How to tell a real cut from a rearranged price tag

The date is the easy part. Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November. It is mechanically the day after the fourth Thursday in November, which is why it moves: 29 November in 2024, 28 November in 2025, 27 November this year. That tells you when the banners go up, not whether the laptop you have been putting off is at its floor. The second question is the one worth answering, and it takes about ninety seconds a product.

Read the price history, not the discount

Which? tracked 175 home, tech and health appliances across eight major retailers from May 2024 to May 2025, six months either side of the sales. It found 83 per cent were cheaper or the same price at least once outside the four-week Black Friday window, and that not one of the products it tracked was at its cheapest price of the year on Black Friday day itself.

So pull the twelve-month history for the exact model before you look at the offer. That history comes from a price-tracking site or browser extension that logs a retailer's listed price over time, not from the retailer itself. Pick one, check it actually covers the shops on your shortlist, and read two things off the chart: the lowest price the model held, and the date it held it. A chart that only goes back three months cannot tell you whether November is a low. A cut landing above a price the thing held for a fortnight in June is not a low, whatever sits beside it in red.

Set your walk-away figure from that low and ignore the reference price completely. It is the only number on the screen that came from what the market paid rather than from a marketing department.

What the law does and does not require of a "was" price

A reference price has to be a genuine previous selling price rather than a decorative one. The unfair commercial practices provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force on 6 April 2025, letting the Competition and Markets Authority decide a breach itself and fine a business up to 10 per cent of worldwide turnover.

What the law does not do is fix a minimum number of days. The CMA's discount and reference pricing principles, written for the online mattress sector but which the CMA has said it will have regard to in others, point to a reference period of at least 30 days. The detail is still being fought over: in July 2026 the High Court, in a case brought under the older enforcement regime, rejected the regulator's attempt to impose a blanket sales-volume ratio on discount claims in the Emma mattress case. The higher price must still have been a real selling price offered beforehand, but how much selling counts is judged case by case. Which is why a "was" price is a claim, not something you can verify from the page.

Two other practices are prohibited outright: drip pricing, where mandatory charges are added as you move through checkout rather than shown in the headline price, and falsely claiming limited availability to force an immediate decision. A countdown timer that resets when you reload the page is the everyday version of the second one.

The model number test

Paste the full model number, suffix letters included, into a search. If one retailer stocks it and no independent reviews exist, you cannot compare that price against anything, and neither can a price-match desk. Sale-only derivative models built to a lower specification are best documented in the American market, but an unmatchable model number is a deliberate dead end wherever you find it. Bundles do a milder version of the same job: price the parts separately.

Where the categories part company

They do not bottom out at the same moment, and treating November as one event is the commonest mistake.

• TVs. Which?'s television expert has said you do not need to buy at a specific sales time, and that TVs are often even cheaper in the spring. A merely decent November price is a wait.
• Laptops. Read the specification, not the model name. The same badge can carry a different processor, less memory or a dimmer panel, and that variant is often the one on offer.
• Phones. The deep cuts land on the previous generation. Decide which generation you want before you look at a single price.
• Headphones and smart home kit. Their lows recur through the year, so the November price is seldom unique. The easiest category to be patient in.
• Consoles and popular gaming hardware. The one place where waiting can cost you the item rather than the price. If availability is the risk, buy when you see it.

The season week by week, from now to the January sales

Now to the end of September: nothing worth acting on

There is nothing to buy at this point, and no UK retailer has published its 2026 sale dates yet. This is shortlist time. Write down three candidate models per purchase, with full model numbers, and start collecting price histories so you have months of baseline before the noise begins.

Early October: the first calibration reading

Amazon has run a members-only October event every year since 2022, and for the last two years it landed in the first full week: 8 and 9 October in 2024, 7 and 8 October in 2025. If it repeats, it gives you a free reading on your shortlist about six weeks before Amazon's own November event opens.

Mid October to early November: the announcements land

This is when the dates become knowable rather than guessable. In 2025 Currys opened on 29 October and ran through to 2 December, a longer season than most people picture.

