This is a live page. Last updated 2 September 2026. Black Friday falls on Friday 27 November. Amazon has not announced its UK sale dates. We check this page every week and rewrite it the day the dates land.
Black Friday 2026 falls on Friday 27 November. That date is fixed, because it follows American Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of the month. Very little else about the UK sale is fixed yet, including the part most people want to know: when the discounts actually start.
Amazon has not announced its UK Black Friday Week dates for 2026, and on its recent record it will not announce them until November. Currys, Argos and John Lewis tend to move within a few days of each other once it does. So this page starts where the useful work starts, three months out: what is confirmed, what is only a pattern, and what the things that get discounted every year cost today.
The short version
- Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November. Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November.
- Amazon has not announced its UK dates. Its last three announcements landed on 2, 8 and 13 November, so the first half of November is the window to watch.
- Amazon’s UK sale has run 11 or 12 days each year since 2023, opening the week before Black Friday itself.
- Which? tracked 175 appliances for a year and found 83% were the same price or cheaper outside the Black Friday window.
- Since April 2025 the CMA can fine companies directly over fake countdowns and misleading crossed-out prices, and it opened cases against eight businesses in November 2025.
- Record today’s price for anything you are planning to buy. Six of ours are in the table below.
When is Black Friday 2026, and when is Cyber Monday?
Black Friday is Friday 27 November 2026. Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November 2026. Those two dates bracket the weekend that most UK retailers treat as the peak of the year, and they are the only dates on this page that nobody can change.
Here is how the last three years ran, with the Amazon UK sale window alongside, so you can see how loosely the sale is tied to the day it is named after.
| Year | Black Friday | Cyber Monday | Amazon UK sale window |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 24 November | 27 November | 17 to 27 November |
| 2024 | 29 November | 2 December | 21 November to 2 December |
| 2025 | 28 November | 1 December | 20 November to 1 December |
| 2026 | 27 November | 30 November | Not announced |
One quirk of the 2026 calendar is worth planning around. Monday 30 November is the last working day of the month, which is payday for a lot of people. If Amazon opens on its usual schedule, the sale will have been running for over a week by the time that money arrives, and the first days are when the limited-stock offers go. Anyone paid monthly on the last working day is shopping the back half of the sale, or shopping on credit.
Has Amazon confirmed its UK Black Friday dates?
No. As of 26 August 2026 there is no Amazon announcement of a UK Black Friday Week, and there is no reason to expect one for another two months. Every date you see quoted for Amazon’s 2026 sale right now is somebody’s guess, usually built from the same table below.
| Amazon UK Black Friday Week | Announced on | Ran | Notice given |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2 November 2023 | 17 to 27 November | 15 days |
| 2024 | 8 November 2024 | 21 November to 2 December | 13 days |
| 2025 | 13 November 2025 | 20 November to 1 December | 7 days |
| 2026 | Not announced | Not announced | n/a |
The announcement has crept later every year, from the first week of November to the second, and the notice given has more than halved. The sale itself has barely moved: 11 days in 2023, 12 in each of the two years since, opening a week before Black Friday and closing on Cyber Monday.
Apply that shape to 2026 and you get a sale starting around 19 or 20 November and finishing on 30 November, announced somewhere in the first two weeks of the month. We will put the real dates here the morning they are published.
The catch: Amazon has already broken one of its own patterns this year. Prime Day sat in July for a decade and then moved to 23 to 26 June 2026, four days instead of two. A company willing to move its biggest sale by a month is a company that can shift a November one too. We track that event separately on our Prime Big Deal Days page.
How much of Black Friday is a real discount?
The best UK evidence on this comes from Which?, which tracked the price of 175 home, tech and health appliances every day for a year, from May 2024 to May 2025, across Amazon, AO, Argos, Boots, Currys, John Lewis, Richer Sounds and Very. It then looked at what those products cost during the four weeks around Black Friday 2024 compared with the rest of the year.
The finding, published on 25 November 2025: 83% of the products were the same price or cheaper at some point outside the Black Friday window. Reena Sewraz, the Which? retail editor, described the event as “a false economy” for most shoppers.
Read that carefully, because it is narrower than the headline suggests. It does not say discounts are fake. It says that for five products in six, waiting or buying at another time would have got you the same price or better, so the sale gives you convenience and a deadline rather than a uniquely low price. The one in six where Black Friday genuinely was the low point of the year is the reason to pay attention at all. You can only tell which is which if you know what the thing cost in August.
The rules changed since the last Black Friday
In April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act handed the Competition and Markets Authority the power to decide that a business has broken consumer law and to fine it directly, without going to court first. Before that the CMA had to litigate. This is the first Black Friday season where that power has a full year of use behind it.
