Holiday Season E-Commerce Statistics 2026: Online Sales, Mobile and AI

US shoppers spent $257.8 billion online from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, up 6.8% year-over-year (YoY) during the 2025 holiday season, according to Adobe Analytics. Salesforce, whose holiday season e-commerce statistics cover a wider set of markets, reported record-breaking online sales of $1.29 trillion globally and $294 billion in the United States over the same two months. For the season ahead, Deloitte forecasts e-commerce sales between $316.1 billion and $318.9 billion this season.

The holiday quarter is also when online buying takes its biggest bite of US retail. On the Census Bureau’s unadjusted figures, e-commerce sales in the fourth quarter of 2025 accounted for 18.3% of total sales. The sections below break that spend down by shopping day, device, product category, payment method and channel, with the 2026 forecasts beside last season’s results.

Key Takeaways

• The holiday quarter carried about 29.6% of all US e-commerce sales in 2025, or $365.2 billion of $1,233.7 billion on the Census Bureau’s unadjusted figures.
• Phones did most of the buying: Adobe found the majority of online transactions (56.4%) taking place through a smartphone this season (up from 54.5% in 2024).
• Online grew faster than stores, with Mastercard SpendingPulse reporting that e-commerce sales surged +7.4%, while in-store sales grew +2.9%.
• AI referrals grew from a small base, as Adobe found traffic to retail sites from generative AI tools (shoppers clicking on a link to a retail site) increased by 693.4% compared to the year prior.
• Appliances sold online on deals, as Adobe measured refrigerators and freezers (up 360%) and washers and dryers (up 350%) against October 2025 spending levels.
• Deloitte expects online to outpace total retail again, forecasting a 4% to 4.8% increase in total 2026 holiday sales against a 7.5% to 8.4% increase in 2026 holiday e-commerce sales.

Editor’s Choice

• US online holiday spend: consumers spent $257.8 billion online from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31.
• Global online holiday sales: Salesforce counted record-breaking online sales of $1.29 trillion globally.
• Cyber Monday online spend: consumers spent a total of $14.25 billion online for Cyber Monday.
• Shopify Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales: merchants achieved a record $14.6 billion in sales over Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend.
• Global Cyber Week sales: overall industry global sales increasing 7% year over year (YOY) to $336.6 billion.
• Q2 2026 e-commerce share: e-commerce sales in the second quarter of 2026 accounted for 17.1% of total sales.

Holiday Season E-Commerce Statistics for 2025

These figures are compiled from 34 sources across 18 publications: 17 Tier 1 (US Census Bureau, ONS, Adobe, Mastercard, Shopify, Amazon, Salesforce investor site), 13 Tier 2 (NRF, Deloitte, Bain, PwC, Salesforce newsroom) and 4 Tier 3 (company blogs). Publication dates run from November 2025 to September 2026. Only figures visible on the publisher’s own page were used.

• In Adobe’s data, 25 days saw consumers spend more than $4 billion in a single day, up from 18 days in 2024.
• After Cyber Week, Adobe expects the full 2025 holiday season (Nov. 1 to Dec. 31) to hit $253.4 billion online, up 5.3% YoY, a forecast the final total beat.
• Salesforce reported that year-over-year (YOY) sales growth hit 7% globally and 4% in the U.S.
• Late shoppers lifted the finish, with a 12% YOY global increase in sales (9% in the U.S.) in the last two weeks of December.
• On a longer window, e-commerce sales between November 2025 and January 2026 (seasonally adjusted and excluding gasoline stations, motor vehicles and parts dealers, and food services) grew 7.5%, per Deloitte’s reading of Census Bureau data.
• In the Census Bureau’s quarterly e-commerce report, total e-commerce sales for 2025 were estimated at $1,233.7 billion, an increase of 5.4% from 2024.
• E-commerce sales in 2025 accounted for 16.4% of total sales, compared with 16.1% of total sales in 2024.
• The totals differ because the trackers count different things: Adobe measures US retail sites it monitors, Salesforce extrapolates from its commerce platform, and the Census Bureau surveys retailers by quarter.

Source: Salesforce, US Census Bureau, Deloitte, Adobe, January to March 2026

Holiday Online Sales Growth by Tracker

• Mastercard SpendingPulse found that U.S. retail sales excluding automotive increased 3.9% year over year from November 1 through December 21, across both channels.
• Deloitte’s reading of Census e-commerce for November to January showed the fastest growth at 7.5%, while Mastercard SpendingPulse measured in-store sales up just 2.9%.
• In apparel, online sales were up +8.5% and in-store sales were also rising +7.0%, as shoppers browsed online before buying in store.
• Prices did part of the work: the average selling price (ASP) increased 7% YOY both worldwide and in the U.S.
• Unit demand grew more slowly, as order volumes this season moderately increased 3% globally and 1% in the U.S. compared with last year.
• Browsing jumped: online traffic grew 13% globally and 12% in the U.S. over last year’s volumes.
• The Census Bureau put fourth-quarter growth for all channels lower, as total retail sales increased 2.7% from the fourth quarter of 2024.
• Where a tracker reports both channels, online outgrew stores. The spread between trackers reflects window, geography, and price effects, and every one of them points the same way.

Recent Developments

• September 14, 2026: Amazon said Prime Big Deal Days returns October 6 to 7 with 48 hours of exclusive deals across more than 35 categories, an early start to holiday deal events.
• September 10, 2026: Deloitte projected holiday retail sales to total between $1.70 trillion and $1.71 trillion during the November 2026 through January 2027 period.
• September 8, 2026: PwC’s Holiday Outlook found that 29% of consumers plan to use AI as part of their holiday shopping experience, up from 22% last year.
• September 3, 2026: Bain reported that more online shoppers plan to start the coming season’s holiday shopping experience on AI platforms such as Claude, Google Gemini, and ChatGPT (24% this year, up from 17% in 2025).
• August 18, 2026: The Census Bureau said the second quarter 2026 e-commerce estimate increased 12.2% from the second quarter of 2025 while total retail sales increased 6.7%.
• July 20, 2026: Salesforce predicted that 20% of all 2026 holiday e-commerce traffic will originate from AI chat agents.

2026 Holiday E-Commerce Forecasts

• Bain expects online to carry most of the gain, with nonstore sales driving ~ 60% of nominal sales growth in November and December.
• Retail and brand sites remain the main starting point: Bain found shoppers plan to begin on retail and brand websites (60%, up from 51% in 2025), where an additional 13% plan to use retailer AI agents.
• Stores still win the stated checkout intent, as PwC found 60% expect to purchase gifts in-store, compared with 38% on brand/retailer websites, 9% on social media, and just 4% through AI tools.
• For gift ideas, more than half (52%) of all consumers expect to visit stores in person to decide what to give, ahead of search engines (42%), social media (29%), and AI-powered tools (14%).
• PwC also expects ~40% of all planned gift spending in 5 days (Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday), which puts Cyber Week at the center of the online season again.
• Salesforce’s channel survey shows physical stores lead by a wide margin at 77%, outpacing online marketplaces (69%), brand websites (36%), and retailer websites (30%).
• Early 2026 data shows attention rising faster than orders: global digital traffic grew 18% in Q2, but order volume barely moved; it’s up just 1%.
• Stated intent and forecast growth point in different directions: most shoppers still picture buying gifts in a store, while forecasters expect online orders to deliver most of the season’s growth. The retail-wide view sits in our christmas retail sales trends roundup.

Source: Deloitte, Bain, Salesforce, July to September 2026

Are online holiday sales dropping?

No. The Census Bureau estimated that U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of 2026 reached $340.2 billion, an increase of 3.8% from the first quarter of 2026, adjusted for seasonal variation. Online sales are still growing going into the season; the soft spot is order volume, which Salesforce data shows lagging traffic, so higher prices account for part of the dollar gain.

E-Commerce Share of Retail Sales by Quarter

• On an unadjusted basis, the fourth quarter 2025 e-commerce estimate increased 5.6% from the fourth quarter of 2024 while total retail sales increased 2.8% in the same period.
• Seasonal adjustment flattens the holiday peak: e-commerce sales in the fourth quarter of 2025 accounted for 16.6% of total sales on the adjusted series.
• Total retail sales for the fourth quarter of 2025 were estimated at $1,900.5 billion on the adjusted series, with U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the fourth quarter of 2025, adjusted for seasonal variation, but not for price changes, at $316.1 billion.
• The holiday quarter’s unadjusted online share ran 2.8 points above the second quarter’s, the low point of the year.
• Unadjusted fourth-quarter e-commerce sales of $365,167 million were about 1.32 times the first quarter’s $275,715 million.
• A retailer’s online checkout sees its heaviest share of the year’s spending between October and December, which is why site capacity and delivery cut-offs matter more in that quarter than in any other.

Key finding: The Census Bureau’s unadjusted series shows how seasonal online retail is. On a not adjusted basis, the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the fourth quarter of 2025 totaled $365.2 billion, an increase of 21.8% from the third quarter of 2025. The fourth quarter of 2024 showed a similar jump, so the surge is seasonal rather than new.

What is the slowest time of year for e-commerce?

Census data is quarterly, so it cannot name a single slowest month. Among the 2025 quarters, the unadjusted e-commerce share bottomed in the second quarter, as the table above shows, and peaked in the holiday quarter, when e-commerce sales in the fourth quarter of 2025 accounted for 18.3% of total sales. Spring and early summer are the quiet stretch for online retail relative to stores; the fourth quarter is the busy one.

Cyber Week and Key Shopping Days Online

• Cyber Monday spending peaked late in the day: in the peak hours of 8 pm to 10 pm, consumers spent $16 million every minute.
• The final Cyber Monday total of $14.25 billion landed above Adobe’s initial projection of $14.2 billion (up 6.3% YoY).
• Adobe measured Cyber Week (the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday), which brought in $44.2 billion online overall, up 7.7% YoY.
• This is now the second holiday season in a row where Black Friday growth outpaced Cyber Monday, as shoppers moved on earlier deals.
• On Shopify, shopping peaked at 12:01 pm EST on Black Friday when sales reached a record $5.1 million per minute.
• Cross-border orders represented 16% of all global orders on Shopify, and the average cart price was $114.70 over the weekend.
• Salesforce found that Cyber Monday drove $53 billion in global online sales (up 7% YOY) and $13.6 billion in the U.S. (up 6% YOY).

Thanksgiving Weekend Online vs In-Store Shoppers

• NRF counted a record 202.9 million consumers who shopped during the five-day holiday weekend from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday.
• Cyber Monday continues to be the second most popular day for online shopping, attracting 75.9 million online shoppers compared with 64.4 million in 2024.
• Phones led on Cyber Monday, with 46.9 million consumers shopping online via their mobile device, up from 40.4 million last year.
• The top shopping destinations during Thanksgiving weekend were supermarkets (47%) and online (45%).
• Weekend shoppers were spending $337.86 on average on items like gifts, holiday apparel, decorations, and other seasonal purchases.
• As of the Thanksgiving weekend, 84% of consumers had already begun their holiday shopping.
• NRF and Prosper based these counts on a survey of 3,099 adult consumers, with a stated margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 points. How those shoppers split their budgets is covered in our holiday season consumer behavior insights.

By the numbers: NRF counted 134.9 million shoppers online, up 9% from 124.3 million last year, against 129.5 million consumers shopped in-store, up 3% from 126 million in 2024. Online shoppers outnumbered store shoppers across the long weekend, so even the busiest in-store days of the year now run online-first.

Holiday Mobile Shopping Statistics

• In the UK, £16.5 billion was spent on mobile devices, rising 14.1% from 2024 during the holiday period.
• Smartphones handled 82.2% of BNPL purchases and 56.4% of all online transactions across the 2025 season, per Adobe.
• Mobile wallets spread at checkout, used for 27% of all global orders and 29% in the U.S. during Cyber Week.
• Returns stayed on bigger screens: this season, 38.8% of returns happened on a mobile device (vs. desktop).
• By mid-2026, Salesforce data showed mobile now commanding three-quarters of all online traffic.
• The mobile share rises on holidays and gift days, when shoppers buy away from a desk; the desktop share holds for returns and research-heavy purchases. Device and channel habits for the gift season are tracked in our online shopping trends for Christmas.

Online Holiday Spending by Product Category

• Three categories dominated: of the $257.8 billion spent online this holiday season, over half (54%) was driven by three categories: electronics, apparel, and furniture.
• Growth across those three was electronics ($59.8 billion, up 8.2% YoY), apparel ($49.0 billion, up 7.4% YoY) and furniture ($31.1 billion, up 6.6% YoY).
• Groceries grew fastest among the categories Adobe named: groceries ($23.7 billion, up 10.2% YoY).
• Beauty followed, with cosmetics ($8.4 billion, up 9.3% YoY).
• Gift staples also grew: sporting goods ($8.4 billion, up 7.7% YoY) and toys ($8.8 billion, up 7.8% YoY).

What were the best-selling items of the 2025 holiday season?

Adobe’s list of this season’s top-selling items included toys such as LEGO Icons sets, Wicked dolls, Furreal plush toys, LeapFrog Learning toys, Hot Wheels sets, and Bluey playsets. Top-selling gaming consoles included Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation Portal, while home picks included cordless vacuum cleaners, Ray-Ban Meta glasses, air fryers, cookware sets and tumblers.

Holiday Discounts and Appliance Deals Online

• Deals pushed shoppers up the price ladder: the share of units sold for the most expensive goods increased by 20% compared to the rest of the year.
• By category, this figure was up 56% in electronics, 55% in sporting goods, 38% in appliances, 34% in personal care products and 29% in tools.
• On Cyber Monday itself, Adobe measured electronics (peaking at 31% off listed price) and appliances (19%).
• Across the season, electronics carried the deepest peak discount at 30.9%, while appliances reached 20.2%, up from 19.2% in 2024.
• After Cyber Week, shoppers can still find great bargains through the first week of December in toys (peaking at 23% off listed price), with appliance markdowns easing to 15%.

