Black Friday Store Hours 2026

Black Friday used to mean setting an alarm for 3 AM, waiting in the cold, and sprinting through the doors the moment they unlocked. That version of the day has mostly disappeared. Retailers learned that spreading deals across the whole week - and online - sells just as much without the chaos and the overtime. So the modern Black Friday is calmer: stores open early, but not at midnight, and the same prices are usually waiting for you online. This guide covers when the major chains open on Black Friday 2026, which ones are closed the day before on Thanksgiving, and how to decide whether an in-person trip is even worth it.

One thing to keep in mind before you go: this site tracks whether a store is open on a given day, not the exact hour it unlocks. The opening times below reflect each chain's typical Black Friday policy in recent years, but individual locations - especially mall stores and ones in smaller markets - can differ. If you are planning to be first in line at 5 AM, confirm your specific store's hours on its website or app the week of Thanksgiving, since chains announce their official Black Friday hours in early-to-mid November.

When Is Black Friday 2026?

Black Friday is always the day after Thanksgiving, which is the fourth Thursday in November. In 2026, Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26, so Black Friday is Friday, November 27. Cyber Monday, the big online-deal follow-up, lands on November 30.

Black Friday itself is not a federal holiday. Banks, post offices, and government offices treat it as a normal business day and stay open on their regular Friday schedules, even though many private employers give staff the day off. That means if you need to run a non-shopping errand that Friday - a bank branch, the DMV, the post office - you are dealing with regular hours, not holiday hours. It is only the retail world that shifts into a different gear.

Most Stores Are Now Closed on Thanksgiving Day

The single biggest change to Black Friday over the past several years is that Thanksgiving Day itself has gone quiet again. For a stretch in the 2010s, chains like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Kohl's, and Macy's opened their doors on Thanksgiving evening to get a jump on Black Friday. Public pushback and staffing costs reversed that. Most major retailers now stay closed the entire day on Thanksgiving and give employees the holiday off, then open early the next morning instead.

What replaced the Thanksgiving-evening rush is online. Nearly every big chain now flips its Black Friday deals live on its website on Thanksgiving morning - or even earlier in the week - so shoppers can grab the same prices from the couch while the stores themselves are dark. If a deal is advertised as "starts Thanksgiving," it almost always means online, not in person. The main brick-and-mortar exceptions on Thanksgiving Day are grocery stores, drugstores, and convenience stores, many of which open at least part of the day. Our Thanksgiving store hours page breaks down exactly which categories stay open on the holiday itself.

What Time Stores Open on Black Friday

Here is the typical Black Friday opening time for the major chains. Department stores open earliest because that is where the traditional doorbuster deals live. Big-box and electronics stores follow close behind, and home improvement and grocery stores mostly just run their normal hours.

Department Stores Open Earliest

If there is still an early-morning rush anywhere on Black Friday, it is at the department stores. Kohl's is usually the earliest of the bunch, frequently opening at 5 AM and running straight through the day into the evening. Macy's typically opens at 6 AM, and JCPenney is usually in the 5 AM to 6 AM range as well. These chains built their holiday sales around the doorbuster model - a limited quantity of deeply discounted items available first thing in the morning - so they lean into the early opening more than any other category.

Mall-based department stores are tied to the mall's own schedule. If a Macy's is a mall anchor, it may open when the mall opens rather than on its own standalone hours, which is often 6 AM or 7 AM on Black Friday specifically. Standalone locations set their own times and tend to be the earliest. For the full picture on this category year-round, see our department store hours guide.

Big-Box and Electronics Stores

Walmart opens at 6 AM on Black Friday, which is simply its normal daily opening time - there is no special ultra-early door anymore. What Walmart does instead is stagger its deal events online across the week leading up to Black Friday, so the in-store experience is more about volume and availability than a single opening-bell scramble. Best Buy, the classic electronics doorbuster store, is closed on Thanksgiving and typically opens at 6 AM on Black Friday, with its biggest TV and laptop deals available both in store and online.

Target has deliberately pulled back over the years and now usually opens at 7 AM on Black Friday rather than the pre-dawn hours it once kept. Target also emphasizes price matching and week-long deal windows, so there is less pressure to be there at open. If you are chasing a specific electronics or big-ticket deal, the smart move is to check whether it is available online first - most are - and only make the trip if the item is in-store exclusive or something you want to physically see before buying.

Home Improvement and Grocery Stores Keep Regular Hours

Home Depot and Lowe's both run Black Friday deals, but neither opens especially early for them - most locations keep their standard 6 AM opening. Their Black Friday and holiday promotions typically run for the entire week or longer, so there is no reason to line up at dawn. The deals on tools, appliances, and holiday decor are the same whether you show up at 6 AM or 6 PM.

Kroger and other grocery chains treat Black Friday as an ordinary Friday, opening on their normal schedule, usually around 6 AM. Grocery stores never adopted the doorbuster model because their customers are buying food, not chasing limited-quantity electronics. If anything, the grocery rush around Black Friday weekend is about restocking after Thanksgiving rather than deal-hunting. Costco is worth calling out separately: it skips early Black Friday openings entirely, sticks close to its regular 9 AM to 10 AM member hours, and pushes most of its Black Friday savings online.

Online Deals Start Before the Doors Open

The reason Black Friday store hours matter less than they used to is that the deals no longer live behind the store doors. Most major retailers now launch their Black Friday pricing online days before the actual Friday, and many run "Black Friday deals all November" events that make the in-person early opening almost beside the point. If your only goal is the lowest price, you can usually get it online without setting an alarm.

In-person shopping still has a place. Big-ticket items you want to inspect first - a large TV, a mattress, an appliance - are easier to evaluate in the store, and a handful of chains reserve certain doorbuster quantities for physical locations. But for the majority of Black Friday purchases, the store's opening time is a convenience question, not a make-or-break one. Cyber Monday on November 30 then extends the online deals for anyone who would rather shop from home entirely.

How to Plan Your Black Friday Trip

A few things make a Black Friday outing go smoothly if you decide an in-person trip is worth it:

• Confirm the exact hours in mid-November. Chains publish their official Black Friday opening times a week or two before Thanksgiving. Check your specific store's website or app rather than relying on last year's times.
• Check whether the deal is online too. If the item you want is available at the same price online, you can skip the early morning entirely and order it from home.
• Start with the earliest openers. If you are hitting several stores, begin at the department stores that open at 5 AM to 6 AM, then move to the 7 AM openers like Target as they unlock.
• Remember Thanksgiving is closed. Do not plan a Thanksgiving-evening trip expecting stores to be open - almost none are anymore. The action is Friday morning.
• Have a target list. The best Black Friday deals are limited quantities. Knowing exactly what you want and where it is keeps the trip short and productive.

You can also use the Open Now tool to see which stores are open at the moment you are reading this, or the Quick Check tool to look up a specific store's status by day. For the broader holiday season, our holiday store hours guide covers Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's, and our store opening times guide explains the normal weekday and weekend opening patterns each chain follows the rest of the year.

Frequently Asked Questions