Presidents Day Sales Statistics in US 2026 | Key Facts

Presidents Day Sales in the US 2026

Presidents Day weekend has quietly grown into one of the most commercially significant retail events in the American calendar. Falling on the third Monday of February — February 16, 2026 this year — the holiday has long since evolved beyond its patriotic origins into a full-scale consumer spending bonanza. Retailers across the country, from national chains like Best Buy, Walmart, and Amazon to specialty home and mattress brands, kick off their promotions days before the actual holiday, stretching what was once a single-day observance into a multi-day shopping window. Industry estimates cited by Forbes Personal Shopper put 2025 Presidents Day weekend retail spending at approximately $22 billion, a figure that reinforced the holiday’s standing as the first major retail event of Q1. The 2026 edition is already building on that momentum, with retailers unleashing some of the deepest discounts seen outside of Black Friday — in categories ranging from furniture and mattresses to electronics and winter apparel.

What makes the 2026 Presidents Day sales landscape particularly compelling is the convergence of favorable retail conditions and shifting consumer behavior. According to U.S. Census Bureau data released February 10, 2026, total US retail and food services sales for the full twelve months of 2025 rose 3.7 percent from 2024, reflecting a consumer base that remained fundamentally strong despite persistent inflation concerns and interest rate pressures. Nonstore retailers — primarily online sellers — grew 5.3 percent year-over-year through December 2025, a trend that feeds directly into Presidents Day purchasing patterns, where digital channels are expected to account for more than 45 percent of total transactions in 2026. Early industry projections point to a 4 to 6 percent spending increase over the 2025 Presidents Day weekend, making this one of the strongest starts to a retail year in recent memory.

Interesting Facts About Presidents Day Sales in the US 2026

Source: Industry estimates cited by Forbes Personal Shopper, February 2026; U.S. Census Bureau Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey, February 10, 2026; Retail Brew, February 13, 2026

The table above paints a picture of a Presidents Day sales event that has grown well beyond its modest origins. The $22 billion spending figure from 2025 — and the projected 4 to 6 percent jump projected for 2026 — speaks to a sustained pattern of consumer engagement with this particular long weekend. The fact that Congress deliberately engineered Monday federal holidays in 1971 partly to create spending boosts shows just how intertwined commerce and this holiday have always been. What has changed dramatically, however, is the scale and the digital dimension. With over 45 percent of Presidents Day 2026 transactions expected to be completed online, the weekend has transformed from a foot-traffic event at brick-and-mortar stores into an omnichannel retail phenomenon where digital and physical channels compete and overlap simultaneously.

The furniture search data — an 18 percent jump compared to early February 2025 — is telling in another way. It suggests that consumers are moving money away from Q1 travel spending and redirecting it toward home investment, a behavioral shift that has benefited home goods retailers more than almost any other segment. The mattress category remains the perennial star, with Presidents Day long established as the optimal purchase window for sleep products, thanks to brands clearing existing inventory ahead of spring launches. Meanwhile, the emerging BNPL trend and the jump in average order values point to a consumer who is spending more per transaction than last year, even if they are using financing tools to spread the cost — a nuance that retailers and credit analysts alike will be watching carefully throughout the first quarter of 2026.

Overall US Retail Sales Context in the US 2026

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey, Release CB26-26, February 10, 2026 (Project No. P-7504206, Approval CBDRB-FY26-003); National Retail Federation (NRF) CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor, January 12, 2026

The broader retail environment feeding into the 2026 Presidents Day sales period is one of measured strength. The U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent advance estimate, released February 10, 2026, confirmed that US retail and food services sales for December 2025 reached $735.0 billion — essentially flat from November’s revised figure but up 2.4 percent from December 2024. The fact that the full year 2025 posted 3.7 percent growth over 2024 matters enormously as context for Presidents Day 2026: it tells us that consumers entered February 2026 on the back of a broadly healthy retail environment, even if individual spending trajectories varied widely by income bracket. Nonstore retailers — the category that encompasses e-commerce — grew at 5.3 percent year-over-year through December 2025, confirming the ongoing structural shift toward digital purchasing that underpins the high online transaction share forecast for Presidents Day weekend 2026.

