Amazon's Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday deal events will run from November 19 to November 30, 2026, the company said on November 10 in a release distributed through Business Wire. The 12-day window contains Black Friday on November 27 and closes on Cyber Monday, and for the first time, according to Amazon, deals will drop twice on each of those two days, at midnight and at 8 a.m. Pacific time. The release places Alexa for Shopping, the assistant Amazon formed in May by merging Rufus with Alexa+, at the centre of the event, along with 15 hours of live sport on Prime Video on Black Friday that viewers can watch without a Prime membership and shop from during the broadcasts.

In Short

Amazon's main holiday sale runs for 12 days, from November 19 to Cyber Monday on November 30, with new themed deals every day and, for the first time, two batches of deals on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Sellers who entered deals before the October 20 deadline, and brands advertising on Amazon or Prime Video, are competing in a window that Amazon increasingly runs through its own AI assistant. What changes is timing: deals now land at midnight and 8 a.m. Pacific on the two peak days, and the assistant can buy a product the moment its price meets a shopper's target, without that shopper returning to the page.

Twelve days, two drops

The structure of the event is set out in a few lines. Amazon's "Today's Big Deals" section will carry 12 days of daily themed deal drops across six themes: Toys, Tech, Fashion, Beauty, Premium Gifts and Stocking Stuffers. Six themes across twelve days means at least some of them recur, although the release does not give the order. On Black Friday and Cyber Monday, deals will drop at midnight and again at 8 a.m. PT, which is 3 a.m. and 11 a.m. on the US East Coast, PPC Land's conversion. Amazon says savings on those two days reach up to 60%. Brands named for the daily drops include Theragun, Balsam Hill, Frye & Co. and HydroJug, and the deals are "available only while supplies last."

The shape of the calendar has not changed. In 2024, Amazon's Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday event ran from November 21 to December 2. In 2025 it ran from November 20 to December 1, according to Amazon's announcement for that year. In each of the three years, the event starts on the Thursday a week before Thanksgiving and ends on Cyber Monday, 12 days later. Thanksgiving falls on November 26 in 2026, so the dates moved by one day. The novelty is inside the window, not around it.

How many deals are there? The release offers two answers. Its headline and opening paragraph promise "millions of deals across brands like Le Creuset, HP, Google, and Stanley." The quote from Doug Herrington, chief executive of Worldwide Amazon Stores, refers to "thousands of deals on the most-loved gifts." The two figures may describe different things - the whole catalogue on discount against a curated subset - but the release does not say so, and it gives no breakdown by category or by seller type.

"Customers count on Amazon for low prices and great selection every day, not just during the holidays," Herrington said. "This Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday, we're taking that even further with thousands of deals on the most-loved gifts with new themed deals dropping every day. Plus, Alexa for Shopping acts as a personal holiday shopping expert - creating lists, tracking prices, setting deal alerts, and doing the deal hunting - making it easier than ever to find great gifts at great prices."

The discount figures follow a pattern. According to the release, shoppers can find up to 50% off select Levi's fashion, up to 40% off select LEGO and Hasbro Games toys, up to 35% off select Samsung, Bose and Anker electronics, up to $600 off select Sony and Hisense televisions and up to $500 off select artificial Christmas trees from Balsam Hill and Fraser Hill Farm. Every one of those figures is a ceiling, and nearly every one applies to "select" items. The release does not state the reference price against which savings are calculated, and it adds that "All deals and availability are subject to change."

Amazon also says the Holiday Shop holds "more Amazon Exclusives" than in any previous year, citing Swarovski jewellery, Caraway cookware sets, necklaces from Spicy Dan in exclusive colourways and the NAADAM Originals cashmere crewneck in medium blue. No count of exclusives is given for this year or for any earlier one.

What sellers committed to before the dates were public

For third-party sellers, most of the decisions behind those deals were made weeks ago. The submission window for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals opened on July 8 and closed on October 20, 2026, and the reminder Amazon sent sellers on October 8 did not give the dates of the event itself. Deals entered in that window carry a $100 upfront fee per promotion plus 1.5% of promotional sales, capped at $5,000, and peak fulfilment fees have applied since October 15, running until January 14, 2027. Nothing in that notice, as PPC Land reported it, mentioned that Black Friday and Cyber Monday would each have two release times.

Does the 8 a.m. drop include seller-submitted deals, or only deals Amazon sets on its own retail inventory? The release does not say. It also does not explain how deals are assigned to themed days, or whether sellers were told which day or which drop their promotion would occupy.

Returns are the other fixed cost. Items bought on Amazon.com between November 1 and December 31, 2026 can be returned until January 31, 2027, and Amazon made that extended window an annual rule in October. The rule applies whether a seller uses Fulfillment by Amazon or ships orders itself, so a purchase made on Cyber Monday remains returnable for two months.

The release repeats a figure Amazon has used before. "More than 60% of sales in Amazon's store come from independent sellers, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses," it says, the same share Amazon gave for its 2024 event. Amazon lists discounts from US small businesses including up to 65% off BLITZU compression sleeves, 65% off The Beard Club grooming products, 55% off Comfy Cubs baby products, 40% off Solawave red light therapy wands and up to 30% off SMIRLY kitchen products. Shoppers can also look for the Small Business badge or ask Alexa for Shopping to "shop small businesses," a phrase the release gives as a working command.

Alexa for Shopping as the deal hunter

The AI assistant gets its own section, and the functions it lists are almost all about price. According to the release, customers can ask Alexa for Shopping to watch for deals and price drops on items they are considering, and "With Auto-Buy, it can even complete the purchase for you when the price is right." A "Price History" button on product pages, or a request to the assistant, shows "up to 365 days of pricing insights." Customers can ask to be updated when a named brand "releases something new," build and share wish lists and registries, set deal alerts on saved lists, and use a deal widget on the lists page to surface active deals on saved items.

Little of this is new, and the dates matter. On November 18, 2025, Rufus gained memory, price tracking and auto-buying, then with 30-day and 90-day price history. On May 1, 2026, Amazon extended price history to a full year in the US, the UK and India, and said more than 50 million customers had used the tool since its 2024 launch. Twelve days later Amazon merged Rufus and Alexa+ into one shopping assistant. Before Prime Big Deal Days in October, it promoted the assistant's price history and Auto-Buy for that sale too. Black Friday Week is the first full holiday peak for the merged product.

Amazon has been building usage numbers to go with it. On its third-quarter earnings call on October 29, chief executive Andy Jassy said more than 400 million customers had used Alexa for Shopping over the previous 12 months and that US customers who use it spend 50% more per order than those who do not. On November 6, Amazon began testing a text-message version with a small invited group, as PPC Land reported when Alexa for Shopping started taking orders by text. The holiday release mentions neither figure nor the text channel.

It does make a breadth claim: Alexa for Shopping "can now handle more than 100 everyday shopping actions through simple conversation." The examples are mostly account administration - adjusting Subscribe & Save deliveries, checking a gift card balance, tracking refunds, updating delivery instructions and managing Prime and Audible memberships. The November 6 announcement had already linked to a separate Amazon post on more than 100 new capabilities, covering holiday gift lists, baby registries and refund tracking, without saying when those capabilities arrived.

Buying at a threshold

Auto-Buy is the function with the clearest commercial consequence. An assistant that completes a purchase when a price crosses a line set days earlier turns a discount into a trigger, not an invitation. That is the territory of agentic AI, in which software acts on a customer's behalf rather than presenting options. The release does not describe what happens when a target price is met by a deal that is "available only while supplies last," whether Auto-Buy orders can be cancelled before shipping, or how many customers have Auto-Buy requests active going into the event. When Amazon promoted the same function before Prime Big Deal Days, its preview described no cancellation terms either.

Brand-release alerts carry a similar question. A request such as "update me when [brand] releases something new" sends a launch straight to a customer who asked for it, with no ad in between. In its November 6 announcement, Amazon said new-release alerts would monitor Amazon and the wider web. The holiday release does not say how a release is detected, how quickly the alert follows, or whether brands have any way to shape what the assistant reports.

Where the ads sit

The release does not mention advertising inside the assistant at all. Amazon sells it nonetheless. Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands prompts inside Rufus became billable under existing cost-per-click bids on March 25, 2026 in the United States, after a free beta that began in November 2025. The stakes for placement are high in a conversational interface. Research from Workflow Labs, published in April, found that Rufus narrows discovery from 50 results to roughly five named products. That figure is the firm's, not Amazon's.

Amazon is also keeping outside agents away from the same deals. In September it cut Meta's Muse agent off from buying on Amazon.com, and on the October 29 call Jassy told analysts that third-party AI agents were not meaningfully affecting Amazon's advertising business. The deal hunting Herrington describes is meant to happen on Amazon's own assistant.

A Holiday Shop sorted by the shopper

The second AI-adjacent change is less visible. According to the release, "the Holiday Shop delivers a fully personalized experience," surfacing gift recommendations "based on customers' shopping history, preferences, and family needs so the most relevant ideas appear first." The shop still carries Top 100 lists, curated gift guides, the annual Top 100+ Toys list and the Holiday Kids Gift Book, as well as a newly launched FAO Schwarz selection on Amazon.

