Black Friday 2026 for Gamers: When Sales Start and How Not to Get Fooled

Black Friday 2026 falls on Friday, November 27, and Cyber Monday on November 30. Game stores rarely stick to a single day, though. Here you’ll find when PlayStation Store, Epic, Xbox, Nintendo and Steam run their sales, what’s worth waiting for on consoles and gaming hardware, and how to tell a real discount from a fake one. We keep this article updated as stores announce their sales.

When Is Black Friday 2026 and When Do Game Stores Start Their Sales

Black Friday is one day, but most stores stretch it into one or two weeks of deals. As of November 2, 2026, none of the big digital stores has announced its dates for this year. To give you an idea of when sales usually kick off, we’ve added last year’s dates wherever we could confirm them.

Store	Black Friday 2026	Last year (2025)
PlayStation Store	not announced yet	sale started November 21, 2025
Epic Games Store	not announced yet	November 18 – December 2, 2025
Microsoft Store / Xbox	not announced yet	no confirmed dates
Nintendo eShop	not announced yet	European sale ended November 30, 2025
Steam	no big sale in November	Autumn Sale 2026 ran October 1–8

Last year’s pattern is clear: digital stores started about a week before Black Friday. Start checking them in the third week of November. As soon as a store confirms this year’s dates, we’ll add them to the table.

Games: Digital or Physical

For games you’ve got two routes on Black Friday. Digital stores discount whole catalogues at once and the game lands in your library right away. Physical copies for PS5, Xbox or Switch are sold by regular retailers, and their prices move independently of PlayStation Store or the eShop. You can resell a disc once you’re done with it, a digital copy you can’t. If you only want to play through a game and move on, compare both prices, as the gap depends on the game.

Wherever you shop, make a list first. Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox and the eShop all let you add games to a wishlist, and the store tells you when they go on sale. That saves you scrolling through hundreds of deals you don’t care about.

Steam: No Big Sale in November

If you’re waiting for a Steam Black Friday sale, this year you’ll be disappointed. Steam held its autumn sale in early October: the Steam Autumn Sale 2026 ran from October 1 to 8, 2026. The next big one is the Winter Sale, from December 17, 2026 to January 4, 2027. In between, there’s no store-wide November sale on Steam’s calendar.

You’ll still see discounts on Steam around Black Friday. Individual publishers run their own sales, which tend to be smaller and cover only their games. If you’ve got your eye on something and you’re not in a hurry, the Winter Sale is the safer bet. All Steam sale dates are in our Steam sale calendar. And if a sale purchase doesn’t work out, you can get your money back, see our guide on how to refund a game on Steam.

PlayStation Store, Epic and Microsoft Store

PlayStation Store started its Black Friday sale on November 21 last year. Current deals are on the PlayStation deals and events page. If you’re shopping for PS5 games, compare the editions too. Sometimes the gap between the standard and a pricier edition shrinks during a sale.

Epic Games Store ran Black Friday and Cyber Monday as a single sale last year, from November 18 to December 2, 2025. On top of the discounts, the weekly free games keep coming and you can claim them without paying anything. The store is at store.epicgames.com.

Microsoft Store and Xbox discount games for both Xbox and PC. You’ll find current deals on the Xbox game deals page. Before buying an Xbox game, check whether it’s in Game Pass. If you’re already subscribed, playing it through the subscription may work out cheaper.

PS Plus and Game Pass Subscriptions

With subscriptions, first check which tier you’re buying. Both PS Plus and Game Pass have several tiers, and a deal may not cover the one you want. Then look at how long you’re buying for and what that works out to per month. And make sure the offer applies to existing subscribers, not just new ones.

Sony and Microsoft haven’t announced any subscription deals for this year yet. We’ll add them once they do. What each tier includes and costs is in our Game Pass vs PS Plus vs GeForce NOW comparison.