The NRF’s confirmation that 2025 holiday season sales grew 4.1 percent, landing squarely within the federation’s forecast range of 3.7 to 4.2 percent and pushing total holiday spending just over the $1 trillion mark for the first time, set a buoyant tone for the start of 2026. That milestone mattered for Presidents Day planning: retailers who sold through holiday inventory efficiently entered Q1 with leaner stock positions and sharper pricing strategies. For Presidents Day 2026, this translated into the kind of competitive pricing wars — particularly between Amazon, Walmart, and Target — that retail analysts identified as one of the three primary drivers of unusually deep discounts this February, alongside high carryover inventory from late 2025 and robust early online search demand.

E-Commerce & Online Shopping Statistics in the US 2026

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, Q3 2025 (Project No. P-7504206, Approval CBDRB-FY26-003); U.S. Census Bureau Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey, February 10, 2026; NRF Holiday Forecast 2025

E-commerce has become the defining structural force behind Presidents Day sales statistics in the US 2026, and the data bears that out with clarity. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Retail E-Commerce report — the most authoritative measure of online retail in the country — confirmed that US retail e-commerce sales reached $310.3 billion in Q3 2025, representing 16.4 percent of total retail sales for the quarter. That 5.1 percent year-over-year growth rate for Q3 2025 e-commerce, outpacing the 4.1 percent growth for total retail sales in the same period, underlines a consistent pattern: digital retail is growing faster than its physical counterpart, and that gap is widening. Heading into the Presidents Day 2026 weekend, retail data firms projected that more than 45 percent of total Presidents Day transactions would take place online — a figure that, if confirmed, would represent a remarkable departure from even five years ago when in-store shopping still dominated the holiday weekend.

The NRF’s holiday season data adds important context. The federation projected online and non-store sales to grow between 8 and 9 percent during the 2025 holiday season, reaching $312.2 billion to $315 billion — a rate more than double the overall retail growth rate for the same period. When consumers arrive at Presidents Day weekend already habituated to digital purchasing from the holiday season, the transition is seamless. Retailers have responded by investing heavily in machine learning-based dynamic pricing algorithms that adjust prices in real time based on inventory levels, competitor pricing, and customer demand signals — a technological arms race that is simultaneously driving down prices for consumers and compressing margins for retailers. The rise of mobile shopping — with measurably higher traffic recorded in early February 2026 compared to the same period a year prior — is a further dimension of this digital shift that Presidents Day 2026 is crystallizing in real time.

Top Retail Categories & Discount Ranges in the US 2026

Source: NBC Select Presidents Day Deals Guide (updated February 13, 2026); Good Morning America Presidents Day 2026 Deals Roundup; Forbes Personal Shopper, February 2026; Best Buy Presidents Day Sale, launched February 9, 2026

The product category breakdown for Presidents Day 2026 reveals a retail event that has evolved far beyond its historical association with just mattresses and furniture — though those two categories remain the undisputed anchors. Mattress discounts of up to 50 percent reflect a deliberate strategy by brands to use the Presidents Day window as their primary annual sales reset, clearing memory foam and hybrid inventory before spring launches introduce new models. Retail insights expert Stephanie Carls called Presidents Day “one of the strongest sales moments of the year” for the mattress category, and the aggressive pricing from brands like Nectar — which launched its deals on February 8, 2026, a full eight days before the actual holiday — confirms that assessment. The furniture segment, where discounts reached as high as 70 percent at Wayfair and Ashley Furniture, benefited directly from the consumer behavioral shift documented in early February 2026 data: furniture-related online searches surged nearly 18 percent compared to early February 2025, as households opted to invest in home upgrades rather than Q1 travel.