• Store sales did not follow the online appliance surge: in December, electronics and appliance stores were up 2.28% month over month seasonally adjusted but down 0.09% year over year unadjusted.
• Video games led the online sales lift at 415% against October 2025, with refrigerators and freezers up 360% and washers and dryers up 350%.
• Shoppers also leaned on chatbots for appliances, as these services were used most in categories including video games, toys, appliances, electronics, and personal care products.
• The online appliance pattern is deep discounts, heavier demand for top-end models, and flat store sales; the model-level picture is in our best-selling home appliances during Christmas data.

AI, Social Commerce and BNPL in Holiday Shopping

• The AI spike held on the biggest day: on Cyber Monday, AI traffic to U.S. retail sites increased by 670%.
• UK shoppers followed, with AI-driven referrals on Boxing Day up 685% on 2024 figures.
• AI visitors bought more readily: shoppers referred to retailer websites from AI-powered search channels converted nine times more often than those coming through social media referrals.
• Salesforce said AI and agents were driving 20% of all retail sales and fueling $262 billion in revenue.
• Adoption kept climbing in 2026, when 50% of shoppers reported using an AI assistant at some point before buying, a 67% year-over-year increase.
• On social, TikTok was driving 9% of global social traffic across Cyber Week, a 55% YOY increase.
• Buy now, pay later (BNPL) set records, up 9.8% YoY and representing $1.8 billion more than the last season, and Cyber Monday was the biggest day on record for BNPL, crossing the $1 billion milestone ($1.03 billion, up 4.2% YoY).

Source: Adobe, Salesforce, PwC, January to September 2026

Why it matters: Adobe cautions: “While the base of users remains modest, the uptick shows the value AI can deliver as a shopping assistant.” In PwC’s 2026 survey, the share of shoppers who expect to purchase gifts through AI tools is just 4%. AI is steering discovery well before it handles the purchase.

Holiday Returns, BOPIS and Curbside Pickup

• BOPIS usage peaked on Monday, Dec. 22, when 35% of all online orders were placed for in-store pickup.
• As shoppers rushed to finish their last-minute gifting, that rate climbed to one in three during the final five days before Christmas.
• In Adobe’s data, in the days following Christmas Day (Dec. 26 to Dec. 31), returns were up 4.7%, and 1 out of every 7 returns this season happened during this time period.
• Curbside pickup spiked before the holiday, as curbside pickup peaked on Dec. 23rd (the day before Christmas Eve), driving 39.0% of online orders.
• Items purchased in-store during the final four days before Christmas face the highest likelihood of being returned in January.
• The two return figures below point in different directions because they measure different things: Salesforce counts global purchases returned, while Adobe tracks US online returns against the prior season. Refund timing and policy data sit in our Christmas returns and refund statistics.

Source: Salesforce, Adobe, January 2026

Global and UK Holiday E-Commerce

• UK shoppers splashed a record £26.9 billion online (up 4.1% from 2024) in November and December 2025, according to Adobe.
• Across 2025, online spend reached £118.5 billion, up 2.8% on 2024 in the UK.
• Black Friday once again stood out as the single biggest online shopping day of the year, with £1.16 billion spent in the UK.
• Cyber Weekend delivered £3.8 billion, and Boxing Day passed £500 million.
• The ONS found that UK online sales values rose by 1.8% over the month to December 2025, and by 11.1% when comparing December 2025 with December 2024.
• Globally, Salesforce found that Black Friday drove $79 billion in global sales (up 6% YOY) during Cyber Week.
• The UK spends a larger share of its retail budget online than the US does, so its holiday gains come from a higher base. Country-by-country gift budgets are in our global Christmas shopping habits data.

Source: Salesforce, Adobe, Office for National Statistics, December 2025 to January 2026

What share of annual e-commerce happens in the holiday quarter?

About 29.6% of US e-commerce sales in 2025 landed in the fourth quarter, $365.2 billion of $1,233.7 billion, on the Census Bureau’s unadjusted figures. That quarter also lifted online’s slice of all retail to 18.3% of total sales.

Three months that hold close to 30% of the year’s online sales explain why retailers plan inventory, staffing and delivery cut-offs around Cyber Week rather than around an average month.

Conclusion

US shoppers set another online record last season, spending $257.8 billion online from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, with phones, AI referrals and BNPL all taking larger shares of that spend. The pattern that matters for buyers and sellers is concentration: most of the online year happens in a few weeks, and the deepest appliance and electronics discounts cluster around Cyber Week.

This season starts from that base, with Deloitte forecasting e-commerce sales between $316.1 billion and $318.9 billion this season. The forecasts assume online keeps outgrowing stores; the open question is whether order volumes rise with them or higher prices carry the gain again.