Consoles (PS5, Switch 2, Xbox, Steam Deck): What’s Worth Waiting For

Console deals are the most visible part of Black Friday and also the most misleading. Before you buy, go through this:

• Bundle or console only. Retailers love selling a PS5 or Switch 2 in a bundle with a game. Work out what the console and the game would cost separately. A bundle only pays off if you actually want that game.
• Which model. With PS5, check whether you’re getting the disc version or the Digital Edition, and whether it’s a PS5 or a PS5 Pro. With Xbox, Series S and Series X are very different machines. A discount on the cheaper model can look tempting and still not be enough for you.
• Nintendo Switch 2 vs. the original Switch. Switch 2 and the original Switch (including the OLED model) are different consoles. Listings mix them up, so check the exact name. What Switch 2 can do is covered in our article on Nintendo Switch 2 specs.
• Steam Deck. Steam has no big sale in November, so waiting for Black Friday just for a Steam Deck may not make sense. Keep an eye on the Steam Deck page directly on Steam.
• Controllers and accessories. A second controller or a charging station goes on sale more often than the console itself. If you already own the console, that’s probably where you’ll save.

Nobody has officially announced console prices for Black Friday 2026 yet. Once Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo confirm their deals, we’ll add them.

Gaming Hardware: Laptop, PC, Graphics Card, Monitor, Accessories

Gaming hardware gets the most Black Friday deals and leaves the most room for mistakes. A percentage off tells you nothing if you don’t know what you’re buying.

Gaming Laptop

Focus on the graphics card and how much power the manufacturer lets it draw in that laptop. The same GPU can be noticeably slower in a thin laptop than in a beefier one. Check the cooling, the amount of RAM and whether you can upgrade it later. Watch out for older models that get marked up and then “discounted” to a price they already had before.

Gaming PC and Graphics Card

With prebuilt PCs and GPUs, watch the generation. Black Friday is when older graphics cards and CPUs get cleared out, and their sale price isn’t always better than a newer generation at full price. Compare performance in benchmarks, not just the name and the discount. With prebuilt PCs, go through the full parts list: a cheaper power supply or slow storage lowers the price, but also the lifespan and performance.

Monitor

For a gaming monitor, resolution, refresh rate and panel type are what matter. Pick based on what you play and on what hardware. Competitive shooters benefit from a higher refresh rate, slower games with great visuals from a higher resolution. Make sure your GPU or console can actually drive that resolution and refresh rate, or you’re paying for specs you won’t use.

Accessories

Headsets, keyboards, mice and gaming chairs are on sale almost everywhere on Black Friday. This is where it pays most to pick a specific model in advance and track only its price. Random “great deals” often turn out to be an older model or a cheaper variant with the same name.

How to Spot a Fake Discount

If you shop in the EU, you’re protected by a rule from the Omnibus Directive, which added Article 6a to the Price Indication Directive (98/6/EC). When a store announces a price reduction, it has to show the lowest price it charged in at least the 30 days before the discount. In 2024 the Court of Justice of the EU confirmed that the percentage off has to be calculated from that lowest price. So a store can’t raise the price right before Black Friday and then “discount” it back down.

The rule helps, but it doesn’t solve everything. So:

• Check the price history. Price comparison sites show how a price has moved over the past months. You’ll see whether the “Black Friday price” is really the lowest, or the same as in summer.
• Don’t trust the struck-through price. A crossed-out “original” price or a “recommended retail price” isn’t necessarily what the product actually sold for.
• Compare several stores. The same product is often cheaper elsewhere even without a sale.
• Use wishlists for digital games. The store alerts you to a discount, and over time you’ll learn whether a game has been cheaper before.

Black Friday at GamersTogether

We’ve got our own Black Friday deal too. With the discount code BlackFriday you get a yearly GamersTogether membership for CZK 1,592 instead of CZK 1,790, so you save CZK 198. Payments are in Czech crowns. The code is valid from now until November 30, 2026, 23:59 (Prague time).

How to use it:

1. Sign in on the website, or create an account.
2. In your account, open Můj účet → Předplatné (My account → Membership). Account management is in Czech for now.
3. For the yearly membership, enter the code BlackFriday in the “Slevový kód” (discount code) field and pay by card.

Paying by QR bank transfer? Then you don’t need to enter anything. The deal price of CZK 1,592 applies automatically as long as you send the transfer during the promotion.

What membership gets you:

• You support the website and the GamersTogether community.
• Up to 10% off merch in our shop.
• Loyalty points you can spend in the loyalty shop on game keys, gift cards and other rewards.
• Mini-games and the wheel of fortune, which earn you extra points.

Everything about membership is on the GamersTogether membership page.

We share the deals we find throughout November on Discord. If you come across a good one yourself, post it there too: GamersTogether Discord.

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