Shopify Black Friday checklist for 2026

1 Put the dates in the calendar and start early

Black Friday is Friday, November 27, 2026, Cyber Monday is Monday, November 30. If you run a whole Black Friday week, it starts Monday, November 23.

Announce early. According to the National Retail Federation, about two in five holiday shoppers start browsing and buying before November. Teasers and wish lists make sense from late October; the prices drop at launch.

2 Save your prices before the promotion

Shopify keeps no price history. Export your products as a CSV file about 30 days before your first promotional price and again on launch day, and keep both files. You'll want them to prove what a product cost before.

If you sell in the EU, this is required groundwork: any announced price reduction must state the lowest price of the previous 30 days.

3 Base every compare-at price on a real prior price

The EU Court of Justice ruled in 2024 that in the EU, an advertised discount like "20% off" must be calculated from the lowest price of the previous 30 days. A German court added in 2025 that this price must be clearly visible, not in a footnote. Under that rule, a Black Friday week price becomes the reference price for December.

Shoppers notice inflated discounts: in a German survey, 64% said they often see fake discounts in Black Friday offers.

4 Plan promotions that need no compare-at price

A free gift over a set cart total or free shipping over a threshold leaves the product price untouched. That makes them easier to plan, especially for December after Black Friday week. A volume tier or a bundle, by contrast, is a discount on the product price, even if the product page shows no compare-at price.

5 Plan discounts as a stack, not one by one

Many Black Friday mishaps come from discounts that combine in ways nobody planned. The rules, per Shopify's Help Center:

• At most five product or order codes and one shipping code per order.
• At most 25 active automatic discounts, and app discounts count toward that.
• Product discounts apply first, then order discounts on the new subtotal, shipping discounts last.
• Two percentage order discounts are both calculated on the original subtotal. Two 10% discounts add up to 20% off, not 19%.
• If two discounts can't combine, the one that's better for the customer applies.

6 Test every discount with real carts

Shopify's own Black Friday checklist says to test all codes and automatic discounts at checkout. Use Shopify's test payment gateway or Shopify Payments test mode, and do it in advance: while test mode is on, nobody can place a real order.

Run these carts: just below and just above every threshold, the same product in two variants, an item that's already on sale, a code together with an automatic discount.

7 Set start, end and limits

Give every discount a start and end date in your store's time zone. Give public codes a total usage limit, one use per customer and a minimum order value. After the promotion, you can deactivate discounts in bulk in Shopify.

One trap: if you reactivate discounts in bulk, Shopify sets them to "no end date". Re-enter the end date afterward.

8 Make the store fast

Black Friday likely brings your biggest crowd of the year, mostly on phones. In an analysis by Google and Deloitte, a mobile site 0.1 seconds faster went along with 8.4% more conversions for retailers. Shopify lists unneeded apps and tags, too many sections per page and oversized images as the main slowdowns. Clean up in October, not during Black Friday week.