Black Friday

Black Friday 2026: Your Ultimate Guide to the Year's Biggest Shopping Day

Mark your calendars — Black Friday 2026 falls on Friday, 27 November, and we're already lining up the year's most jaw-dropping deals across every category you care about. Whether you're hunting for a new TV, upgrading your tech, refreshing your wardrobe, or ticking off your Christmas list early, this is the one day of the year when retailers genuinely go all-out to win your basket.

What to Expect This Year

Expect the discounts to start landing well before the day itself. Most major retailers now run "Black Friday Week" promotions from the Monday prior, with the deepest cuts often appearing in the final 48 hours. Categories tipped to see the steepest drops this year include large-screen OLED TVs, robot vacuums, air fryers, gaming consoles and bundles, premium headphones, smartwatches, fragrance gift sets, and winter coats. Travel deals — flights, hotel stays, and package holidays for 2027 — have also become a major part of the weekend, so it's worth widening your search beyond physical products.

We'll be tracking prices across hundreds of retailers, flagging genuine discounts, and calling out the dressed-up "deals" that aren't really deals at all. Bookmark this page and check back daily from mid-November onwards.

How Black Friday Started

The phrase "Black Friday" has older roots than most shoppers realise — and the original meaning had nothing to do with bargains. It first appeared in 1869, used to describe a catastrophic crash in the US gold market on Friday, 24 September that year, triggered by two speculators who tried to corner the supply.

The shopping version we know today emerged almost a century later, in 1950s Philadelphia. Police officers used "Black Friday" as shorthand for the chaotic day after Thanksgiving, when huge crowds of suburban shoppers and football fans poured into the city ahead of the annual Army-Navy game on Saturday. Officers worked extra-long shifts, traffic ground to a halt, and shoplifting spiked. It was, in their words, a thoroughly black day.

Retailers, understandably, weren't keen on the negative branding. By the 1980s, they had successfully rebranded the term with a far cheerier story: this was the day stores moved from being "in the red" (operating at a loss for the year) to "in the black" (turning a profit), thanks to the avalanche of holiday spending. That accounting metaphor stuck, and Black Friday became the unofficial starter pistol for the Christmas shopping season.

The day crossed the Atlantic in earnest around 2013, when Amazon and a handful of major UK retailers began running coordinated promotions. Within a few years, it had become firmly embedded in the British shopping calendar — now stretching across an entire week, blending into Cyber Monday, and increasingly extending right through to December.

How to Shop Smart

A genuine bargain needs a genuine reference point. Before you buy, check the product's price history, compare across at least two retailers, and ignore the countdown timers designed to rush you. We do the legwork so you don't have to — every deal on this page has been verified against its 90-day price history.

Happy hunting.