Prime Big Deal Days 2026: How Amazon Brands Should Prepare for October Prime Day
Prime Big Deal Days 2026 runs Tuesday, October 6 and Wednesday, October 7. Amazon’s October Prime event opens at 12:01 a.m. PT (3:01 a.m. ET) on October 6 in both Canada and the U.S. and lasts 48 hours. Prime members in 22 countries can shop Prime Big Deal Days this season.
48 hours from 12:01 a.m. PT. New Today's Big Deals on Amazon.com drop at midnight, 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. PT on both days.
It is not the same event brands planned for last year. The Canadian event is half as long. U.S. shoppers now have an AI assistant that shows up to a year of price history and can buy automatically when a price hits their target. And the event ends one week before the first of Amazon’s U.S. arrival deadlines for Black Friday inventory.
Here is what changed, what our Prime Day 2026 data says about October, and a before, during and after plan you can still act on.
Prime Big Deal Days 2026 at a glance
Prime Big Deal Days 2026
| Dates | Tuesday, October 6 to Wednesday, October 7 |
|---|---|
| Start time | 12:01 a.m. PT (3:01 a.m. ET) on October 6 |
| Length | 48 hours |
| Where | 22 countries, including Canada and the U.S. |
| New | Today's Big Deals on Amazon.com: midnight, 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. PT on both days |
| What follows | U.S. and Canadian holiday peak fulfillment fees from October 15 |
Sources: Amazon’s U.S. and Canadian announcements.
What is different about October Prime Day this year
Canada's event is half as long
Amazon.ca ran a four-day Prime Big Deal Days in 2025, from October 7 to 10. This year the Canadian event runs 48 hours, on the same dates as the U.S.
4 days
2025 · Oct 7 to 10
2 days
2026 · Oct 6 to 7
If demand holds up, it now lands in two days instead of four. Daily budgets sized for last year’s event may run out sooner, and limited-quantity deals may sell through faster. There is also less time to spot and fix a problem once the event starts. Plan in hours, not days.
The timing also suits seasonal products. The event ends five days before Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday, October 12, and Amazon’s Canadian announcement highlights a Halloween Shop and a Fall Favourites collection.
Shoppers on Amazon.com can check up to a year of past prices
In May, Amazon brought its Rufus shopping assistant together with Alexa+ to launch Alexa for Shopping for U.S. customers. Amazon says Rufus helped more than 300 million customers in 2025. For this event, Amazon is promoting features that let shoppers:
- Set deal alerts for specific products they need
- Set a target price on an item and get an alert when it drops, or turn on Auto-Buy so Alexa buys it at that price
- Check up to 365 days of price history on hundreds of millions of products
Two things follow for any brand selling on Amazon.com, including Canadian brands selling cross-border. First, shoppers can compare your deal price with up to a year of past prices. Raising a price in September to make an October discount look deeper would show up in that history. Second, shoppers who turn on Auto-Buy have decided in advance what they will pay. If your price does not reach their target, the order does not happen, whatever the deal badge says.
+89%
Traffic to U.S. retail sites from AI chat services and browsers during Prime Day 2026, per Adobe.
40%
Better conversion from shoppers arriving from AI sources than from paid search, email, social media and other non-AI channels.
Shopping through AI is growing off Amazon too. Adobe reported that traffic to U.S. retail sites from AI chat services and browsers was up 89% during Prime Day 2026. It also found that shoppers arriving from AI sources converted 40% better than shoppers from paid search, email, social media and other non-AI channels. Whether a shopper asks Alexa for Shopping or another assistant, the clearer your product page is about who a product is for and how it compares, the more an assistant has to work with.
It is the last big event before holiday fees and cut-offs
Amazon’s U.S. holiday peak fulfillment fees apply from October 15, 2026 to January 14, 2027. Amazon.ca’s holiday peak fulfillment fees apply during the same period. The average per-unit increase over standard rates is the same as in 2025, and the 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge Amazon added to FBA fees in the U.S. and Canada in April applies on top.
Amazon has also set U.S. deadlines for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (November 27 and 30) inventory to arrive at its facilities:
Oct 14
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution shipments
Oct 21
FBA shipments with minimal shipment splits
Oct 28
FBA shipments with Amazon-optimized splits
On Amazon.ca, FBA inventory has to arrive by October 28 for your products to be guaranteed the Prime badge during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday event. If Prime Big Deal Days sells through stock you meant to keep for November, you may not have time to replace it.
What our Prime Day 2026 data says about October
In our Prime Day 2026 recap, we looked at 48 brand accounts we manage on Amazon Canada during the June 23 to 26 event. Three findings shape how we are planning October:
61.5%
Most event sales came from ads.
Advertising drove 61.5% of event sales, up from about 46% at the July 2025 event, while organically attributed sales fell roughly 25%.
−20%
Baskets were smaller.
Units sold grew 31.9% while average order value fell 20%. Shoppers bought more items and spent less per order.
