Black Friday Dates, Year by Year

Full Date Table (2016-2032)

All dates below are for the United States. Every Black Friday listed is the day immediately after that year's Thanksgiving Day.

The Rule Behind Every Date

Thanksgiving in the United States has been fixed since 1941 as the fourth Thursday of November. Once that's set, Black Friday and Cyber Monday follow automatically: Black Friday is one day later, and Cyber Monday is three days after that, on the following Monday. Because the rule is anchored to a weekday rather than a fixed date, the exact numbers shift a little every year, but the pattern of Thursday, then Friday, then the following Monday never changes.

1. Start with November 1 of the year you're checking.
2. Find the first Thursday of that month.
3. Count forward three more Thursdays (four Thursdays total). That's Thanksgiving.
4. Add one day for Black Friday, and three more days (to the following Monday) for Cyber Monday.

Why the Date Range Looks So Wide

Because November has either 30 days and either four or five Thursdays before the month ends, the fourth Thursday can land as early as November 22 or as late as November 28, depending on which day of the week November 1 falls on that year. That pushes Black Friday itself into a seven-day window, from November 23 at the earliest to November 29 at the latest. Both ends of that range are equally normal and equally correct: they're both the fourth Friday of November, they just look very different on a calendar.

2024 is a good example of how big that swing can be. Black Friday fell on November 29, about as late as the date can possibly land, while the year before, in 2023, it fell on November 24, nearly a week earlier. Nothing about the holiday itself changed between those two years, only where November 1 happened to fall on the weekly calendar.

Looking for the Countdown Instead?

If you just want to know how much time is left until the next Black Friday, the homepage has a live countdown plus a one-click way to add the date to your own calendar, generated entirely in your browser with no account required (see the privacy policy for details). Curious about the name itself rather than the date? See why it's called Black Friday for the documented origin story.

Does Every Country Use the Same Date?

Mostly, yes, though the tradition started in the United States. Because Thanksgiving itself is a US and Canadian holiday (Canada's falls in October, on a different schedule), the "Black Friday" sales date that other countries follow is really the US date, carried over by large multinational and online retailers that run the same promotional calendar everywhere they operate. The United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and a growing list of other countries now treat the US date as their own Black Friday sale day, even though the day after Thanksgiving has no local significance there beyond the shopping event itself.