On 18 November 2025, a week before Black Friday, the CMA opened a consumer protection drive aimed squarely at online pricing. It launched enforcement investigations into eight businesses, sent advisory letters to 100 firms across 14 sectors, and published finalised guidance on price transparency. The practices it named include drip pricing, where compulsory fees appear part way through checkout, misleading countdown timers, automatic opt-ins to optional charges, and headline prices that leave out costs you cannot avoid.
A year into the regime, in April 2026, the CMA reported that it had opened investigations into 14 businesses, issued 157 advisory and warning letters, ordered more than £760,000 in refunds to consumers and imposed £4.7 million in fines.
For a shopper, the practical effect is that a crossed-out price is now a claim a retailer has to be able to stand behind, and a timer that resets when you reload the page is a compliance problem rather than a marketing flourish. It does not make the claim true. It makes it worth screenshotting.
Six prices we are recording now
These are six products that go on offer every Black Friday in the UK, across the price bands where most people actually spend. We wrote down what each one cost on 26 August 2026. That column will not change. The table under it pulls the live Amazon price, so when you come back in November you can put the two side by side and see the size of the cut for yourself.
| Product | Price on 26 Aug 2026 | What would count as a real cut |
|---|---|---|
| Fire TV Stick 4K Plus | £36.99 | Under £25 |
| Echo Dot (newest gen) | £39.99 | Under £25 |
| Oral-B Pro 1 | £29.98 | Under £22 |
| Ninja Air Fryer PRO 4.7L | £79.99 | Under £60 |
| Ring Battery Video Doorbell 2K | £44.99 | Under £33 |
| Shark PowerPro cordless vacuum | £199.99 | Under £150 |
The third column is our own line in the sand, set at roughly a third off the August price, which is the point at which a discount on this kind of product usually beats what the same item hit earlier in the year. Anything shallower than that has probably happened before and will probably happen again in January.
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Fire TV Stick 4K Plus
TechAmazon’s own hardware is the closest thing Black Friday has to a reliable discount, because Amazon sets the price itself and wants the devices in as many living rooms as it can manage. Our August figure is £36.99.
It is also the product where a crossed-out price tells you least. Fire sticks carry a promotion of some kind for a good part of the year, so the number to beat is the one we recorded above, not whatever Amazon puts a line through in November.
Check today’s price on Amazon →Echo Dot (newest generation)
Smart homeThe same logic applies, with one wrinkle. Echo speakers are sold as a way into buying more Echo speakers, so the interesting price is often on a two-pack rather than a single unit. If you want two, price the bundle on its own terms and divide.
Worth knowing before you commit: a speaker this size is a compromise for music. If sound is the point, our guide to Bluetooth speakers covers what the same money buys.
Check today’s price on Amazon →Oral-B Pro 1
HealthElectric toothbrushes are promoted so often that Black Friday barely stands out in this category. That makes it a useful honesty test: if the November price is one you also saw in July, the event did nothing for you here.
The cost that decides this purchase is the heads rather than the handle. Replacements run a few pounds each and most people get through three or four a year, so a brush that saves you £5 and takes dearer heads is the worse buy inside twelve months.
Check today’s price on Amazon →Ninja Air Fryer PRO 4.7L
KitchenAir fryers are the category Black Friday was built for: gift-adjacent, heavily branded and stocked in volume, which means retailers other than Amazon will be discounting the same machines on the same days. Check Argos and Currys before you accept an Amazon price on this one.
Single drawer at 4.7L suits one or two people. Households of four usually end up wanting the dual-drawer model, which costs more and is discounted less predictably. Our air fryer guide works through the size question.
Check today’s price on Amazon →Ring Battery Video Doorbell 2K
Home securityThe doorbell is the cheap part. Ring’s useful features sit behind a subscription, so the real price of this purchase is the hardware plus several years of plan fees, and a November discount on the hardware changes that total by less than it looks.
If the recurring cost is what puts you off, there are doorbells that record locally and charge nothing monthly. We cover them in our guide to video doorbells with no subscription.
Check today’s price on Amazon →Shark PowerPro cordless vacuum
HomeCordless vacuums are where the pound amounts get big enough to be worth waiting for. A third off £200 is £66, which is a different conversation from a third off a £30 toothbrush, and it is the band where Black Friday most often does beat the rest of the year.
It is also the band with the most model churn. Manufacturers refresh cordless ranges constantly, and the model on offer in November is often the one being cleared. That is not a reason to avoid it. It is a reason to check the model number against the current range before you buy.
Check today’s price on Amazon →What to do between now and November
Three months is more than enough time to make Black Friday work in your favour, and almost all of the work happens before the sale opens.
Start by writing down what you actually want, with today’s price next to it. A screenshot with the date visible does the job. Without that number you have no way to judge a November discount, and the retailer knows it. This is the single thing that separates people who do well out of the sale from people who feel like they did.
