Steam Black Friday sale 2026: there isn't one. Buy or wait?
Davit Darchiashvili · Oct 12, 2026
Black Friday falls on 27 November this year, and if you are waiting for a Steam Black Friday sale, there will not be one. Valve's published calendar has no store-wide sale that week. The Autumn Sale, which used to run over Black Friday, moved to the start of October in 2025, and the next big Steam sale is the Winter Sale on 17 December.
That leaves a practical question: is Black Friday still worth anything for PC games, or should you wait three weeks? Last year was the first Black Friday in years without a Steam sale, so we can measure it. We took the price history of the 734 most popular paid games we track, across Steam and the official stores that sell to the US, and compared Black Friday week 2025 with the Winter Sale that followed.
What happened to the Steam Black Friday sale in 2025
It did not disappear completely. Even without a store-wide event, 42% of the popular games we checked were discounted on Steam during Black Friday week 2025. These were publisher sales, run on their own schedule, and where they happened they were not timid: the median cut was 67%. Cyberpunk 2077 was 65% off, Red Dead Redemption 2 75% off.
Compare that with 2024, when the Autumn Sale started on Black Friday week: 90% of the same kind of games were discounted on Steam. So the change is real. More than half of the games that would have been on sale on Steam that week were not.
Cyberpunk 2077 was 65% off on Steam during Black Friday week 2025, without a Steam-wide sale. (Official Steam screenshot)
Where it was cheaper than Steam
The bigger story was off Steam. During Black Friday week 2025, 66% of these games were cheaper at another official store than on Steam. These are authorised sellers, most of which deliver a Steam key. The ones that most often had the lowest price:
| Store | Games where it was cheapest | Share of the games beating Steam |
|---|---|---|
| GameBillet | 181 | 37% |
| GreenManGaming | 78 | 16% |
| Fanatical | 49 | 10% |
| IndieGala Store | 34 | 7% |
| Humble Store | 33 | 7% |
| GOG | 31 | 6% |
| AllYouPlay | 23 | 5% |
Black Friday week 2025 (24 November to 1 December), 734 popular paid games, official stores selling to the US. Price history via IsThereAnyDeal; analysis by Playze.
Examples from that week: Black Myth: Wukong was cheapest at Fanatical, and Fallout 4 at Green Man Gaming. The pattern is not new. These stores discount on their own calendar, and Black Friday is one of their biggest weeks. Our study of discounts across stores found that some of them show a discount on almost everything, all the time, so the useful comparison is always the final price.
Key marketplaces were often cheaper again, as they are most weeks of the year. That is a different kind of purchase: a resold key rather than a sale from an authorised store, with different protection if something goes wrong. If you go that way, our guide to whether key shops are safe lists what to check first. The figures in this article cover official stores only, so they understate how low the cheapest price on Black Friday really was.
Black Myth: Wukong was cheaper at Fanatical than on Steam during Black Friday week 2025. (Official Steam screenshot)
Black Myth: Wukong, one of the games cheaper away from Steam last Black Friday. Final trailer from the official Black Myth channel.
Black Friday or the Winter Sale?
Here is the comparison that decides it. For each game, we took the best official price available during Black Friday week 2025, on Steam or elsewhere, and set it against Steam's price in the Winter Sale three weeks later:
- Black Friday was cheaper for 47% of games.
- The Winter Sale was cheaper for 32%.
- The price was the same for the remaining 21%.
So waiting for the Winter Sale paid off about one time in three. The other two times, Black Friday was as good or better, as long as you looked beyond Steam. A year earlier, when Black Friday and the Autumn Sale overlapped, waiting for the Winter Sale paid off even less often, for 18% of games.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was 75% off on Steam during Black Friday week 2025. (Official Steam screenshot)
The rest of 2026, in order
| Event | Dates | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Steam Scream V (Halloween) | 26 Oct – 2 Nov 2026 | Themed sale for horror games |
| Steam Auto-Battler RPG Fest | 16 – 23 Nov 2026 | Genre fest, not store-wide |
| Black Friday | Friday 27 Nov 2026 | No Steam-wide sale; other stores run theirs |
| Cyber Monday | 30 Nov 2026 | Same |
| Steam Winter Sale | 17 Dec 2026 – 4 Jan 2027 | Store-wide |
Steam dates from Valve's published sale calendar. See our full Steam sales calendar for the year.
The Auto-Battler RPG Fest the week before Black Friday is a themed event, not a store-wide sale, so do not expect it to cover the games you are waiting for. The full list is in our Steam sales calendar.
How to handle Black Friday this year
- Check the game page on Black Friday. It compares Steam with the other stores and shows the lowest price on record. If today's price is at or near that low, buy.
- If it is not close, wait for 17 December. The Winter Sale is the most likely next step down. Our analysis of which Steam sale is the best shows why.
- Set a price alert instead of watching. An alert fires on whichever store hits your price first.
- Use the Black Friday page for browsing. Our Black Friday game deals page lists what is genuinely discounted across stores that week.
Fallout 4 was cheapest at Green Man Gaming during Black Friday week 2025. (Official Steam screenshot)
The bottom line
There is no Steam Black Friday sale in 2026, but Black Friday still matters for PC games. Last year 42% of popular games were discounted on Steam anyway, 66% were cheaper at another official store, and the Black Friday price beat the Winter Sale price more often than the other way round. Compare stores on 27 November, buy what is at its low, and leave the rest for 17 December.