Amazon Prime Day Could Drive $26.3 Billion in US Online Sales This Week

Amazon's Prime Day sale kicks off Tuesday, and new forecasting suggests it will be the biggest one yet. US consumers will spend $26.3 billion online at Amazon and other retailers during the four-day sale, up 9% from last year's event in July. That projection makes this year's event the largest Prime Day on record, and it arrives earlier on the calendar than ever before.

The scale of that number becomes clearer set against recent holiday benchmarks. As Chain Store Age reported using the same Adobe data, this would be more than what consumers spent on Cyber Monday and Black Friday 2025 combined, which drove $14.25 billion and $11.8 billion, respectively, for a total of $26.05 billion. A single four-day summer sale is now projected to outpace two of retail's biggest traditional shopping days stacked together.

Why Shoppers Are Spending Despite Higher Prices

Rising costs are not scaring shoppers away from Prime Day this year. Nearly half of consumers say inflation will make them more likely to shop on Prime Day, while only 20% said it would make them less likely to shop the sale. Adobe's lead analyst sees this as part of a learned shopping pattern rather than a reaction to current prices alone.

“Consumers have been conditioned to wait for big promotional periods, to hit the buy button on purchases such as apparel, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, in comments shared with Retail Dive. That conditioning effect is why Adobe is describing these as red-letter days that rival holiday sales in November and December.

Not every shopper is buying in, though. The same Numerator data cited by Retail Dive found that, for those not interested in the sale, 40% say they don't need to make a purchase right now, nearly that many say they're not a Prime member, and nearly a quarter say Prime deals aren't worth it. Membership and perceived value remain real barriers, even as overall spending climbs.

Earlier Timing Hasn't Reduced Competition

Amazon moved Prime Day earlier this year, and one read on that decision was an attempt to get ahead of rivals before they could respond. That strategy may not be paying off the way Amazon hoped. Retail Dive's coverage of the event notes that rivals are staging competing sales, and consumers plan to shop them, or at least compare prices, citing Numerator data showing more than 60% of shoppers will look at Walmart and more than 40% at Target, with others also checking out Costco, Best Buy and Temu.

Even Etsy has joined the counter-programming with its own campaign, enlisting sellers who are named Jeff but are not billionaires, a pointed jab at Amazon's founder timed for maximum visibility this week.

For Amazon sellers tracking this competitive shuffle, the lesson is one that keeps repeating: the event has moved earlier on the calendar in back-to-back years now, and sellers who plan around the previous year's timing tend to fall behind. The earlier date cut the typical preparation window by two to four weeks, with deal submissions, FBA shipments, and warehousing arrivals all carrying firm cutoffs that fall well before the event itself begins.

Apparel Is Where Amazon Has Quietly Become Dominant

While Prime Day's headline numbers draw the attention, a separate analysis covered in the same Retail Dive report points to a category where Amazon's growth has been less visible but more dramatic over time. Apparel and footwear gross merchandise value at Amazon has grown from $11 billion in 2015 to about $73 billion last year, according to research from Wells Fargo analysts led by Ike Boruchow.

That trajectory has put Amazon well ahead of every other apparel retailer in the country. Amazon's sales in the category are expected to reach some $78 billion this year, more than 13% of all apparel sold in the U.S. and more than 44% of apparel sold online, Wells Fargo found. Walmart, number two in the space, sold about $33 billion last year, by contrast. That gap, more than double Walmart's volume, reflects a pattern Wells Fargo has tracked for years; an earlier Wells Fargo estimate reported by Sherwood News put Amazon's 2023 apparel and footwear sales at roughly $68 billion, already representing about 13% of all US apparel sales at the time, showing how quickly that share has continued to climb.

Back-to-School Shopping Is Arriving Early

Adobe expects this year's sale to do double duty, driving both typical Prime Day categories and an early wave of back-to-school purchases. Per Retail Dive's report, Adobe expects people to leverage Prime Day for back to school, as well as for summer travel-related items and home purchases, with earlier back-to-school spending boosting sales of children's clothing and backpacks, and strong growth expected in sales of luggage, car seats and portable chargers.

Discounting patterns reflect that mix of categories. Adobe expects apparel to have the biggest deals across US retailers during the event, at 23%, with electronics also at 23%, toys at 19%, televisions at 18%, and appliances at 18%, according to figures reported by Chain Store Age. One standout category sits outside the usual back-to-school list entirely: per coverage from WWD's Sourcing Journal, vacuum cleaners should see a 150% boost in spending during Prime Day 2026, making it number eight and the only housewares segment in the top 10 gainers, Adobe predicted.

Physical Stores Stand to Benefit Too

Online retailers are not the only ones positioned to capture Prime Day's halo effect. Retail Dive's report cites Placer.ai data showing brick-and-mortar stores that hold sales during this time should also capture some attention, since people won't just be shopping online for deals related to Prime Day.

Foot traffic trends suggest shoppers are in a better position to act on that than earlier in the year. The same Placer.ai data found that consumers curtailed trips to stores when the price of gas skyrocketed, but that recovery began in April and into May. That tracks with a separate Placer.ai analysis cited by WWD, which described the trend as a sign of resilience, noting that despite elevated gas prices earlier in the year, year-over-year brick-and-mortar foot traffic remained positive through May, with driving habits rebounding by April after a brief pullback in March.

For sellers and retailers alike, the picture forming around this year's Prime Day is one of a sale that has outgrown its original one-day, one-retailer format. It now shapes back-to-school timing, pulls in physical retail traffic, and forces nearly every major competitor to respond in some form, whether through a parallel sale or, in Etsy's case, a marketing campaign aimed squarely at the company that started it all.