The 2026 Holiday Sales Forecast: $1.7 Trillion, and Where the Margin Goes

The first major 2026 holiday sales forecast landed on September 10. Deloitte expects U.S. holiday retail sales of $1.70 trillion to $1.71 trillion between November and January. That is 4.0% to 4.8% above last year. E-commerce carries the growth: $316.1 billion to $318.9 billion, up 7.5% to 8.4%.

A week later the second read arrived. eMarketer and Salesforce, as reported by Talk Business & Politics, expect holiday sales to grow 4.1%. That beats the 2.7% they recorded for 2025. It still trails the 4.3% they expect for the full year. For the second year in a row, the holidays will grow more slowly than the rest of the calendar.

Both forecasts describe revenue. Neither describes profit. Between now and January, carriers add surcharges. Shoppers hold out for deals. Free shipping costs more to fund. And roughly one in six holiday purchases comes back. This post reads the 2026 holiday sales forecast the way a finance team would: where the growth is, and where the margin goes.

1. The 2026 Holiday Sales Forecast, Side by Side

The two headline totals look far apart. Deloitte says $1.70 trillion. eMarketer says about $1.41 trillion, up from $1.35 trillion. They are not in conflict. They measure different things. Deloitte counts three months, November through January, and leaves out automotive and gasoline. eMarketer counts November and December. Even last year looks different through each lens. Deloitte has the 2025 season growing 4.1% to $1.63 trillion. eMarketer has it growing 2.7%.

The growth rates are the useful part, and they agree. Deloitte's range is 4.0% to 4.8%. eMarketer and Salesforce say 4.1%. Deloitte rests its case on income. It expects disposable personal income to grow 4.5% to 5.2% over the season, and its economist Akrur Barua calls that a strong predictor of retail and e-commerce sales.

One caution belongs next to every number in this post. None of these forecasts is adjusted for inflation. Talk Business notes that inflation ran at 3.4% in July. Set that against 4.1% growth and most of the gain is price, not volume. The season is growing. The number of units moving through it is barely growing at all.

The online line is the one place where everyone sees real expansion. Deloitte's 7.5% to 8.4% is roughly double the pace of total retail. eMarketer expects online to take 21.5% of holiday sales, against a 17.4% share for the full year. There is also recent precedent for an upside surprise. Adobe measured $257.8 billion in online spending for November and December 2025, up 6.8%, against its own forecast of $253.4 billion.

2. Where the Growth Is: Online, Mobile, and Five Days in November

If the growth is online, it is even more specifically on the phone. eMarketer expects mobile commerce to reach $174.91 billion in November and December. That is 58% of all online holiday sales. The more striking figure is the increment. Mobile is expected to deliver 71.8% of the new online dollars this season. For most brands, the holiday growth plan and the mobile checkout are now the same project.

The calendar is just as concentrated. eMarketer's forecast for the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday:

Thanksgiving: $7.1 billion, up 6.3%. Black Friday: $13.4 billion, up 7.7%. Small Business Saturday: $6.78 billion, up 7.5%. Cyber Sunday: $6.48 billion, up 7%. Cyber Monday: $16.27 billion, up 7.4%, and again the largest online shopping day of the year.

Add those up and five days produce about $50 billion. That is roughly one sixth of the entire online season. Black Friday is the fastest grower of the five.

By category, eMarketer expects growth to be hard to find. Spending will concentrate in a few places. Apparel and footwear is one of them, with sales expected to rise 5.9% over the holiday season. Computers are pegged at 6% and toys and hobby at 5.6%. Physical retail, once autos and gasoline are removed, is expected to grow just 1.6%. Salesforce adds one more growth pocket. Social commerce rose 17% in the first half of the year, and 28% of Gen Z shoppers plan to buy through social apps this season, up from 25%.

3. The Shopper Behind the Forecast

The shopper who will produce this growth is not in a generous mood. eMarketer reports that 42.7% of consumers are more price sensitive than they were a year ago. Their tactics are specific. 31.7% are planning purchases earlier. 30.2% are comparing prices across retailers. 29.9% are postponing purchases until a major sale. Roughly 90% of survey respondents expect higher prices to change how they shop for the holidays.

Salesforce sees the same caution in its traffic data. Global digital traffic grew 18% in the second quarter. Order volume grew 1%. People are looking far more than they are buying. Consumer pessimism is up 16% from a year ago.

The mood is not evenly spread. In its 2026 holiday predictions, Salesforce describes a K-shaped season. 52% of low-income consumers and 50% of middle-income consumers are pessimistic, against 36% of high-income consumers. Nearly half of low-income shoppers, 49%, say they are buying less. Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi makes a similar point in the Talk Business report. Spending is being held up by the wealthiest households, while the bottom 80% are making choices.

