Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday: the full playbook
Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November. The work between now and then needs to happen in the right order. Some tasks depend on work you do earlier. There are 12 decisions to make, and a different page below covers each one.
You have read the lists. What no list tells you is which job quietly depends on another, so the one you left until November turns out to have needed October.
When does Black Friday 2026 land?
Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November, which in 2026 is 26 November. So Black Friday is Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November. Neither date moves, and every date below counts back from them.
The four days are one run, not two events. The weekend between them carries its own traffic, and stock has shifted by Sunday night.
Why does the order matter more than the list?
Some of these tasks depend on other tasks. Search and filters read your product fields. The filters help shoppers find the products you want to sell. The offers sit on the sale page, the rehearsal tests what already exists, and the read-back in January measures what ran.
That is the reason a task list sorted by urgency misleads you: a task that looks safe to leave until November may be needed before you can finish three other tasks.
Two of those tasks are decisions you stop changing rather than things you build. Set your product information first, because filters and badges read it. Then set the rules for your offers, because an offer built before the numbers are final is one nobody has tested at the number it will run at.
Which page decides which part?
Each row names the decision, not the method. Find the decision your store has not settled yet, then open that page.
| What it decides | Where |
|---|---|
| Which week each job belongs to | The eight-week checklist |
| Which products carry a discount | What to put on sale |
| Which product information is frozen, and from when | Catalog prep |
| Which words a shopper types reach something real | Search prep |
| What the sale page contains, and what empties it | The sale collection |
| Which offer wins when two land in one cart | Discounts that combine |
| Which questions a gift shopper can narrow by | The gift guide |
| When the banner starts, and when it stops | Scheduling the banner |
| What gets rehearsed before the day | The run-through |
| What you watch while it runs | Live monitoring |
| Which decisions change between Friday and Monday | Cyber Monday |
| What you read back once it is over | The read-back |
What has to hold across all four days?
Three things run the whole length of the sale rather than belonging to one step. Shoppers should still be able to narrow down the products on the sale page as items sell out. When two offers land in one cart, the discount the shopper ends up with still has to be the one you set. And the banner has to come down on time, without anybody having to remember to take it down.
Sledge is a Shopify app that runs all three from one install. Its filters and merchandising rules read your live stock, so the page still narrows to what is left on Sunday night. The nine offer types combine with other discounts where Shopify's rules allow. Banners and countdowns carry their own end dates, so the sale comes down on schedule.
Plans are chosen by Monthly Revenue Boost, the revenue Sledge is asked to add in a month, from $8,000 on Pro to $300,000 on Ultimate. Catalog size never enters it. Check that ceiling against your busiest month rather than an average one, because November is the month that tests it.
Questions, answered
In what order do the Black Friday jobs depend on each other?
Your product information comes first, because filters, badges and sort rules all read it. Search and filters come next, because that is what narrows the sale page. Offers sit on top of the page, the rehearsal comes after the offers exist, and the read-back closes the run in January. Each step uses the information or settings from the step before it.
Do Black Friday and Cyber Monday need separate plans?
One sale, two sets of decisions. Stock has moved by Sunday night, the offer that carried Friday is not always the one worth carrying Monday, and a Monday end time lands mid working day rather than over a weekend. Treat the four days as one run with a checkpoint on the Sunday.
Which of these decisions can still change once the sale is live?
The ones nothing else was built on top of. An end time, a boosted keyword, the order products appear in: all safe to move. Your product information and your offer rules are not, because other things read them once and kept whatever they said at the time.
How do I know which page to open first?
Work down the twelve decisions on this page and stop at the first one your store has not settled. If your product information is still changing, nothing underneath it is worth building yet. If it is settled but the sale page is thin, that is where this run is actually stuck.
Two dates. Twelve decisions.
On Pro and up, Growth Intelligence reads your own orders and names the next move with a dollar figure on it, so the offer you build in October is the one November was going to reward.
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