Holiday sales are expected to grow by 4 to 4.8% this year and reach $1.7 billion, according to Deloitte’s annual holiday forecast, released today.
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Deloitte is predicting that holiday retail sales will reach between $1.70 trillion and $1.71 trillion this year, up 4% to 4.8% over holiday 2025.
The global accounting and consulting firm released its annual holiday forecast today and said it expects holiday sales growth to mirror expected growth in disposable income.
“Disposable personal income (DPI) remains an important input to our holiday retail forecast,” Akrur Barua, Deloitte Insights economist said in releasing the forecast. Deloitte is projecting that DPI will grow between 4.5% to 5.2% during the holiday season. DPI growth is “a strong predictor of retail and e-commerce sales,” Barua said.
At this point, 11 weeks before Black Friday, the traditional start of the peak holiday shopping period, Deloitte and other forecasters are fairly confident that holiday 2026 will be at least as strong as holiday 2025.
Last year, sales between November and the end of January grew 4.1%, and totaled $1.63 trillion.
Deloitte’s forecast parallels Bain & Co’s forecast, released last week, that holiday sales would top $1 trillion and be up 4.5% over the 2024 holiday season.
Bain, however, cautioned that more than half of that expected growth will be due to higher prices resulting from inflation.
Consumers Will Seek To Stretch Their Dollars
Deloitte’s forecast notes that consumers will employ the same behaviors to stretch their dollars that they used last year. “As they look to get more out of their dollars, we continue to see value-seeking behaviors across income levels, including switching among brands and retailers and using promotions to manage spending,” Natalie Martini, vice chair, Deloitte, and U.S. retail and consumer products leader, said in a statement.
Deloitte is forecasting e-commerce growth of 7.5% to 8.4% over the holiday season, with e-commerce spending of between $316.1 trillion and $318.9 trillion.
“Consumers ongoing use of digital tools to research, compare, and complete purchases across all categories” will help boost e-commerce sales, according to Barua.
The “Decision Season” Influences Holiday Season Sales
While the Deloitte and Bain forecasts cover the period from November through January, a report from marketing and consumer insights company InMarket, in partnership with Kantar shows that a significant amount of shopping – and pre-purchase research – occurs long before November 1. According to the report, two out of three shoppers have already started holiday shopping in October.
InMarket calls this earlier planning and purchase research period the “Decision Season.”
The Decision Season means brands have two jobs to be ready for holiday sales, Peter Hartt, SVP, Client Strategy at InMarket said in releasing the report. Those jobs, Hartt said, are to “be top of mind through September and October when people are still deciding what to buy, then to be present in-store when they actually buy it.”
“The brands that only show up for the second job are bidding on a decision that could’ve already been made,” Hartt said.
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