The 2026 Merchant’s Guide to BFCM

What a shopper wants doesn't expire when they close the tab

Black Friday still gets planned as a four-day sprint. Most of that expensive traffic leaves without buying, and it gets counted as failure. But those shoppers saved a product, compared options, waited on a price, or waited for a size to come back. The interest was real. It didn't fit inside a four-day window.

We compared Swym benchmarks against the 2025 season reported by Shopify, Klaviyo, Adobe, and Salesforce, then tracked what's already shifting in 2026. Browse more BFCM playbooks and campaign calendars in the 2026 Holiday Hub.