Black Friday 2026 on Amazon in Europe: Ads Launch a Week Early

Black Friday 2026 falls on November 27. On Amazon in Europe, the competition for that week is huge: on a single day in October, 91.5 million ads ran across the nine EU stores. If you launch your campaigns in Black Friday week, though, you’re late. In Europe’s largest store, amazon.de, most new Black Friday ads in 2025 launched a full week before the event.

The numbers come from our Amazon Ads Report EU 2026, based on Amazon’s public ad archive for its EU stores.

Where the competition is

amazon.de carries 35% of all running ads in the EU stores. France, Italy and Spain together carry another half: on October 26, 2026, 45.8 million ads ran there, compared with 31.8 million on amazon.de. If you sell in several EU marketplaces, your Black Friday competition is spread across all of them, and so is your budget.

When Black Friday ads launch

For the launch timing we counted every day for a full year how many ads start on amazon.de. On a normal day it’s around 786,000. The big shopping events bring clear peaks, but not all at the same time.

Event	When do the new ads arrive?	Peak day	vs. base
Black Friday (Nov 28, 2025)	one week before, Nov 19–21	1.09m (Nov 20)	+50%
Prime Day (Jun 23–26, 2026)	on the first day, while 1.39m ads end	1.36m (Jun 23)	+66%
Prime Big Deal Days (Oct 6–7, 2026)	on the first day, much weaker	0.92m (Oct 6)	+18%

On Prime Day, advertisers swap their campaigns on the day itself: 1.36 million ads started on the first day while 1.39 million ended. Black Friday worked differently. The peak came on November 20, eight days before the event, with 50% more new ads than on a normal day. Hardly any ads ended over the Black Friday weekend, so the campaigns kept running past the event.

Whether France, Italy and Spain follow the same rhythm, we don’t know yet. We’re measuring Black Friday 2026 live across the EU stores. Until then, amazon.de is the best signal we have: it’s the largest store, with 35% of all running ads in the EU.

What this means for Black Friday 2026

If the pattern repeats, most competitors on amazon.de will launch their Black Friday ads around November 18–20, 2026. From then on, bids and visibility shift, a full week before the event. If you start on November 26, you enter a market where everyone else has been running for days.

For your planning:

• Have new campaigns ready by around November 18, so they’re live before the peak. Tuesday is the strongest launch day on amazon.de, and November 17, 2026 is a Tuesday.
• Budget per marketplace for the whole week, not just Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you run out of budget in France or Italy by November 20, you’re missing on the days competitors advertise most.
• Check creatives before launch, especially for France. amazon.fr restricts ads 2.7 times as often as amazon.de, and a restricted ad in Black Friday week is a lost week.
• Check your stock. Ads for products that sell out before the event cost money and bring nothing. FBA inbound deadlines get tight before Black Friday.

For more dates in the year, see our overview of Amazon events.

Black Friday budgets without the click marathon

The race starts around November 18. For many teams that means touching dozens of campaigns in the same week, in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, each with its own daily budget and dates. In the Amazon Ads console, that’s one campaign after another.

In the Advertising area of AMALYTIX, the campaigns of your connected marketplaces sit in one table with budget, spend, sales and ACoS. Select the campaigns that should get more budget for Black Friday and change daily budgets, status or dates in one pass. The changes wait in Transactions until you’ve reviewed them and send them to Amazon. Which campaigns get how much is still your call.

More numbers on Amazon advertising in Europe

Black Friday timing is one of many analyses from Amazon’s ad archive. The free report also covers ad density in all nine EU stores, who pays for the ads, which agencies steer the most reach, who advertises with other brands’ names and how Amazon promotes its own brands.

Frequently asked questions about Black Friday 2026 on Amazon

When is Black Friday 2026?

Black Friday is on Friday, November 27, 2026. Cyber Monday follows on November 30.

When should I launch my Black Friday campaigns on Amazon?

Before Black Friday 2025, most new ads on amazon.de launched on November 19–21, a week before the event. For 2026, new campaigns should be live by around November 18–20.

Does this apply to France, Italy and Spain too?

We measured the daily launches on amazon.de, Europe’s largest Amazon store. Whether the other EU stores follow the same rhythm is part of our live measurement of Black Friday 2026. Until then, planning with the amazon.de timing is the safer choice.

Where do the numbers come from?

From Amazon’s public ad archive, which Amazon has to keep for its nine EU stores under the Digital Services Act. It contains no budgets or sales.