Holiday Spending Statistics (2026)

The National Retail Federation released its 2026 forecast on Oct. 15, 2026. It expects retail sales in November and December to grow 4.2% over 2025, to $1.013 trillion. That would follow a 3.1% rise in 2025, when holiday sales reached $972 billion by NRF's current count (see the table below).

NRF defines the season as Nov. 1 through Dec. 31 and leaves out auto dealers, gas stations and restaurants to focus on core retail. The forecast is nominal, so it includes price increases. NRF's chief economist pointed to inflation, rising gas prices and pressure on household budgets as factors that will hit income groups differently this year. NRF's consumer survey for the 2026 season, which reports per-person spending, had not been published as of mid-October; the figures below on how people spend are from the 2025 season.

Going into the 2025 season, NRF forecast growth of 3.7% to 4.2%, to between $1.01 trillion and $1.02 trillion, which would have been the first holiday season above $1 trillion. In January 2026, the CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor, which tracks anonymized credit and debit card purchases, estimated that holiday sales grew 4.1%, near the top of that range.

NRF's October 2026 release puts 2025 growth at 3.1% and the total at $972 billion, built on Census data that was revised in September 2026. The Retail Monitor showed December 2025 sales (excluding autos and gas) up 3.54% from a year earlier, after a 4.53% gain in November. A late Thanksgiving pushed Cyber Monday into December in 2025, which moved one big shopping day out of November. Clothing stores (up 6.11%) and sporting goods, hobby, music and book stores (up 5.16%) led December, while building and garden stores fell 5.3%.

In NRF's October 2025 survey of 8,247 adults, conducted with Prosper Insights & Analytics, consumers planned to spend $890.49 each on the winter holidays. That was the second highest amount in the survey's 23-year history and 1.3% below the 2024 record of $901.99 (see the chart below).

Over the past decade, planned spending has moved in a fairly narrow band, from $796 in 2016 to $902 in 2024. The dip to $833 in 2022 came during the period of high inflation, when people held back on gifts. Ninety-one percent of consumers planned to celebrate a winter holiday such as Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa in 2025, compared with 92% in 2024.

Of the $890.49 people planned to spend in 2025, $627.93 was for gifts for family, friends and others. The remaining $262.56 was for seasonal items such as food, candy, decorations and greeting cards (see the table below).

The split has shifted slowly. Gift budgets were $605 in 2015 and $628 in 2025, while spending on seasonal items rose from $214 to $263 over the same years. In 2024, $488 of the $641 gift budget was set aside for family members.

Nearly all holiday shoppers buy for family: 95% of adults in NRF's 2025 survey, and 98% of households with children. Sixty-eight percent bought for friends and 34% for co-workers. Households with children were more likely to buy for every group, including 54% for co-workers.

Families with children also spend more. Their planned gift budget rose to $743 in 2025 from $710 in 2024, while the gift budget for all adults fell to $628 from $641.

For more than a decade, at least two in five holiday shoppers have started before November. In 2025, 42% planned to browse and buy before November, down from 45% in 2024 and a peak of 49% in 2021. The top reasons were spreading out the budget (54%) and avoiding last-minute stress (41%).

Starting early does not mean finishing early. Sixty percent expected to finish in December, and 63% planned to wait until Thanksgiving weekend to do most of their shopping, up from 59% a year earlier. By early November, 58% had started and had finished about a quarter (26%) of their planned purchases. By early December, shoppers had completed 51% on average, and 45% planned to buy their last gift before Thursday, Dec. 18.

A record 202.9 million people shopped during the five days from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday 2025, up from 197 million in 2024 and above the previous record of 200.4 million in 2023 (see the chart below). Before the weekend, NRF's survey had expected 186.9 million.

Black Friday remained the biggest day both in stores and online, with 80.3 million in-store and 85.7 million online shoppers, slightly fewer than in 2024. Cyber Monday was the second busiest online day at 75.9 million shoppers, up from 64.4 million, and 46.9 million of them shopped on a phone. The weekend itself grew: the Sunday after Thanksgiving drew a record 32.6 million in-store shoppers, 27% more than in 2024 (see the table below).

Ninety-six percent of Thanksgiving weekend shoppers made a holiday purchase in 2025, spending $337.86 on average on gifts, holiday clothing, decorations and other seasonal items. That was up from $315.56 in 2024 and the highest since the 2019 record of $361.90. About 67% of it ($225.74) went to gifts.

The most common gifts bought over the weekend were clothing and accessories (51%), toys (32%), books and other media (28%) and gift cards (26%). Supermarkets (47%) and online (45%) were the top destinations, ahead of department stores (40%), clothing stores (37%) and discount stores (30%). By the end of the weekend, 84% of consumers had started their holiday shopping, but they still had 53% of it left.

Super Saturday, the last Saturday before Christmas, was expected to draw 158.9 million shoppers in 2025, up from 157.2 million in 2024 and above the 158.5 million record of 2022. Forty-five percent (71.6 million) planned to shop both in stores and online, 29% (46.2 million) only in stores and 26% (41.1 million) only online.

Shopping does not stop on Dec. 25. Seventy percent of consumers planned to shop in the week after Christmas, mainly for sales (45%) and to use gift cards (26%), and 17% to return or exchange gifts. Gifts of experience are gaining ground: 31% planned to give one in 2025, compared with 22% in 2015.