Credit fills some of the gap. Adobe counted $20 billion in buy now, pay later spending last holiday season, up 9.8%, and eMarketer expects shoppers to lean on it again. The practical meaning for a merchant is simple. A shopper who plans early, compares everywhere, and waits for the sale is a shopper whose order arrives at a lower margin. The forecast counts that order at full value. The income statement does not.

4. AI Becomes a Holiday Sales Channel

Last year AI shopping was a curiosity in the holiday data. This year it is a channel. During Prime Day 2026, a $26.4 billion event by Adobe's count, referrals from AI platforms to retail sites nearly doubled from a year earlier. That traffic converted about 40% better than traffic from other sources. The direction of travel matters more than the figure. A year before, Adobe had AI traffic converting worse than traffic from other sources.

Salesforce goes further. It predicts that 20% of all holiday e-commerce traffic will originate from AI agents. The definition is broad, and worth reading closely. It includes shopping assistants that answer live questions. It also includes autonomous agents doing back-office work, and competitor scrapers that feed algorithmic price matching. Some of the new visitors on your site this November will be your rivals' pricing bots.

On the merchant side, Salesforce expects one in three e-commerce sites to have its own branded shopper agent live by Cyber Week. It reports that retailers with such agents grew holiday sales 6.2% in 2025, against 3.9% for those without. Shoppers are ready for it. eMarketer finds that 37.1% of U.S. shoppers plan to use AI more often this season, mostly to find gift ideas and compare products.

That last phrase is the one to hold on to. AI traffic arrives informed and converts well. It also arrives having already compared your price with everyone else's. We covered the mechanics in our piece on AI shopping agents. For the holidays, the short version is this. AI is a high-intent channel and a price-transparent one at the same time.

5. Where the Margin Goes: Shipping, Free Shipping, and Returns

Now the other side of the ledger. Three costs scale with every holiday order, and all three are rising.

Carrier surcharges. Peak season pricing starts earlier than most plans assume. EasyPost's summary of the 2026 schedules has UPS surcharges beginning September 27 and FedEx on September 28. Both run into mid-January. The standard residential ground surcharge starts at $0.50 a package in late October. It peaks at $0.75 for UPS and $0.80 for FedEx from late November through late December. EasyPost calculates that these flat residential charges are up 22% to 23% on average from last year. Shippers whose volume spikes pay more. A UPS shipper running at 105% to 125% of its baseline pays $1.75 a package in the shoulder weeks. USPS has filed for temporary holiday prices from October 4 through January 17, pending regulatory review. The proposal adds 40 cents to a light Ground Advantage parcel in the nearer zones and far more to heavy ones.

Free shipping. Salesforce ranks free shipping as the single most important factor in where people shop, at every income level. It also expects retailers to spend an additional $3 billion globally this season to subsidize it, an increase of 7%. The shopper's favorite feature is the merchant's fastest-growing line item.

Returns. In its most recent returns report, the National Retail Federation said retailers expect 17% of holiday sales to come back. For online sales across the year the rate is 19.3%. Here is a rough illustration, mixing one firm's rate with another firm's forecast. If last year's online rate holds, about $61 billion of Deloitte's $316 billion online season will be returned. Each of those orders was picked, packed, and shipped under a peak surcharge. Many will be restocked in January, when full price is a memory.

Retailers have started to push back. eMarketer's summary of the NRF data shows 72% now charge for at least some returns, up from 66%. It has not been painless. Of the retailers that introduced fees, 47% saw more customer complaints. 37% lost customers. 34% saw average order value fall, and 24% saw sales fall. The consumer side of the same research explains why. 82% of shoppers say free returns are a key factor in the decision to buy, and 71% are less likely to come back after a poor returns experience. A blanket fee treats the customer who never returns anything the same as the customer who returns everything.

6. A Holiday 2026 Forecast Checklist for Shopify Merchants

The forecast is good news. The job for the next ten weeks is to keep it. Five moves are worth making before Thanksgiving.

First, plan the season on contribution margin per order. Revenue targets will be hit. Take an average holiday order and subtract the expected discount, the shipping cost with the peak surcharge, and the expected cost of returns. If that number is thin in October, it will be thinner in December.

Second, reset the free shipping threshold now. The surcharge clock starts on September 27. A threshold set in the spring was priced against a cheaper parcel. Move it, or accept the subsidy with open eyes.

Third, make the store easy for AI to read. Complete product data, clean feeds, and accurate inventory decide whether an assistant recommends you. Our guide to Shopify's agentic storefronts covers the setup. This traffic converts. It is worth an afternoon.

Fourth, treat the return policy as a dial, not a switch. The fee data above shows what a blunt change costs. The better question is narrower. Which orders are likely to come back, and what can be done about those orders before they ship? That is a question about individual orders, not about policy pages.

Fifth, put January in the plan. Deloitte's season runs through January for a reason. So do the carriers' surcharges. The holiday is not over on December 25. It is over when the returns window closes.