This is the page we update when the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals actually go live. Right now, in the run-up, it does the more useful job: it tells you what has historically discounted in this window and what hasn't, so you can decide today whether to buy or wait — without a single made-up percentage or predicted price.
How this page works
The 2026 deals will be posted here, on this page, when they go live in November. Nothing below is a deal yet. Every figure on this page is a 2025 fact from an official announcement or a named publication (all cited under Sources), and the prices on our picks are live and date-stamped from Amazon — not remembered, not predicted. When a deal appears here in November it will be judged the way we judge everything: against the game's own price history, not against a strikethrough.
The 2026 dates
Thanksgiving 2026 falls on Thursday, November 26, so Black Friday is November 27 and Cyber Monday is November 30. The two-day event hasn't been two days for years: in 2025 the console stores opened their holiday sales in the week before Thanksgiving and ran them into the first days of December. Plan for the whole fortnight around Thanksgiving, not for one morning.
What historically discounts in this window — and what rarely does
Black Friday started as a physical-retail event and it still behaves like one: the deepest, most reliable cuts are on things that come in a box. Here's the honest pattern, product class by product class, with the 2025 facts we can actually cite.
| Product class | Historically | The 2025 evidence |
|---|
| Controllers & headsets | Reliably discounted. The most consistent Black Friday category in gaming. | PC Gamer's 2025 headset deals list had the HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 at $29.98 against a $49.99 list at Amazon. In December 2025 GameSpot reported the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C Bluetooth controller back at $24 against $30, calling it a "Black Friday-level" price. Xbox's and Sony's 2025 events both named accessories. |
| Physical back-catalog console games (1–3 years old) | Deep and frequent. Where the genuine historical lows land. | Nintendo's own 2025 announcement listed physical first-party games at select retailers from November 23 — Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 3, Nintendo Switch Sports and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door at a $29.99 suggested retail price; Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Luigi's Mansion 3 and others at $39.99. |
| Digital storefront sales (eShop, PlayStation Store, Xbox) | Broad but rarely record-setting. Thousands of titles, mostly the same floor prices as the other big seasonal sales. | Nintendo's Cyber Deals ran Nov 20 – Dec 3, 2025. Sony advertised "up to 75%" off hundreds of PS5 and PS4 digital games from Nov 21. Microsoft put over 2,000 games on sale Nov 20 – Dec 3 at up to 75% (85% on select PC titles). |
| Subscriptions (PS Plus, Game Pass) | Discounted, in a way they rarely are otherwise. The cheapest window of the year for a 12-month plan. | Sony's 2025 promotion offered up to 33% off a 12-month PlayStation Plus membership. Microsoft ran a 14-days-for-$1 Game Pass trial. |
| Console hardware & bundles | Current-generation consoles: sometimes. The bundle is the discount. | Sony's 2025 event advertised $100 off PS5 and PS5 Pro consoles in select regions. Nintendo's Switch 2 stayed at its $449.99 suggested retail price; the value was in the Mario Kart World bundle and $20 off Samsung microSD Express cards. |
| Brand-new fall releases | Rarely. A token trim at most. | The pattern every year: a game released that autumn holds close to its launch price through the holidays. See the skip pick below. |
| Nintendo first-party games (digital) | Modestly, and only in this window. One of the two times a year they move at all. | Cyber Deals 2025 is the reference; outside it, Nintendo's own catalog holds price. Our Nintendo sale frequency guide has the long view. |
| Gift cards & store credit | Rarely, and only via retailer promotions. The card itself is the same price all year. | No store discounted its own credit in the 2025 announcements we cite. Buy a card whenever you need one; there is nothing to wait for. |
| Steam / PC games | Not in this window any more. The Steam Autumn Sale moved to early October in 2025. | Valve's published calendar has the Autumn Sale on Oct 1 – 8, 2026 and the Winter Sale from Dec 17. See Steam Autumn Sale dates. |
Buy now, or wait for November?
The short version: wait on gear, buy the games.Here's the reasoning per product class, written for someone reading this in September or October.
| If you're buying… | Our call | Why |
|---|
| A controller or headset | Wait (unless yours is broken) | Accessories are the most reliably discounted class in this window. If the one you want is a budget pick, the saving is a few dollars; if it's a first-party pad, it can be meaningful. Our picks: the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C and the Cloud Stinger 2. |
| A budget game that's already cheap | Buy now | Games like Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight or a PlayStation Hits disc are already at or near their floor. A Black Friday cut on a $15 game is a couple of dollars, and the pre-holiday stock squeeze on physical copies is real. The live price on each pick below is the check. |
| Last year's big release | Wait | This is the class Black Friday is genuinely for: acclaimed games one to two years old hit their real historical lows here. Wishlist it, note its previous low, and judge the November price against that number — our guide on tracking game prices shows how. |
| A Nintendo first-party game | Wait for Cyber Deals | Nintendo rarely discounts its own games, and the late-November window is one of the few times it does. In 2025 the physical deals opened November 23. If you see a first-party title genuinely cut in that window, take it — a deeper one isn't coming. |
| A 12-month PS Plus or Game Pass plan | Wait | Subscriptions are discounted in only a couple of windows a year — this one, and Sony's Days of Play in late spring. If your renewal is anywhere near November, let it lapse and re-buy in the sale. Our PS Plus and Game Pass pages cover whether you want one at all. |
| A brand-new fall release | Wait — but past November | It won't meaningfully drop on Black Friday. On the usual curve the first real cut arrives around three months after launch and the floor a year or two later. See when games go on sale. |
| A Steam / PC game | Buy in October, or wait for December | The Autumn Sale runs Oct 1 – 8, 2026, and the Winter Sale opens Dec 17. There is no Steam Black Friday any more; the two windows either side of it are the plan. |
| A gift card | Buy whenever | Store credit isn't discounted by the stores. A card bought now is worth exactly as much in the sale — which is the point: it's the currency for it. |
The store windows: 2025 as announced, 2026 as expected
Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft don't publish their holiday sale dates in advance, so the only honest thing to show for 2026 is the pattern from 2025 — and to be clear that it's a pattern. The table below renders from the same calendar as our master game sale calendar, so when a 2026 date is announced it updates here on the same day.