-27%
ROAS alone told the wrong story.
Ad-attributed orders more than doubled (up 120.9%), yet blended ad ROAS fell 27%, mostly because each order was smaller.
The holiday outlook points the same way. Deloitte expects U.S. e-commerce sales to grow 7.5% to 8.4% year over year from November to January, and describes shoppers “making deliberate choices about how they spend” and using promotions to manage their spending. Plan for price-checking, deal-seeking shoppers in October too.
Your Prime Big Deal Days playbook
Now to October 5: set up
01
Choose your hero products and protect your stock.
Pick the products you will push hardest, then check that inventory covers 48 hours of event demand plus the holiday inventory that has to arrive at Amazon by the dates above.
02
Check your deals and your pricing.
In Seller Central, confirm which deals are scheduled and approved. Hold prices steady in the run-up, because on Amazon.com shoppers can check past prices.
03
Tighten the ten listings that matter most.
Tighten the ten listings that matter most. For each hero product, the title, bullets, images and A+ content should plainly answer who it is for, what it does and how it compares. Our Amazon listing optimization guide covers the details. On Amazon.ca, make sure French content is in place for Quebec shoppers (here is why it matters).
04
Raise budgets gradually and schedule the event days.
Amazon Ads’ Prime Day guide includes expert advice to start scaling budgets three to five days ahead, in 20% to 30% steps. Then use schedule-based budget rules for Sponsored Products. They let you set higher budgets in advance for event days, so campaigns have their event budgets as soon as the event opens.
05
Set up your retargeting now.
Build the campaigns you will run from October 8, such as ads aimed at shoppers who viewed your products, so they are ready when the event ends. If you are deciding between DSP and sponsored ads for this, our comparison will help.
October 6 and 7: run the event
- Pace budgets to the deal drops. On Amazon.com, new Today’s Big Deals drop at midnight, 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. PT (3 a.m., 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. ET). Make sure your key campaigns still have budget for the afternoon drop.
- Check for out-of-budget campaigns every few hours. Expert advice in Amazon Ads’ Prime Day guide is to keep budgets open on high-performing branded and non-branded search campaigns.
- Back what already works. Put extra bid and budget behind the products and keywords with a track record, rather than raising everything at once.
- Watch stock on hero products. If a product is close to selling out, move ad spend to one that can still fill orders.
- Judge by the day, not the hour. Make big changes from full-day data, not a single bad hour.
October 8 onward: turn the event into Q4
- Retarget the shoppers who did not buy. Shoppers who viewed your products during the event but did not buy are a natural audience to bring back before Black Friday.
- Step budgets down gradually. Bring them back to normal over a few days rather than cutting everything on October 8. Treat the two weeks after the event as their own budget window, since some shoppers who researched during the event buy later.
- Get your holiday inventory in. The first U.S. arrival deadline is October 14.
- Write your Black Friday brief while it is fresh. Note which products, creatives, audiences and hours carried the event, and which budgets ran out early. Black Friday is 51 days after the event ends.
How to measure Prime Big Deal Days beyond ROAS
Our June results are why we don’t grade an event on ROAS alone. Read these together:
Orders and units, not only sales
Average order value, next to ROAS, so a smaller basket is not mistaken for weaker advertising
New-to-brand orders, which Amazon Ads recommends checking after Prime Day to see how many first-time customers you reached
Long-term sales, which Amazon Ads uses to capture immediate purchases plus the projected value of new customers over the next 12 months
TACoS (ad spend as a share of total sales), to see whether ads lifted the whole business. Our ACoS benchmarks guide explains how to set targets.
Sales over the following two weeks, to catch shoppers who researched during the event and bought later
One adjustment for Canadian brands: last year’s October event ran four days and this year’s runs two, so compare daily averages, not event totals. Otherwise totals like sales, orders and ad spend can look lower simply because the event is shorter.
Frequently asked questions
October 6 and 7, 2026. The 48-hour event begins at 12:01 a.m. PT (3:01 a.m. ET) on Tuesday, October 6.
Yes. Canada is one of 22 countries taking part. The Canadian event runs October 6 to 7, down from four days (October 7 to 10) in 2025.
Prime Day is Amazon's summer event, which ran June 23 to 26 in 2026. Prime Big Deal Days is the October event, held ahead of the holiday season.
No. Deal submissions close before the event, but budgets, bids, listings, inventory plans and retargeting can all still be improved in the final week.
For campaigns that already convert, yes. Scale up gradually in the days before, schedule increases for October 6 and 7, and judge the results on orders and new-to-brand customers as well as ROAS.
In both the U.S. and Canada, they apply from October 15, 2026 to January 14, 2027
Get a second opinion before October 6
Accrue is an Amazon Ads Advanced Partner founded by three ex-Amazonians, working with brands across Canada and the U.S. If you would like us to review your Prime Big Deal Days budgets, deals or holiday plan before the event