The first three weeks of November: the long slope

Prices drift down in uneven steps rather than falling on one day, and this is where price guarantees earn their keep. Currys ran one in 2025: buy a qualifying deal between 29 October and 18 November, register by 25 November, and it refunded the difference if the price dropped again before 2 December. John Lewis relaunched its Never Knowingly Undersold promise in September 2024, matching 25 named brands and refunding if John Lewis itself cut the price within seven days. Read those dates against the calendar before you rely on them. That purchase window closed on 18 November, two days before Amazon opened Black Friday Week and ten days before Black Friday itself, and registration shut on 25 November. Terms change year to year, so read the current ones rather than these.

A guarantee like that narrows the cost of buying early, but only against that one retailer's own later cut and only if you buy and register inside its dates. On a repeat of the 2025 shape, waiting for the Friday and holding a price guarantee are not both available: you pick one. Check the dates first. If they close before the week you were planning to wait for, the guarantee is not a reason to wait, it is a reason to decide now.

The week of the Friday

Amazon opened Black Friday Week on 21 November in 2024 and 20 November in 2025, both times a Thursday, both times exactly eight days before Black Friday. Repeat that offset in 2026 and it opens on Thursday 19 November. Treat it as a pattern to plan around, not a date to rely on.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Friday 27 November and Monday 30 November. A quirk this year: because December begins on a Tuesday, Cyber Monday is the last day of November, so the whole event sits inside one month, where in 2024 and 2025 it spilled into December. The post-sale lull therefore starts a day or two earlier than you may be used to.

December and the delivery cut-offs

The constraint stops being price and becomes logistics. Royal Mail publishes its Christmas last posting dates in the autumn; in 2025 second class closed on 17 December, first class on 20 December and Special Delivery on 23 December. Retailer courier cut-offs run later, but a marketplace seller shipping from abroad can be weeks earlier. Those are the mainland dates. Royal Mail publishes earlier last posting dates for Northern Ireland, the Scottish Highlands and the islands, and plenty of retailers and marketplace sellers either surcharge those postcodes or exclude them from free and next-day delivery entirely. That charge is the one that appears at checkout rather than on the product page, so put your own postcode in before you set a target price, not after.

January, and the honest answer about waiting

If it is not a present, waiting is a real option rather than a consolation. The year-long tracking above found most products matched or beaten at some point outside the sales window, and on televisions the advice from Which? points at spring. The catch is that January clearances lean towards outgoing stock: a better price on last season's model, not on the one you wanted.

The order to do this in

If the thing you need has already broken, none of this is for you. A dead laptop in September is not a timing problem, it is a purchase you have to make now. Buy the cheapest model that clears the specification you actually need, from a retailer running a price guarantee if there is one, and diarise its claim deadline the day you buy. Do not nurse a failing device to November on the strength of a discount nobody has announced yet.

Most of the work happens before November, which is why so few people do it.

1. Build the shortlist in September. Three models per purchase, full model numbers written down, ranked. If you are kitting out a room rather than replacing one item, decide the whole list now: our home office desk kit guide is the sort of thing to work from. Deciding what you need under sale pressure is how bundles win. If you are reading this in November and did not do any of this in September, do it compressed: one hour, three models, full model numbers, twelve-month lows written down, then buy against those numbers. A rushed baseline still beats no baseline.
2. Set your number. For each model, look up the twelve-month low and write down the figure you would be pleased to pay. Do this in September. A target set in the last week of November is not a target, it is a rationalisation.
3. Set up tracking. Put a price alert on each exact model rather than the category, and check the history chart when it fires.
4. Read the price guarantee before you buy. Note the qualifying dates, the registration deadline if there is one, and what counts as a qualifying purchase. That deadline is usually earlier than people expect.
5. On the day, compare against your own number. Not against the reference price, and not against the percentage. Check the seller is the retailer rather than a third party in its marketplace before you pay. Buy at or under your number, unless availability is the constraint, in which case take the in-stock unit.
6. Diarise two dates on purchase. The end of the price guarantee claim window, and the end of your cancellation period.
7. If it drops afterwards, claim. Use the guarantee first. Failing that, an order placed online usually carries a 14-day cancellation right under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, running from the day after delivery, with a further 14 days to send the goods back. Three things narrow it and they cover a lot of tech. Bought in a shop rather than online, there is no cancellation right at all. Games, software and sealed media lose it once you break the seal, and a laptop or PC built to your configuration counts as made to order and is exempt. And if you have done more with it than you could have done in a shop, the retailer can reduce the refund for the wear. Return postage is usually yours. So cancelling and rebuying is a real option on a sealed, unused, online purchase from the retailer itself, and a poor one on anything you have already set up and signed into. If you are paying on Buy Now Pay Later or store finance, treat cancelling and rebuying as a last resort. The refund goes back through the credit provider rather than to you, instalments can keep being collected until it clears, and rebuying before the first agreement closes leaves two of them running at once.