"Family needs" is not a phrase that comes from purchase data alone. In April, PPC Land reported that Rufus was tying search results to saved shopper profiles built through a "Tell us about you" feature, and Alexa for Shopping launched in May with a memory that stores attributes such as family members, pets, interests and dietary needs. The release does not say which of those signals feed the Holiday Shop's ordering, whether customers can see or change them, or whether sponsored placements appear among the "most relevant ideas." For a brand, the difference between appearing first and appearing further down a personalised page is not something the release quantifies.

Creators are written into the shop as well. Amazon names Alix Earle, Brigette McHale, Rochelle Stewart, Preston Konrad and Dad Social as having curated holiday picks "through their Amazon Storefronts," the storefronts that come with the Amazon Influencer Program. The release's links to the storefronts of two of those creators, McHale and Dad Social, carry Associates tracking tags, the identifiers Amazon uses to credit referral commission. Amazon does not say whether the creators were paid to appear in the release, or how their picks were chosen.

Live sport, free on Black Friday, with a shopping button

Prime Video's role in the event begins two days before Black Friday. On Wednesday, November 25, Prime Video will show its first NCAA basketball game, according to Amazon, with the Duke Blue Devils playing the UConn Huskies at 4 p.m. PT at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. On Black Friday it will carry "another 15 hours of live sports coverage, with no subscription or Prime membership required." Coverage begins at 6 a.m. PT with the Farmers Insurance Skins Game, a golf event, followed by the fourth annual Black Friday Football game, in which the Pittsburgh Steelers host the Denver Broncos. An NBA on Prime doubleheader closes the day: the Miami Heat against the New York Knicks, then the Los Angeles Lakers against the San Antonio Spurs.

Two of those events are additions to the schedule PPC Land examined earlier in the month. Amazon's November guide, published on October 30, listed four live games on November 27 - Heat-Knicks, a regional Seattle Kraken game at the Edmonton Oilers, Broncos-Steelers and Lakers-Spurs - and 23 live events across the month. It included neither the Duke-UConn game nor the Skins Game. With those two added, Prime Video's US live sport schedule for November reaches at least 25 events, PPC Land's count. The new release does not mention the Kraken game, which is available only in Washington, Oregon and Alaska.

The shopping layer is called "Shop the Game." According to Amazon, viewers can "simply press 'up' on the remote or open the Amazon Shopping app and search 'shop the game'" to find deals featured in the broadcasts, alongside official NFL, NBA and NCAA merchandise. The release calls the experience "enhanced" but does not say what changed from last year, which products appear, or whether placements in the feature are bought by advertisers or chosen by Amazon.

The mechanics are not new to Amazon's ad business. In May 2024, Amazon Ads introduced interactive and shoppable formats for Prime Video, including carousel ads and pause ads that let viewers add items to their cart with the remote. In May 2026 it presented Dynamic TV Creative, which changes Prime Video interactive ads based on shopping signals. "Shop the Game" applies the same idea to a full day of programming in which the retailer and the broadcaster are one company. It resembles shoppable ads, units that carry a route to purchase inside the ad itself, but the release does not say whether "Shop the Game" counts as ad inventory or as an extension of Amazon's store.

The audience is the reason for the effort. Coverage with no membership requirement widens the potential reach beyond Prime households. Amazon has said Thursday Night Football averaged 17.7 million viewers through its first six games this season, citing Nielsen. Paying to avoid ads does not remove them from these broadcasts: when Amazon replaced its ad-free add-on with Prime Video Ultra at $4.99 a month, its terms stated that live sports may still carry advertising for Ultra subscribers.

Groceries, cards, cars and the rest of the calendar

Much of the remaining release restates offers Amazon had already set. The grocery dates match the release of November 2, in which Amazon priced a Thanksgiving meal with an 8 lb turkey at $25: frozen turkeys from $0.79 per pound until November 26 and fresh turkeys at $0.99 per pound from November 14, with free same-day delivery for Prime members on grocery orders over $25 in more than 2,300 US cities and towns. The one addition is for first-time grocery customers who are Prime members: up to $5 off select perishables sold by Amazon.com and free same-day delivery on their first three perishable orders, with no minimum.

Amazon Haul's early "Haul-iday" event, running November 9-14 with $1 flash deals and $0.11 deals on November 10 and 11, also reappears. PPC Land covered its launch, when Amazon said Haul's buyer count had grown nearly 350% without giving a base or a period.