What is arguably more striking in 2026 is the breadth of categories now captured by Presidents Day promotional activity. Winter apparel discounts of up to 75 percent — levels historically associated with Black Friday, not mid-February — reflect the intensity of retailer competition and the urgency to clear seasonal inventory. TVs dropping to as low as $59.99 at Best Buy, laptops starting at $159.99, and video game discounts of up to 50 percent point to a tech sector fully committed to Presidents Day as a meaningful sales event. The baby and kids category joining the promotional mix — with Target and Babylist offering up to 40 percent off — further widens the consumer demographic engaged with the weekend, ensuring that Presidents Day 2026 appeals to households at virtually every life stage and spending priority.

US Consumer Spending Trends & Behavior in the US 2026

Source: Moody’s Ratings, December 2025; U.S. Census Bureau Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey, February 10, 2026; NRF / Pyxis by Bain & Company / Affinity Solutions spending decile analysis; NRF CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor, January 12, 2026; NRF Valentine’s Day 2026 forecast

The consumer spending picture feeding into Presidents Day 2026 is what analysts describe as “sentimentally weak, fundamentally sound” — a phrase coined by NRF’s leadership to capture the paradox of low University of Michigan Sentiment Index readings coexisting with continued strong actual spending. Moody’s Ratings forecast real consumer spending growth of approximately 1.5 percent for 2026 — a meaningful deceleration from 2025 — attributing it to softening labor markets, cooling wage gains, and affordability pressures. However, that broad macro caution does not uniformly suppress holiday-specific spending. NRF’s spending decile analysis, conducted with Pyxis by Bain & Company and Affinity Solutions using real credit and debit card data, revealed that the top 20 percent of consumers accounted for more than 60 percent of total discretionary spending in 2025, even as the bottom seven income deciles saw negative year-over-year discretionary growth. This income divergence is critical context for Presidents Day 2026: the high-ticket items dominating the weekend — mattresses at $1,000+, appliances with $1,100-$1,500 savings — are primarily accessible to the segment of the population still spending robustly.

The rise of BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) observed during Presidents Day 2026 is a direct response to this affordability tension. It allows consumers in middle-income brackets to participate in higher-average-order-value purchases without immediate full payment, which helps explain why average order values for Presidents Day 2026 are tracking higher than 2025 even as broader real spending growth forecasts moderate. The NRF’s recording of Valentine’s Day 2026 consumer spending expectations at a record $29.1 billion — surpassing the prior record of $27.5 billion from 2025 — confirms that consumers are willing to spend significantly in the period immediately preceding Presidents Day, lending further momentum to the full February retail cycle and reinforcing the view that Presidents Day 2026 will be, in aggregate, the strongest edition of this particular shopping event on record.

Presidents Day Sales by Key Retailers in the US 2026

Source: NBC Select Presidents Day 2026 Guide (updated February 13, 2026); Good Morning America Presidents Day 2026 Deals (February 14, 2026); Best Buy 2026 Presidents Day Sale announcement; Retail Brew, February 13, 2026

Looking at the Presidents Day 2026 retail landscape retailer by retailer, the competitive intensity is immediately apparent. Best Buy’s decision to launch its Presidents Day sale on February 9 — a full week before the actual holiday — set the tone for an event that is no longer confined to a long weekend but has expanded into a ten-day promotional window. The retailer’s offer of savings on Apple Watch Ultra 2 ($250 off), AirPods Pro 3 (down to $209), select Samsung refrigerators (up to $1,500 off), and washers and dryers (up to $1,100 off) represents a level of discount depth that would have been extraordinary outside of Black Friday just a few years ago. Walmart’s headline discount of up to 80 percent on select cross-category items stands as the single highest discount ceiling among major retailers, though these likely represent end-of-season clearance items rather than mainstream inventory.

