Key takeaways
- Halloween spending in 2026 is projected to reach a record $13.5 billion even as 79% of consumers expect higher prices due to tariffs.
- The holiday no longer belongs to October. Nearly half of shoppers started buying in September or earlier, and consumers who began before mid-August spend 1.7 times more on average than those who wait.
- AI has entered the seasonal shopping journey. Forty-seven percent of Halloween shoppers are using AI tools for brainstorming and product research, and among the earliest, highest-spending shoppers, that figure rises to 32%.
Halloween is becoming less trick and more treat. Once easy to dismiss as a novelty occasion, the holiday has grown into a serious commercial event, and the 2026 numbers make that difficult to ignore. According to NRF’s 2026 Halloween consumer survey, conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics across 7,889 respondents, 74% of Americans plan to celebrate this October. In 2019, before the pandemic reshaped consumption patterns, that figure was 68%. The holiday came back bigger, and the numbers have held.
Almost eight in ten American consumers expect Halloween to cost more this year, with 79% citing tariffs specifically. And yet, Halloween spending in 2026 is projected to reach $13.5 billion, up from last year’s record $13.1 billion. Per person, the expected outlay is $115.14, barely changed from $114.45 in 2025. Despite the widespread expectation of higher prices, consumer appetite for the holiday has not shifted, and that tension between economic caution and uninterrupted spending is what makes this year’s data worth examining.
What Halloween spending looks like in 2026
The $13.5 billion breaks across four categories: costumes at $4.4 billion, decorations at $4.3 billion, candy at $4.1 billion, and greeting cards at $0.8 billion. The greeting card figure is perhaps the most telling of the four: card purchase intent has risen from 38% of shoppers in 2025 to 42% this year, a signal that Halloween is acquiring the kind of deeply ingrained behavior usually associated with Christmas or Valentine’s Day.
A Deloitte survey conducted across 1,500 US households finds that 92% plan to engage in at least one Halloween activity this season, with average household spend at $285 — $219 on retail and $66 on experiences. Seventy-one percent of respondents said they can comfortably afford their planned celebrations, even while acknowledging they expect higher prices.
That expectation of higher prices has changed how people shop. Thirty-four percent plan to buy items they can reuse in future years or repurpose for other occasions, 31% say they will shop around more than usual, and 26% plan to seek out coupons and sales. Halloween remains a spending holiday. The approach to it has simply become more considered.
Halloween is a season now
The most commercially significant shift in Halloween 2026 is actually when consumers are buying. Forty-nine percent of shoppers plan to start, or have already started, their Halloween purchases in September or earlier. A decade ago, that figure was 34%. The holiday has stretched from a concentrated pre-October sprint into a multi-week retail event, driven by something more durable than seasonal enthusiasm.
Among those who shop early, 42% do so because they look forward to fall as a season, and 34% describe Halloween as one of their favorite holidays. A further 23% start early specifically to spread their budget across the month. This is planned, deliberate shopping behavior that has simply found an earlier starting point in the calendar.
The commercial implications are clear in Deloitte’s data. Consumers who began their Halloween shopping before mid-August plan to spend 1.7 times more on average than those who wait. These are the market’s highest-value Halloween shoppers, and by October, most of their purchasing decisions are already made. Activating early means, for retailers, reaching a fundamentally different, higher-spending customer than the one browsing shelves in the final weeks of the month.
Shopping behavior is also changing shape within the holiday itself. Trick-or-treating and pumpkin carving have declined over the past two years, remaining below pre-pandemic levels despite a brief post-lockdown recovery. Families with young children are gravitating toward pumpkin patches, trunk-or-treat events and community celebrations. About a third of these families also plan to visit Halloween-themed stores and seasonal displays as a celebration in its own right. The store is now turning into the destination.
How consumers are spending
Discount stores remain the top destination, with 39% of consumers planning to shop there. Specialty Halloween and costume stores follow at 32%, online at 27%. The figure worth watching is local and small businesses, whose share of Halloween shoppers has nearly doubled since 2016 — from 7% to 13% this year.
AI is now part of how a significant share of consumers shop for Halloween. Forty-seven percent of consumers are using AI platforms and tools to support their Halloween shopping, primarily for brainstorming and idea generation (34%) and product research (32%). Among the earliest, highest-spending shoppers, 32% are incorporating generative AI directly into their purchase decisions. The discovery phase of seasonal shopping is changing, and Halloween spending patterns are beginning to reflect that earlier than most retail categories.
What the numbers mean
Halloween spending has held firm alongside the economic pressure, not despite it. The same consumers bracing for higher prices are projected to spend more in aggregate than any previous year on record. What has changed is the approach to the holiday. Spending that was once last-minute and impulse-driven has become more considered, more planned, and spread across a longer stretch of time.
The consumers driving Halloween 2026 purchases started planning in summer, made most of their decisions before October arrived, and used a growing range of digital tools throughout the process. The commercial window for this holiday opens earlier than the calendar suggests, and the retailers who have positioned themselves accordingly — with the right product mix, in the right channels, before the season peaks — as the data shows, will be reaping the rewards.
