The 2026 BFCM send calendar.

Every date that matters this season, what to send on each one, and who to send it to. Take it, change it, use it. There is nothing to download and nothing to sign up for.

Why this is free: the calendar is the easy half. Knowing that you should send a last-chance email on December 1st takes thirty seconds to learn; writing twelve emails that sound like your brand and don't repeat each other takes a week you don't have. We sell the second half. The first half should just be public.

The dates

Thanksgiving falls on Thursday November 26, 2026, which puts Black Friday on the 27th and Cyber Monday on the 30th. The sale window most DTC brands run is Tuesday the 24th through Tuesday December 1st.

Date	Send	Segment	The job
Fri Nov 20	Announce the date	Engaged (90-day)	Get the date into their head before the inbox fills up. No discount reveal.
Sun Nov 22	What's in, what's out	Engaged	State your exclusions up front. Kills the "is this a real sale" objection before it forms.
Mon Nov 23	Early access opens tomorrow	Subscribers / VIP	Turn the warmup into a calendar appointment.
Tue Nov 24	Early access is live	Subscribers / VIP	First-mover revenue, and your most loyal buyers get the best price.
Wed Nov 25	Your hardest-to-explain product	Engaged, no purchase	The one thing that never sells because nobody understands it. Explain it properly, once.
Thu Nov 26	Your price changes Friday	Engaged, no purchase	Thanksgiving. Only send if the early-access price genuinely expires — that deadline is real.
Fri Nov 27	Black Friday — sale opens	All engaged	The biggest send of your year. One idea, one offer, one button.
Fri Nov 27 pm	Second touch — a story, not a repeat	Didn't open the morning send	A second same-day send is fine today. Make it earn its place.
Sat Nov 28	What people are actually buying	Engaged, no purchase	Real order data only. If you can't pull the numbers, cut this email.
Mon Nov 30	Cyber Monday	No purchase yet	Don't invent a deeper discount — it punishes everyone who trusted you on Friday.
Mon Nov 30 pm	Shipping deadlines, if you ship gifts	No purchase yet	Reaches gift buyers that the sale deadline doesn't move.
Tue Dec 1	Ends tonight	No purchase yet	Deadline emails routinely outperform launch emails. State the real end time.

The three flows that matter more than the calendar

Campaigns get the attention. Flows quietly out-earn them, because they fire when someone is already interested rather than when you decided to send.

Abandoned cart — 1h / 22h / 46h

Escalating specificity, not escalating volume. The first email is a link back with no discount talk. The second answers the real objection — shipping time, sizing, whether the sale price is locked. The third is the deadline.

Welcome — immediately / day 2 / day 4

BFCM floods your list with deal-hunters. The job is converting a discount-seeker into someone who likes your brand. Deliver what they signed up for, then earn the second purchase.

Post-purchase — immediately / day 2 / day 8

They just spent money and trust is at its peak. Reassure, then teach them to get the most out of what they bought, then make the second-order ask. No discount codes that undercut what they just paid.

Rules worth following

Suppress purchasers. Use a live segment, not a static list — a list built Thursday is wrong by Saturday. Nothing sours a new customer faster than being sold the thing they just bought.
18 hours minimum between sends to the same segment, except on Black Friday and Cyber Monday themselves, where two sends is normal.
Warm your volume. If you normally send twice a month, twelve sends in eleven days is a spike that gets throttled. Start with your most engaged segment and widen — which is what the calendar above already does.
Authenticate your sending domain — SPF, DKIM, DMARC — before the season, not during it.
Never invent a number. No fake stock counts, no invented review totals, no countdown that resets. One made-up scarcity claim costs more trust than the sale earns.
Test the discount with a real order before the first send. Confirm exclusions apply at checkout, not just in the copy.

If you only send five

Running out of time is the normal outcome. If you cut this down, these five carry most of the revenue:

Early access opens (Nov 24)
Black Friday (Nov 27)
Cyber Monday (Nov 30)
Ends tonight (Dec 1)
Your hardest-to-explain product (Nov 25)

Plus the abandoned-cart flow. If you automate one thing this year, automate that.

The calendar is the easy half.

Writing twelve emails that sound like your brand, work around your exact offer, and don't repeat each other is the week you don't have. That's what we do — 12 campaigns, 3 flows, and this calendar filled in for your store, delivered within 72 hours of a ten-minute intake. $497 flat, full refund if we're late.

Read a complete one first: a full sample suite, written for a store we invented so we're not publishing a client's campaign.

See the offer