Adobe Digital Insights, which measures transactions on US retail websites, reported that consumers spent $257.8 billion online from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025, up 6.8% (an industry figure, not an official statistic). Twenty-five days topped $4 billion in online spending, compared with 18 days in 2024 (see the table below).

Cyber Monday was the biggest online day of the season at $14.25 billion, though Black Friday grew faster (up 9.1% to $11.8 billion) for the second year in a row. Smartphones accounted for 56.4% of online holiday sales and 66.5% on Christmas Day. Census data show the same shift in official terms: e-commerce was $365.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, 18.3% of all retail sales before seasonal adjustment, up from 17.8% a year earlier.

Online was the most common place people planned to shop in 2025 (55%), followed by grocery stores (46%), department stores (44%) and discount stores (42%). Small businesses were on 21% of shoppers' lists and thrift stores on 12%. Fifty-nine percent said they would consider buying a secondhand gift, mostly to save money.

On the receiving side, gift cards topped wish lists for another year (50%), followed by clothing or accessories (46%), books and other media (27%), personal care or beauty items (23%) and electronics (22%). Prices were on people's minds: 85% expected gifts and holiday items to cost more because of tariffs.

Total gift card spending was expected to reach $29.1 billion in the 2025 season, up from $28.6 billion in 2024. Forty-three percent of shoppers planned to buy at least one, and buyers expected to purchase three to four cards and spend $171.32 in total.

Restaurant cards were the most popular type (27%), followed by bank-issued cards (25%), department store cards (25%) and coffee shop cards (20%). Shoppers 65 and older were the most likely to buy gift cards and expected to spend about $58 per card, around $5 more than the average shopper.

For the fifth year in a row, debit cards were the most common way to pay for holiday gifts in NRF's survey (44%), followed by credit cards (37%) and cash (16%). Fifty-nine percent planned to use digital wallets and payment apps.

Buy now, pay later keeps growing. Adobe counted $20 billion in online buy now, pay later spending over the 2025 season, up 9.8%, with smartphones behind 82.2% of those purchases. Cyber Monday alone passed $1 billion ($1.03 billion). In LendingTree's survey, 45% of gift-givers used buy now, pay later for at least one purchase, and 20% for more than one.

LendingTree's survey of 2,032 consumers in December 2025 (an industry survey, not an official statistic) found that 37% took on holiday debt, averaging $1,223. That was up from $1,181 the year before and the highest since the survey's 2022 record of $1,549 (see the chart below). Nearly half of holiday debtors (49%) said they had planned to go into debt.

The debt sat mostly on credit cards (62%), buy now, pay later loans (35%) and store credit cards (32%). Sixty-three percent expected to need three months or longer to pay it off, and 40% were paying interest rates of 20% or more. Forty-one percent were still paying off the previous year's holiday bills, 59% said they were stressed about the debt and 47% regretted how much they spent (see the table below).

The Census Bureau's monthly retail trade figures show the holiday bump in official data. Before seasonal adjustment, US retail trade sales were $620.6 billion in November 2025 and $694.1 billion in December, the highest month of the year. Together they made up 18.0% of the $7.32 trillion in 2025 retail trade sales (see the chart below). NRF says the two months have averaged about 19% of annual retail sales over the past five years on its narrower definition.

December 2025 sales were 3.4% above December 2024, and the November and December total was up 2.3%. The drop afterward is just as steep: January 2026 retail trade sales were $560.7 billion, 19.2% below December. These figures include auto dealers and gas stations, which NRF excludes, so the growth rates differ from NRF's.

Some stores lean on the season far more than others. Clothing and accessories stores took in 22.7% of their 2025 sales in November and December, and their December sales were 69% above their average for January through October. Sporting goods, hobby, music and book stores were close behind at 21.9% (see the table below).

Grocery stores barely change: November and December were 17.5% of their year, close to two-twelfths. Online retailers (electronic shopping and mail order) took 20.2% of their annual sales in those two months, and their December was 37% above a normal month.

Most returns happen in January. NRF's 2025 Retail Returns Landscape report, produced with Happy Returns, found that retailers expected 17% of holiday sales to be returned, and that 82% of shoppers return unwanted holiday gifts within a month of receiving them. Across the whole of 2025, retailers expected 15.8% of sales ($849.9 billion) to come back, with 19.3% of online sales returned.

Adobe's data suggest online holiday returns fell 1.2% in the 2025 season, though returns in the six days after Christmas rose 4.7%, and one in seven returns of the season happened in that window. NRF plans to publish new holiday returns figures in mid-December 2026.

Retailers hire extra workers for the season, and the number has come down from its recent level. NRF expects 325,000 to 375,000 seasonal hires in 2026, in line with an estimated 356,000 in 2025. In 2024 there were 442,000.

NRF said retailers are taking a measured approach to hiring because of higher gas prices, persistent inflation, higher interest rates and elevated consumer debt. For the 2025 season, it noted that some hiring may have been pulled forward into October to support early sales events.

Halloween is the first big spending event of the fall. NRF's 2026 survey expects Halloween spending of $13.5 billion, holding near the 2025 record of $13.1 billion, at $115.14 per person. Seventy-four percent of consumers plan to celebrate, and 47% are using AI tools to help with their Halloween shopping.

Holiday shopping overlaps with these events more each year: NRF's surveys show many consumers begin buying holiday items in October, and retailers start holiday promotions that month. Back-to-school shopping comes earlier still: by early July 2026, 62% of back-to-school shoppers had already started.