The payment offers are more specific. Prime Visa applicants approved between November 5, 2026 and January 7, 2027 receive a $200 Amazon gift card; Prime Store Card applicants receive $100 between November 22 and November 30. Cardholders earn 5% back at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market and "10% back or more" on select limited-time deals through Prime Card Bonus. They can earn a total of 7% back on eligible Amazon.com purchases if they choose No-Rush Delivery at checkout between November 26 and November 30, and again between December 11 and December 24. Those two windows run from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday and through the fortnight before Christmas. The release does not say why Amazon pays extra for slower delivery in those periods; on October 20 it said it is hiring more than 300,000 people for the US holiday season. Members of Prime for Young Adults, aged 18 to 24, get 20% cash back on a curated selection on November 24 only, "4 times the everyday 5% cash back," according to the release.

Cars are part of the promotion too. From November 12 to November 30, eligible Prime members who buy or lease a new car through Amazon Autos receive a $1,500 Amazon.com gift card, sent by email after the car is collected from a participating dealer. The release names Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Subaru, Stellantis and GM. When Amazon Autos launched in December 2024, Hyundai was the only brand, across 48 US cities.

Smaller offers round out the list. New personalised digital gift cards include "Talking Pets," in which customers upload a photo of a pet and "bring it to life to deliver a holiday greeting"; the release does not describe the technology behind it or what happens to the uploaded photos. Amazon's own devices are up to 35% off, and up to 45% off for two Amazon Ember 55-inch televisions and the 2024 Kindle Colorsoft. Travel partners at amazon.com/traveldeals include Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises, Hotels.com, Expedia, Skyscanner, Airalo, Avis and Budget, with up to 15% back as an Amazon gift card.

What the release does not say

The announcement is long on offers and short on measures. It gives no sales expectations and no results from the 2025 event. It does not say how many deals come from third-party sellers, how many Auto-Buy requests or deal alerts are active, or how many people watched last year's Black Friday Football game. It names no dates for Amazon's stores outside the United States, although its prices, card offers, sports schedule and small-business listings all refer to the US.

It is also silent on advertising, which is notable for an event Amazon's ad business depends on. Amazon's advertising revenue grew 11% to $19.64 billion in the third quarter, slowed by Prime Day moving into June, and the company told investors it expects growth "in the high teens" in the fourth quarter, the quarter that contains this event. Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday are where much of that forecast will be tested, yet the release describes the event entirely from the shopper's side.

Why it matters for marketers

The scale of the period is not in doubt. Adobe forecasts US online spending of $275.1 billion for November and December 2026, up 6.7%, with $12.9 billion on Black Friday and $15.1 billion on Cyber Monday. Those are figures for all US online retail, and they are forecasts. Measurement data from last year shows how much the economics of the week can move: Billy Grace's analysis of its clients' data found cost per order fell 18% in Black Friday week 2025.

What this release adds is a clearer picture of where Amazon wants that spending to pass through. Amazon is a retail media network that also owns a streaming service with live NFL and NBA rights, and an AI assistant that can watch prices and buy without being asked twice. Twice-daily drops on the two peak days give shoppers - and their assistants - more moments to act. Personalised ordering of the Holiday Shop decides which gifts appear first. A day of free sport on Prime Video, with a shopping button on the remote, places Amazon's own store inside the broadcast.

For sellers and brands, the open question is how much of the event's demand now reaches them through channels they do not control and cannot see in reporting: an Auto-Buy order triggered by a price threshold, a brand alert answered without an ad, a gift ranked first because of a family profile. The release describes each of those mechanisms. It does not measure any of them, and the first numbers are likely to come, if at all, on Amazon's fourth-quarter earnings call in early 2027.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon, its retail business led by Doug Herrington, chief executive of Worldwide Amazon Stores, and Prime Video, with third-party sellers, advertisers, creators and shoppers in the United States affected.

What: Amazon set its Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday deal events for November 19-30, 2026, with 12 days of themed deal drops and, for the first time, two drops at midnight and 8 a.m. PT on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The release promotes Alexa for Shopping's price tracking, Auto-Buy, 365-day price history and brand-release alerts, a personalised Holiday Shop, and 15 hours of Black Friday live sport on Prime Video open to non-members with a "Shop the Game" feature. It gives no sales, deal-count breakdown or advertising details.

When: Announced on November 10, 2026. The event runs from November 19 to November 30, with Black Friday on November 27; related offers run from November 1, 2026 to January 7, 2027, and returns for holiday purchases close on January 31, 2027.

Where: Amazon's US store, the Amazon Shopping app, Alexa for Shopping and Prime Video; the release gives no dates for other countries.

Why: The event falls in the quarter for which Amazon expects advertising growth in the high teens, and it shows Amazon routing holiday deal-finding through its own AI assistant, personalised shop pages and shoppable live sport. That affects which products shoppers see and when they buy, in ways sellers and advertisers may not see in their reporting.