discount forecast chart does not match the release text in two places. The text puts early November at up to 14%, while the chart's line stays between roughly 9% and 10% through the first week of November and does not reach 14% until around November 14 or 15. The text also gives December as "10-15%," but the chart shows discounts of about 28% on December 1, falling through roughly 20% on December 3 and holding around 17% in the first week of the month. In the final days of December the line moves back down to about 16-17%. Only the middle of December, from around December 12 to December 24, sits inside the 10-15% band. The chart's deepest point, just over 30%, falls on November 30, Cyber Monday, consistent with the text's 30% peak.

These are readings of an unlabeled line chart and carry the same caveat as any visual estimate. The corrected release did not alter either the text or the chart.

Essentials, BNPL and AI traffic

Adobe expects Cyber Week sales of personal hygiene products to rise 150% compared with average September 2026 levels, clothing basics 210%, baby products 113%, pet products 93% and household cleaning items 49%.

Buy Now Pay Later is forecast to drive $21.3 billion between November and December, up 6.6%, with $1.09 billion on Cyber Monday and $807 million on Black Friday. According to Adobe, 82% of BNPL spending will come through mobile devices. For comparison, Adobe recorded $16.6 billion in BNPL spend during the 2023 holiday season.

Adobe also expects traffic from AI-powered chat and browser services to US retail sites, measured by shoppers clicking on a link, to rise 130% year-over-year. The biggest increases are forecast on Thanksgiving (up 159%), Black Friday (up 95%) and Cyber Monday (up 88%). The release does not disclose the base level of this AI referral traffic, so the percentage gains cannot be converted into visits or sales. In an Adobe survey of 5,000 consumers, fielded in July 2026, 77% of respondents who had used AI for online shopping said they felt more confident in their purchase, and 69% said they were less likely to return an item.

On marketing channels, Adobe says affiliates and partners, a category that includes social influencers, and social media overall are set for the biggest gains in share of revenue, up 12% and 17% respectively. Paid search is expected to rise 4%. Within affiliates, cashback and rewards partners hold a 36% share of affiliate traffic, followed by influencers and creators at 22%. Adobe describes these as changes in share, not as percentage-point shifts or absolute revenue.

The first checkpoint has already passed

Of all the forecasts in the release, only one can be checked before November. Adobe had predicted $9.9 billion in US online spending during Amazon's October 6-7 event, up 9.2%, with discounts set to peak at 19% of listed price.

After the event, Adobe put actual spending at $9.86 billion, according to Retail Dive's October 9 report of Adobe's figures. Rounded to one decimal place, that matches the $9.9 billion forecast. Growth is a different matter. Retail Dive gave the 2025 event's total as $9.09 billion, which puts 2026 growth at about 8.5%, below the 9.2% Adobe had forecast. A forecast of 9.2% growth on a $9.09 billion base implies about $9.93 billion, so the shortfall is roughly $70 million, small in a $275 billion season but enough to separate the dollar headline from the growth rate.

Discounts during the event reached up to 20% off listed price, one point deeper than Adobe's 19% forecast, according to the same report. Mobile accounted for $5.1 billion, or 52% of online sales, up 12.8%, and BNPL drove $692.3 million.

Whether October's slightly slower growth says anything about November and December is not a question the release addresses. Adobe's $95.8 billion forecast for the whole of October, up 8%, remains open until the month ends, and the corrected release does not update it.

Why a one-phrase correction matters

For advertisers and retailers planning holiday budgets, Adobe's forecast is among the most widely cited estimates of US online demand, and the company sells the analytics product the data comes from. Adobe notes that Adobe Analytics "is part of Adobe CX Enterprise." The release's own disclaimer states that Adobe "does not warrant that the material contained herein is accurate or free of errors and has no responsibility to update or revise information presented herein." Today's correction is an instance of Adobe revising the material anyway, but only for a historical date, not for any figure.

The October event matters to the holiday story Adobe tells. According to the release, the October Prime event "has changed the shape of the holiday season, pushing U.S. retailers to manage promotions and inventory effectively to capture an additional pre-season spike in shopping interest." Dating that event correctly changes the number of years in which retailers have had to plan around it, from six October editions under the original wording, counting 2026, to five under the corrected one.

The forecast also feeds into channel planning. Adobe's view that social media and affiliates will gain revenue share faster than paid search arrives as PPC Land has tracked Adobe data published in June 2026 on unplanned purchases. None of those channel figures were touched by the correction, and none are accompanied by the underlying revenue totals.

What the correction does not resolve is the unexplained revision of 2024 and the December discount range that the release's own chart does not support. Both remain in the corrected version as published today.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Adobe, through its Adobe Analytics data, with Amazon's October Prime Big Deal Days event as the subject of the corrected passage.

What: Adobe republished its 2026 US holiday shopping forecast with one correction: the October Prime event is now described as an event "which became an annual tradition in 2022" instead of one "which began in 2021." All figures, including $275.1 billion in online spending, are unchanged. The only forecast already testable, the October 6-7 event, came in at $9.86 billion against a $9.9 billion forecast, with growth of about 8.5% against a forecast 9.2%.

When: The corrected release was issued today, October 16, 2026. The original forecast was published September 28, 2026, and covers November 1 to December 31, 2026.

Where: The forecast covers US online retail. The correction was distributed through Business Wire from San Jose, California.

Why: Adobe's notice does not give a reason. The original date did not match the history of Amazon's October event, which began in 2022. The forecast is widely used by retailers and advertisers to plan holiday budgets, and the corrected version leaves in place a December discount range that the release's own chart does not fully support and a 2024 revision Adobe has not explained.