What is noteworthy from a market structure perspective is how the appliance category has become a battleground for multiple major retailers simultaneously. Best Buy, Samsung’s own store, Home Depot, and Amazon were all running competing appliance promotions during Presidents Day weekend 2026, creating exactly the kind of pricing war that retail analysts identified as a key driver of unusually deep markdowns. For the consumer, this translates into genuinely exceptional value, particularly in the large appliance segment where energy-efficient models from Samsung and LG — already in strong structural demand due to rising environmental awareness and the appeal of long-term energy cost savings — were available at the steepest discounts on record for this particular holiday window. Retailers who timed their inventory buildup correctly in late 2025 were well positioned to monetize that stock efficiently during Presidents Day 2026.

Historical Presidents Day Sales Growth Trend in the US 2026

Source: Industry estimates cited by Forbes Personal Shopper (2025 and 2026 figures); U.S. Census Bureau Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey, February 10, 2026 (providing macro context); Retail Brew, February 13, 2026; Meyka.com Presidents Day Sales 2026 analysis

The historical Presidents Day sales growth trajectory shown in the table illustrates a consistent upward trend that, while temporarily interrupted by the 2021 pandemic disruption, has resumed with striking durability. From an estimated $15 billion baseline in 2020 to the confirmed $22 billion in 2025 and a projected $22.9 billion to $23.3 billion in 2026, the compound growth represents a fundamental repositioning of this holiday in the retail calendar. The acceleration between 2022 and 2024 — driven largely by e-commerce maturation, the mainstreaming of BNPL financing, and the aggressive extension of promotional windows by major retailers — mirrors broader patterns in the US retail sector documented by the U.S. Census Bureau, which recorded consistent nonstore retailer outperformance throughout this period.

The 2026 projected growth rate of 4 to 6 percent, while lower than the double-digit recovery rates of 2022–2023, is arguably more sustainable and structurally meaningful. It reflects a maturing market rather than a recovering one — a Presidents Day sales event that has found its equilibrium as the definitive first-quarter retail milestone. The broadening of participating categories, the deepening penetration of online channels now projected to handle over 45 percent of transactions, and the emergence of genuinely competitive multi-retailer promotional activity during the ten-day window preceding the holiday all point to a retail event that is still growing, still evolving, and increasingly important as a predictor of first-quarter consumer spending trends for the year ahead.

Presidents Day Sales & US Employment Context in the US 2026

Source: National Retail Federation (NRF); Gartner 2026 retail AI forecast; IDC AI spending report; Capital One Shopping H1 2025 mall traffic report; Challenger & Gray, October 2025

The broader employment and structural context for US retail in 2026 frames Presidents Day not merely as a shopping event but as a window into the health of an industry that employs over 55 million Americans and contributes $5.3 trillion annually to GDP, according to the National Retail Federation. The somewhat subdued holiday seasonal hiring figure — 265,000 to 365,000 workers for the 2025 season, flagged by NRF as potentially the lowest in more than 15 years — reflected a cautious labor posture among retailers navigating thin margins, but it did not translate into reduced promotional intensity for key calendar events like Presidents Day. In fact, the opposite happened: leaner staffing models have pushed retailers toward technology-driven solutions, including machine learning-based dynamic pricing systems, that allow them to manage Presidents Day promotional complexity with fewer human resources than in previous years.

The retail sector’s AI investment trajectory is perhaps the most consequential longer-term force shaping how Presidents Day 2026 is being run operationally. Gartner’s projection that global AI spending will exceed $2 trillion in 2026 — a 36.8 percent increase from $1.48 trillion in 2025 — is not an abstraction for the retail industry; it is already manifesting in the real-time price adjustment algorithms, demand forecasting tools, and personalized promotional targeting systems that major retailers deployed during the Presidents Day 2026 promotional window. Retailers that can harness these tools most effectively are those best positioned to convert the $22.9 billion to $23.3 billion in projected Presidents Day 2026 spending into profitable revenue rather than margin-dilutive volume — a distinction that will likely define the Q1 2026 earnings narrative across the sector.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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