UPDATE: Oct. 25, 2023, 5:40 p.m. EDT This story has been updated.
When it comes to holiday programming, Walmart typically has its Black Friday plans set in stone by mid-October. In 2022, it trumpeted the return of its monthlong Black Friday Deals for Days event on Oct. 19. The year prior, its announcement came on Oct. 18. And in 2020, it arrived out of the blue on Oct. 14.
Strangely, we still haven’t heard a peep about Black Friday 2023 at the big box store — but an odd sale that briefly appeared on its website this week could mean the reveal is coming very soon.
On Tuesday, Oct. 24, Mashable staff first noticed a banner on the Walmart homepage promoting an unnamed sale that would begin the following day; paid members of the Walmart+ program would receive early access to its deals at 12 p.m. ET before they opened to all shoppers at 2 p.m. ET. The banner linked to a landing page for the event, which included five featured deals accompanied by a glittery blue background and a countdown timer.
Screenshots of the Walmart homepage and the event landing page from the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 25.
Credit: Screenshot via Walmart.com
Credit: Screenshot via Walmart.com
Once the sale began on Oct. 25 at noon ET, the banner changed to a block in the middle of Walmart’s homepage that named the sale as a Walmart Deals Holiday Kickoff event. Some shoppers may recall that the same moniker was used for the sale Walmart ran alongside Amazon Prime Big Deal Days from Oct. 9 to 12, which dropped prices sitewide. But this week’s iteration had no set runtime and only 10 total “deals you can’t miss” (none of which were especially “can’t-missable,” aside from a $278 65-inch 4K Roku TV).
To make the situation even weirder, all mentions of the sale were scrubbed from the Walmart homepage by 4:15 ET on Oct. 25 — though the event’s landing page was still live at the time of writing. Some of the featured products have since sold out or increased in price.
We’re not entirely sure what happened here. It would be easy to assume the sale was posted by mistake if it hadn’t been advertised a good day in advance and kept live for several hours. We’ve reached out to a representative for Walmart for more information and will update this story if/when we hear back.
Everything you need to know about Black Friday 2023: The first early deals arrive in late October
The one thing we can say for sure is that the event’s early access formatting is reminiscent of Walmart’s past two Black Friday Days for Days sales, which were divided into multiple phases that each had three to seven hours of early access for paid Walmart+ members. (The Deals Holiday Kickoff sale in October did not offer early access, for the record.) In the interest of pure speculation, it could be a sign that Walmart is inching closer to its official Black Friday rollout, which is long overdue at this point.
The only retailer that has confirmed its Black Friday plans thus far is Best Buy, which will be releasing some early Black Friday deals over the weekend: Paid members of its My Best Buy program get exclusive access to them from Oct. 27 to 29 before everyone can shop them starting Oct. 30. The official Best Buy Black Friday sale will run for nine days from Nov. 17 to Nov. 25 before it shifts into Cyber Monday mode for the following two days.
This story is developing.