Where this goes wrong, and how to recover

Buying on the first day at a mid price. The opening wave is the widest, not the deepest. A price guarantee is your route back, but only if you bought and registered inside its dates and only against that retailer's own later price, which is why step four matters more than it looks.

Waiting past the stock. A narrow set of things: consoles, in-demand graphics hardware, anything supply constrained. Availability beats price there, and holding out for a deeper cut is how people end up paying a markup in December.

Last year's model at this year's price. Sometimes the right buy, sometimes a trap. Check whether the successor exists and what it changed. If the difference is a badge, take the discount. If it is the panel, the chip or the battery, do not.

Ordering from a marketplace seller by accident. The listing looks identical but returns handling, warranty route and price guarantee eligibility can all differ. Look for the sold-by line at checkout, not on the product page.

Assuming delivery will make it. A deal that arrives on 28 December is not a Christmas present. For anything with a date attached, buy earlier and accept a slightly worse price, or check the retailer's own guaranteed cut-off rather than the courier's general one.

Trusting a 2026 date you read somewhere. Several pages already state confident retailer start dates for this November. They cannot know them yet. Wait for the retailer's own announcement in October.

Frequently asked questions

When will the 2026 sales actually start in the UK?

Nobody knows yet, and any page giving you a 2026 retailer start date today is guessing. Black Friday is fixed at Friday 27 November 2026 and Cyber Monday at Monday 30 November, but retailers announce their own windows in October or early November. For shape: Currys ran 29 October to 2 December in 2025, and Amazon opened Black Friday Week on 20 November in 2025.

Is it better to buy on Black Friday itself or wait for Cyber Monday?

Neither day has a reliable edge, which is why the price history beats the calendar. Across the 175 products Which? tracked, not one was at its cheapest price of the year on Black Friday day itself. Set a target price and buy the moment something hits it.

Are Black Friday prices in the UK actually cheaper?

Often less than the banners suggest. Which? tracked 175 appliances at eight major retailers from May 2024 to May 2025 and found 83 per cent were cheaper or the same price at least once outside the four-week Black Friday window. The discount percentage on the page is not evidence on its own.

Should I buy a TV in the November sales?

Only if the price beats what that exact model has already sold for during the year. Which?'s television expert has said you do not need to buy a TV at a specific sales time such as Black Friday or the January sales, and that TVs are often even cheaper in the spring.

What are my rights if the price drops after I buy?

Start with the retailer's own price guarantee, and check its dates: they usually close before Black Friday. Currys refunded the difference on qualifying 2025 purchases if the price fell again before 2 December, provided you registered by 25 November. Failing that, an online order usually carries a 14-day cancellation right from the day after delivery under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, but it does not cover in-store purchases, unsealed software or media, or made-to-order machines, and the refund can be reduced if you have used the item.

Do I need Amazon Prime to get the November deals?

The October event and the November one are not the same thing. Prime Big Deal Days, which ran on 8 and 9 October in 2024 and 7 and 8 October in 2025, is exclusive to Prime members. Black Friday Week has historically been open to everyone, though individual offers within it can be Prime-only.

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