The trend: The holiday sales season is set to begin in earnest in October, with a number of retailers rolling out events to compete with Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days.

• Walmart’s sale will run from October 7–12 for all shoppers, with Walmart+ members getting an additional five hours to shop before the discounts officially go live.
• Target Circle Week is returning from October 5–11, with deeper discounts for members of the retailer’s free loyalty program as well as its Target Circle 360 subscribers.
• Best Buy’s “Techtober Sale” will last from October 6–12 for the general public, while members of the retailer’s Best Buy loyalty program will get access to an exclusive sale from September 28 to October 5.
• Kohl’s Cyber Deals event will run from October 6–9, one day longer than last year; despite the name, shoppers will get discounts of up to 50% in-store as well as online.

All four retailers timed their events to overlap with Prime Big Deal Days, which will be held October 7–8.

The landscape: As in previous years, uncertainty is causing shoppers to pull their holiday spending forward. But this year, tariffs are adding another layer of urgency as consumers try to get ahead of potential price increases and product shortages.

• Roughly two-thirds of consumers have started or plan to start holiday shopping before Black Friday, per McKinsey’s August ConsumerWise survey.
• Gen Z and millennials are even more likely to get a head start: 46% of Gen Zers and 55% of millennials planned to start making holiday purchases in October or earlier, which could reflect financial strain that is leading them to spread out buys and grab early discounts to avoid bigger bills later in the season.
• Over 15% of total holiday spending will come before November, per PwC’s holiday forecast—making October sales events a requisite for retailers looking to maximize their share of sales this festive season.

Our take: With shoppers increasingly expecting deals in October, retailers have their work cut out for them.

• Amazon’s decision to keep its sale to two days may help avoid seller fatigue, but it risks losing ground to Walmart and Target, whose weeklong sales will start before Big Deal Days begins and continue after they end.
• Going too big on October sales could also create inventory problems for the rest of the holiday season, especially for smaller retailers who weren’t able to stock up during the tariff reprieve. Fifty-seven percent of retail executives said low stock was a moderate to severe problem heading into the holidays, per a survey by ReturnPro—a sharp reversal from last year, when 56% reported higher inventories than the year prior.