| Store | 2025 holiday window (as announced) | What it tells you |
|---|
| PlayStation Store | PlayStation Black Friday 2025: Nov 21 – Dec 1, 2025 | Ran well past Black Friday itself and covered PS Plus memberships as well as games — the cheapest window of the year for a 12-month subscription. |
| Nintendo eShop | Cyber Deals 2025: Nov 20 – Dec 3, 2025 | Nintendo's own Black Friday / Cyber Monday eShop event, and one of only two windows a year where first-party games move at all. |
| Xbox / Microsoft Store | Black Friday with Xbox: Nov 20 – Dec 3, 2025 | Microsoft's announcement put "over 2,000" games on sale at up to 75% off (up to 85% on select PC titles) and included accessories. |
| Steam | No Black Friday event — the Autumn Sale moved to early October in 2025 | Steam's next sitewide sale after October is the Winter Sale in mid-December. PC buyers no longer get a Steam-side Black Friday. |
| Store | 2026 — expected (not announced) | Basis |
|---|
| Nintendo eShop | Cyber Deals 2026: The fortnight around US Thanksgiving — roughly the third week of November into the first days of December. | Cyber Deals 2025 ran Nov 20 – Dec 3. Thanksgiving 2026 falls on November 26, so expect a very similar window. |
| PlayStation Store | PlayStation Black Friday 2026: From roughly a week before Black Friday (November 27, 2026) into the first days of December. | The 2025 promotion ran Nov 21 – Dec 1, opening the Friday before Black Friday week and closing after Cyber Monday. |
| Xbox / Microsoft Store | Black Friday with Xbox 2026: the week before Thanksgiving into the first days of December. | The 2025 event ran Nov 20 – Dec 3. Microsoft does not publish the dates ahead of time. |
Calendar last reconciled against the stores' own announcements on 2026-09-03. Expected rows are pattern-derived from the real 2025 dates — they are not announcements, and we replace them with confirmed dates the moment each store publishes.
Our current top picks, priced live
These are the games and gear this site already rates highest for value — the picks we would tell you to buy on any given day — with today's Amazon price on each. In November this is the list we check first, and the deals that meet our bar get posted above. Two things to know: the accessories on this list are the ones most likely to move in the window, and the budget games are already so close to their floor that waiting on them saves almost nothing.
How we'll judge a deal when we post it here
The same way we judge every price on this site. A Black Friday deal earns a spot on this page only if the price is low relative to that game's ownhistory — not relative to a launch price nobody has paid in a year, and not because a banner says "doorbuster". Our walkthrough on spotting a fake game discount is the checklist; the short version is that a strikethrough is a claim, and the price history is the evidence.
What to do between now and November
- Decide what you actually want. The people who overspend on Black Friday are the ones choosing while the timer runs. Our best games under $20 and under $30 lists are a seed wishlist of proven titles; the gift guides cover buying for someone else.
- Buy the cheap games now.Anything already near its floor — the budget picks above — gains nothing from waiting and risks the pre-holiday stock squeeze on physical copies.
- Hold the gear. Controllers, headsets and subscriptions are the classes this window is genuinely good for.
- Note each wishlist game's previous low.One number per game turns "is this good?" into a yes or no on the day.
- Come back here. When the stores announce their 2026 windows, and again when the deals go live, this is the page we update.
PC buyers: your window already moved
For years the Steam Autumn Sale sat in Thanksgiving week and gave PC players a Black Friday of their own. Valve moved it to early October in 2025 and has published Oct 1 – 8 for 2026, with the Winter Sale opening December 17. If you play on PC, Black Friday is now a hardware-and-accessories event for you, and the game sales are the two bookends either side of it. The full picture is on the Steam sale schedule.
The other pages that matter for this window
Black Friday game deals: how to planis the evergreen strategy guide — how to read a strikethrough, how to build a wishlist, why older games win. This page is its live counterpart. For the individual stores, see Nintendo eShop sale dates, the PlayStation Store sale schedule and the Xbox sale schedule. For the week-to-week deals outside the holiday window, the deals hub is always live.
