5 Predictions for 2026 Holiday Shopping

U.S. and global holiday ecommerce sales should grow year over year in 2026, shaped by AI referrals, flexible payments, cross-border orders, and Amazon’s fluctuating marketplace share.

Since 2013, I have predicted ecommerce trends and sales for the coming holiday season. What follows are my five ecommerce predictions for 2026.

Ecommerce Grows 8%

U.S. online holiday sales from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31 will increase approximately 8% over the same period last year.

Adobe reported that consumers spent $257.8 billion online with U.S. merchants during the 2025 holiday season, up 6.8%. More recently, ecommerce purchases from U.S. sellers during the four-day June 2026 Prime Day event increased 9.3%.

The National Retail Federation has not yet published its 2026 holiday forecast, but it expects full-year retail sales (online and brick-and-mortar) to increase 4.4%. That compares with average annual growth of 3.6% during the past 10 years, excluding the pandemic period.

Thus, if retail overall improves, so should ecommerce. My 8% forecast puts holiday ecommerce growth above last year’s performance and above NRF’s full-year retail prediction.

Female shopping on a laptop in front of a Christmas tree.

The Christmas season remains important for online merchants.

AI Converts Better

Shoppers referred from generative AI tools will convert at least 25% better than those arriving from non-AI channels during the 2026 peak shopping season.

In a sense, this already happened. Last Christmas, Adobe reported that AI-referred shoppers converted 31% better than traffic from other sources. On Thanksgiving Day, the advantage reached 54%, while Black Friday AI referrals converted 38% better.

The gap has continued in 2026. AI-referred shoppers converted 40% better than non-AI channels during the June Prime Day event, even as traffic from AI tools increased year over year.

The caveat is that volume is small. In the context of the total ecommerce market, AI-driven site visits are a tiny trickle.

Yet as more shoppers use Gemini, ChatGPT, and similar tools, conversion rates should move toward what is normal in traditional search and other channels.

Thus even as it reaches a broader group of consumers this holiday season, expect AI to outperform other channels in terms of conversion rates.

BNPL Tops $22 Billion

Buy-now, pay-later services will finance more than $22 billion in U.S. online purchases from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31.

Installments are appealing during the Christmas season, when shoppers want to give generously without putting the entire cost of those gifts into a single month’s budget or rack up high interest rates on a credit card.

Expect that appeal to push 2026 holiday BNPL U.S. spending past $22 billion for the first time, making postponed payments increasingly common.

International Ecommerce Grows

Cross-border purchases will account for roughly 20% of worldwide Black Friday-Cyber Monday ecommerce spending in 2026.

International shopping is already commonplace. DHL’s 2026 E-Commerce Trends Report found that 70% of global online shoppers buy from sellers in other countries, up from 60% a year earlier, and 45% make cross-border purchases more than once a month.

China merchants dominate those sales. Some 59% of international shoppers buy from Chinese sellers, nearly twice the 32% who buy from U.S. sellers. Lower prices are the top reason shoppers give for buying abroad. Chinese discount marketplaces are widespread too, with 41% of shoppers using Temu, 32% Shein, and 22% Alibaba or AliExpress.

Those buying habits should carry into holiday shopping, pushing international purchases to roughly one in every five dollars spent online worldwide during Black Friday-Cyber Monday.

Amazon Sellers Slip

Third-party sellers will account for 60% or less of Amazon’s worldwide units sold during the fourth quarter of 2026.

Marketplace sellers have recently lost a little ground to Amazon’s own retail operation. Third-party sellers accounted for 62% of worldwide units sold in Q4 2024 and 61% in Q4 2025. The share fell to 60% in Q1 2026 before returning to 61% in the second quarter.

Expect Amazon’s own retail business to gain enough share during the fourth quarter to hold third-party sellers to 60% or less of paid units.

Last Year’s Predictions

My five predictions last year included rapid fulfillment, Canadian cross-border purchases, small-business growth, AI shopping, and consumer confidence.

Near-instant gratification — not enough data. I predicted shoppers would receive or pick up at least 35% of November and December ecommerce orders within 24 hours. Unfortunately, I cannot prove it.

I had expected Comscore’s annual State of Digital Commerce Report to provide fulfillment-speed data, but the consultancy did not publish a 2025 edition.

Canadian-American relations — not clear. I predicted at least 55% of Canadian shoppers would make a holiday purchase from a U.S. ecommerce store.

Canada and the U.S. remain major trading partners, although tariff disputes soured Canadian attitudes toward American companies and products. I found no transaction data showing whether 55% of Canadians actually bought from U.S. ecommerce sellers.

Small-business growth — not enough data. I predicted smaller U.S. online merchants would grow holiday revenue approximately 10% in 2025 to roughly $15.5 billion. I could not find a post-holiday dataset isolating that group.

AI shopping at 50% — correct. I predicted at least half of North American shoppers would use AI for holiday shopping and that AI product discovery would become the top ecommerce traffic source.

Surveys differed on adoption, with Synchrony, the financial services provider, putting U.S. usage at 56% and Epsilon, the marketing and data firm, at 29%.

Consumer confidence — correct. Epsilon found average holiday spending reached $1,190, 52% above consumers’ preseason expectations, while Adobe reported record U.S. online sales of $257.8 billion, up 6.8%.

Overall since 2013, my predictions have been: