Is Cyber Week still the peak? What brands need to know

Two camps, one big question

Every autumn, two camps emerge. One argues that Black Friday has lost its power, diluted by October promotions, summer sales and a Christmas shopping season that starts earlier each year. The other insists that nothing else comes close to Cyber Week’s ability to concentrate demand.

Both have a point. But the distinction matters for brands deciding where to invest promotional budgets, how to allocate stock and which markets deserve the greatest operational attention.

Our marketplace data offers a useful perspective. Across our network, Cyber Week remains a significant concentration of annual sales, but the performance varies sharply by product segment and country. The question for brands then is not simply whether the peak has survived, but what it takes to capture its value.

The case “for”: Cyber Week losing its monopoly

The evidence that shopping activity is spreading across the calendar is hard to ignore. McKinsey’s 2025 holiday shopping research found that two-thirds of consumers planned to start their holiday shopping before Black Friday (McKinsey, 2025). Its conclusion was clear: the season is no longer won or lost in a single day or week.

Retailers have helped create this shift. Promotions increasingly begin in October or early November, with some retailers guaranteeing that customers shopping earlier will receive the same price as those buying during Black Friday itself. When deals appear earlier, shoppers have less reason to wait for a single event.

Deloitte’s 2025 Black Friday–Cyber Monday survey reinforces the point. Six in ten consumers had already shopped during October promotional events, while half said they were spreading purchases to manage their budgets (Deloitte, 2025). The result is a longer and more complex promotional season. Brands are competing for attention and sales across more events, while consumers have more opportunities to compare prices and wait for a deal.

That creates a commercial challenge. Participating in every promotional moment may increase visibility, but it can also extend discounting and put pressure on margins. Brands must consider whether each event creates additional demand, or simply shifts purchases that would have happened elsewhere in the calendar.

The case against: the peak staying very much alive

A longer shopping season does not mean every event carries equal weight. In our network, the eight days from 25 November to 2 December 2025 accounted for around 7% of annual GMV and approximately 22% of Q4 GMV. That is a substantial concentration of sales in a relatively short window.

Consumer research helps explain why. 60% of shoppers put items in their baskets ahead of time specifically to purchase during Cyber Week (Deloitte, 2025). In other words, earlier browsing does not necessarily mean earlier buying: consumers can research products in advance while waiting for the offer they consider worth acting on.

Cyber Week also remains a deliberate shopping occasion. 82% of surveyed consumers planned to shop during Black Friday/ Cyber Monday in 2025, up from 79% in 2024, even though expected spending per shopper fell by 4% (Deloitte, 2025).

The implication is that the promotional calendar may be expanding without Cyber Week losing its ability to concentrate transactions. Other events can generate meaningful sales, but they do not automatically replace the demand that gathers around Black Friday.

Our data also shows why the event cannot be dismissed as a legacy of the retail calendar. Across our network, Cyber Week GMV increased by around 8% year-on-year in 2025. So the peak remains commercially significant, even as the conditions around it change.

The real story: one peak, different outcomes

The most useful insight from our data is that Cyber Week does not deliver a uniform result across categories or countries. Sports recorded 52% year-on-year GMV growth during Cyber Week 2025, while fashion grew by 8%. Premium and luxury was broadly flat, declining by 0.8%, while shoes fell by 36%, and accessories by 34%.

Wider industry trends help explain some of these differences. McKinsey’s sporting goods research highlights growing interest in active lifestyles, with major sporting events also potentially contributing to demand for sports products in 2025 (McKinsey, 2025). Our results reflect these wider trends, but are also influenced by our own brand portfolio, which includes major sports brands. The growth in sports GMV should therefore not be taken as a direct measure of the wider market. Shoes and accessories tell a different story. While both categories declined in our data, broader market figures from J.P. Morgan indicate modest growth of around 5% in the US apparel and footwear market (J.P.Morgan, 2025). This suggests that the results may reflect the performance of specific brands within our portfolio, rather than a wider downturn in these categories. These are important variations.

A strong Cyber Week result for one segment does not guarantee the same outcome for another, and brands should be wary of using overall retail headlines as a proxy for their own performance.

The same applies across Europe. Cyber Week GMV grew by 47% in Spain, 35% in France and 31% in the UK. Germany, the largest market in our dataset, declined by just under 2%, while the Netherlands fell by 7%.

For decision-makers, this shifts the emphasis on whether Cyber Week matters to where it matters most. The event may be a major opportunity in one market or category and a more difficult proposition in another. Planning needs to reflect those differences rather than assume a single promotional strategy will work across the board.

These differences matter even more as the promotional calendar expands. With shoppers starting earlier and more sales events competing for their attention, brands face a bigger challenge than how to perform during Cyber Week: how to capture demand across the season without eroding margins in the process.

What brands should do before Cyber Week 2026

The evidence points towards three priorities:

1. Give each promotional event a clear commercial role. 

Cyber Week may be the principal opportunity to capture concentrated demand, but other events can serve different objectives. Brands should define what they want each promotion to achieve and measure whether it delivers incremental value.

2. Plan by market and product segment. 

Our data shows substantial differences in Cyber Week performance across both categories and countries. Stock, promotional depth and investment should reflect local demand patterns and category performance, rather than a single pan-European assumption.

3. Measure profitability alongside sales. 

GMV provides an important view of marketplace performance, but it does not tell the whole story. Brands should also examine order value, discount levels, returns and net margin to understand whether a successful trading period has delivered sustainable commercial value.

Operational readiness remains essential. Accurate product data, available sizes and dependable fulfilment help brands meet demand when it arrives. But these capabilities need to support a clear trading strategy, not simply enable participation in more promotions.

Conclusion: plan for the season, prepare for the peak

Cyber Week has not lost its place in the retail calendar, but it now sits within a longer season in which shoppers have more opportunities to browse, compare and buy. The two camps are therefore describing different parts of the same reality. Shopping activity is spreading across the year, while Cyber Week continues to concentrate a significant share of sales into a short period. The strategic challenge is therefore to manage both, which means understanding where demand is growing, identifying which promotional moments create genuine incremental value, and preparing operations around the markets and categories with the greatest opportunity.

The peak still matters, but the advantage comes from knowing what it means for your business.