Then work out where the item is sold besides Amazon. Large appliances, TVs and vacuums are stocked by Currys, AO, Argos and John Lewis, and their sales overlap Amazon’s almost exactly. Amazon being first does not make it cheapest.
Check the delivery and returns position while you are calm rather than during a countdown. Anything you buy online in the UK comes with a cancellation right: you have 14 days from the day the item arrives to tell the seller you are cancelling, another 14 days to send it back, and the refund is due within 14 days of the seller receiving it. Custom-made goods, perishables and sealed items opened for hygiene reasons are outside that right, and a marketplace seller based abroad can make the return slow even when the right applies.
Finally, if the purchase is big enough, look at how you are paying for it. Anything costing over £100 and no more than £30,000 on a credit card carries Section 75 protection, which makes the card company jointly liable if the goods never turn up or arrive faulty. That protection is worth more on a £300 vacuum than the £10 you might save by paying with a debit card that earns nothing.
Is Prime worth joining just for the sale?
Black Friday Week is open to everyone, unlike Prime Day and the October event, so you do not need a membership to shop it. What Prime buys you during the sale is delivery speed, plus whatever savings Amazon chooses to reserve for members that week.
UK Prime costs £8.99 a month or £95 a year, with a reduced rate of £4.49 a month or £47.49 a year for 18 to 22 year olds. One month costs less than a tenth of the annual price, so if the sale is the only reason you want it, take a month rather than a year and put a reminder in your calendar to cancel. A free trial works the same way, provided you cancel it before it converts.
What we update on this page, and when
This page is maintained rather than published and left. Every Wednesday we recheck Amazon’s UK press centre and the retailer announcements, and change the date at the top whether or not anything moved. The moment Amazon publishes its Black Friday Week dates, the table above stops being a pattern and becomes a schedule, and this page will say so the same morning.
The August prices we recorded stay put permanently. That is the point of them. The live table refreshes on its own, so the comparison you get in November is between a fixed number we wrote down in public three months early and whatever Amazon is charging when you read it.
Related pages worth a look
- Amazon Prime Big Deal Days 2026, the autumn event that runs before this one, tracked the same way.
- Black Friday mobility deals, for wheelchairs, scooters and daily living aids.
- The October 2026 energy price cap, which lands weeks before the sale and decides how much of it you can afford.
- Our UK running cost index, if you want to know what an appliance costs to run before you judge what it costs to buy.
Sources
- Amazon UK press centre: Black Friday Week 2025 dates, published 13 November 2025
- Amazon UK press centre: Black Friday Week 2024 dates, published 8 November 2024
- Amazon UK press centre: Black Friday Week 2023 dates, published 2 November 2023
- About Amazon UK: Black Friday and Cyber Monday explainer, including Prime pricing
- Which?: most Black Friday deals are the same price or cheaper at other times of the year, 25 November 2025
- CMA: consumer protection drive on online pricing practices, 18 November 2025
- CMA: direct consumer enforcement, one year on, 17 April 2026
- GOV.UK: accepting returns and giving refunds, the law on online cancellations
- Citizens Advice: Section 75 protection on credit card purchases
We earn a commission if you buy through the Amazon links on this page, at no cost to you. It doesn’t change which products we pick or what we say about them. Our how we make money page explains the arrangement, and our methodology covers how we check prices.
Black Friday 2026: common questions
When is Black Friday 2026 in the UK?
Friday 27 November 2026. Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November.
Has Amazon announced its 2026 Black Friday dates?
Not as of 26 August 2026. Amazon announced its last three UK sales on 2 November 2023, 8 November 2024 and 13 November 2025, so the first half of November is when to expect it. Any site quoting exact Amazon dates today is guessing from that pattern.
When does the Amazon sale usually start?
A week or so before Black Friday itself, and it runs through Cyber Monday. The last three have lasted 11, 12 and 12 days. On that shape, 2026 would open around 19 or 20 November.
Do you need Amazon Prime to shop Black Friday?
No. Amazon says a membership is not required to shop during Black Friday, which is the main difference between this sale and Prime Day. Prime buys you delivery speed and some member-only offers. It costs £8.99 a month or £95 a year, or £4.49 and £47.49 for 18 to 22 year olds.
Are Black Friday discounts real?
Some are. Which? tracked 175 appliances for a year and found 83% were available at the same price or cheaper outside the Black Friday period, which leaves roughly one in six where the sale genuinely was the low point. Knowing the pre-sale price of the exact product you want is the only way to tell which group you are in.
Can I return something I bought in the sale?
Yes, if you bought it online. You have 14 days from delivery to cancel, 14 more to return the goods, and the refund is due within 14 days of the seller getting them back. Personalised goods, perishables and sealed hygiene items are excluded, and buying from a marketplace seller abroad can make the process slower.