The biggest Memorial Day discounts may arrive before the holiday weekend, with many of the deepest markdowns historically appearing on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Patio furniture, fashion, and mattresses are expected to offer some of the best savings this year, with discounts reaching as high as 34% on average.
Experts warn shoppers to watch out for inflated “before” prices and recommend comparing price histories across retailers to spot genuine deals.
Memorial Day weekend has long been known as one of the biggest shopping events of the year, but new data suggests consumers may want to rethink when they hit “buy.”
According to a recent analysis from Decodo, some of the strongest discounts are expected to appear before the holiday weekend officially begins — especially for shoppers looking for deals on patio furniture, clothing, and mattresses.
ConsumerAffairs spoke with Gabriele Vitke, Product Marketing Team Lead at Decodo, who shared what categories are likely to have the best deals, when to wait and see on certain deals, and other Memorial Day sales trends.
Where the biggest savings are
Here’s a breakdown of where the biggest savings are expected this Memorial Day:
Patio furniture and outdoor goods: This led every other category in 2025 at a 34% average discount, with prior-season clearance furniture reaching 47%.
Fashion and apparel: This category followed at 32%, athleisure hit 39%, and swimwear 36%.
Mattresses: Average discounts landed at 30% in 2025, with memory foam direct-to-consumer brands cutting 38%, and some individual offers reaching 50% off list.
Major appliances: Averaged a 22% discount, but bundled multi-piece kitchen sets unlocked 27%
Groceries: 15% discount on average.
“Dynamic pricing engines respond to inventory pressure and competitive density, rather than the calendar, so the same structural forces that delivered 2025's results are in play for 2026,” Vitke said.
“What has shifted dramatically is the consumer wallet. Average expected spend fell from roughly $284 in 2025 to $91 in 2026, a decline of nearly 68%, while participation rose from 37% to 53% of shoppers. More households are showing up with much smaller baskets, which keeps retailer pressure to compete on price firmly intact.”
When to shop and when to wait
While there are plenty of sales worth jumping on for Memorial Day, it’s important to be a discerning shopper. Vitke shared which days of the weekend are likely to have the best deals, as well as when to shop at certain retailers.
“Consumer electronics is the clearest category to skip,” Vitke said. “In 2025, 65-inch 4K TVs averaged 11% off on Memorial Day, versus 19% on Prime Day and 24% on Black Friday; mid-range laptops followed the same 11/18/23 pattern; and premium wireless headphones, gaming console bundles, and current-model smartphones all showed their deepest annual cuts in late November. If the item is a current-model premium electronics SKU, the math almost always favors waiting.”
When it comes to timing your shopping, Vitke has more advice.
“The ‘shop on Monday’ advice is really a Walmart-and-grocery pattern, not a universal one,” she said. “Amazon's best price-drop day across 2025 was Wednesday, so Wednesday, May 20, is the algorithmically-friendly early window.
“Best Buy peaked on Friday, Target and Newegg on Saturday, Home Depot and CVS on Tuesday, and Walgreens on Wednesday. Shoppers get the most value by aligning to each retailer's rhythm rather than defaulting to Monday.”
How to spot a genuine markdown
Not every sale you see marketed on Memorial Day comes with a genuine price markdown.
Sometimes, retailers will even show higher list prices to make it look like the “sale price” is a better bargain than it really is. However, Vitke has some advice for knowing how to spot real sales.
“First, use a browser extension to check 60-to-180-day price history rather than trusting the percentage-off claim on the page,” she said. “Second, compare the actual dollar price across retailers selling the same SKU, because same-SKU spreads of up to 19% appeared between the cheapest and most expensive major retailers across the 2025 weekend.
“Third, and this is the discipline that separates consistent winners, set a target price you'd actually pay before the sale opens, the same way the pricing engines themselves set thresholds before the transaction window.”
Preparation beats reaction
Vitke’s last piece of Memorial Day shopping advice: preparation beats reaction.
“One pattern that gets overlooked: the cookout-focused household typically saves more in absolute dollars across grocery and beverage purchases than on any single non-mattress big-ticket category,” she said.
“Beverage-alcohol traffic ran roughly 22% above baseline during the 2025 weekend, with premium spirits down 14% and cookout proteins down 25%. The dollars add up quickly across the basket. One timing nuance worth flagging: across 2025, the deepest individual markdowns on 41% of tracked SKUs landed on the Wednesday or Thursday before the holiday, not on the weekend itself. Preparation beats reaction every time.”