What Is BFCM? Meaning, 2026 Dates and a Shopify Plan

BFCM stands for Black Friday Cyber Monday, the four-day sales weekend that starts the day after US Thanksgiving and ends the following Monday. In 2026, BFCM runs from Friday, November 27 to Monday, November 30: the US Office of Personnel Management lists Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, November 26, 2026. For an online store, BFCM also names the campaign around those days: teasers and early access the week before, the offer over the four days, then shipping updates and follow-ups.

This guide explains what BFCM means, gives every 2026 date, shows how much BFCM weighs for Shopify stores, and lays out a messaging plan with a checklist. Kanal, our Shopify app for WhatsApp, SMS, RCS and iMessage, runs that plan from one place, and our BFCM 2026 calendar gives it day by day.

What does BFCM mean?

BFCM is short for Black Friday Cyber Monday. You will also see it written BF/CM or BFCM weekend. The terms around it:

Sources: OPM federal holidays for Thanksgiving, Adobe's Cyber Week release for the Cyber Week definition, GivingTuesday for December 1, 2026, all read on November 9, 2026.

In e-commerce, "BFCM" is used for the whole campaign as much as for the four days. When a merchant says "our BFCM plan", they usually mean everything from the first teaser in mid-November to the last shipping update in December.

When is BFCM 2026?

The dates follow from Thanksgiving. On its federal holidays page, the Office of Personnel Management lists Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, November 26, 2026:

Source: OPM federal holidays, 2026 schedule, read on November 9, 2026. In 1, Thanksgiving Day: Black Friday is the next day.

So the BFCM 2026 dates are:

• Black Friday: Friday, November 27, 2026
• BFCM weekend: Saturday, November 28 and Sunday, November 29
• Cyber Monday: Monday, November 30, 2026
• Cyber Week: Thursday, November 26 to Monday, November 30

The same page already lists Thanksgiving Day 2027 on Thursday, November 25, which puts Black Friday 2027 on November 26 and Cyber Monday 2027 on November 29.

The dates are the same for a store that sells in Europe or the UK and runs a Black Friday offer: Black Friday follows US Thanksgiving wherever the customer lives.

Why BFCM matters for a Shopify store

Shopify published its merchants' results for BFCM 2025 in a report dated December 2, 2025. It counted:

• $14.6 billion in sales over the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, up 27% from 2024, or 24% in constant currency.
• More than 81 million customers buying from Shopify merchants.
• A peak of $5.1 million per minute at 12:01 p.m. EST on Black Friday.
• More than 94,900 merchants with their highest-selling day ever on Shopify.

Source: Shopify news, BFCM 2025 data, read on November 9, 2026. Shopify notes that the data is unaudited and that sales are measured as gross merchandise volume.

Across US retail sites, Adobe Analytics measured, for the 2025 Cyber Week, in its release of December 2, 2025:

Source: Adobe newsroom, based on Adobe Analytics data covering over 1 trillion visits to US retail sites, read on November 9, 2026.

Source: Adobe, "Cyber Monday Hits Record $14.25 Billion in Online Spending", December 2, 2025. In 1, Adobe's definition of Cyber Week.

The same release says 57.5% of Cyber Monday online sales came through a mobile device. For a store, that means the BFCM customer reads your offer on a phone, where a text or a WhatsApp message lands next to the customer's own conversations.

A BFCM messaging plan for a Shopify store

The plan below runs in four phases, from preparation to follow-up, on whichever channels your customers agreed to. The dates are for BFCM 2026.

Phase 1: prepare, by November 13

• The offer. One headline offer (a sitewide discount, a tiered offer or a gift with purchase) and one end date, the same in your messages, on your site and at checkout. Create one discount code per send to see which message sold.
• The segments. Engaged contacts who clicked a message recently, your best customers, last year's BFCM buyers, and new subscribers. On Kanal's Scale plan, segments are built from your Shopify customers and orders.
• Consent. Every marketing message goes to customers who agreed to it, on that channel. In the US, the FCC's rule at 47 CFR 64.1200 requires prior express written consent for telemarketing calls and texts made with an autodialer; our SMS opt-in guide explains what to collect. On WhatsApp, the opt-in is collected by a pop-up, a widget or a link.
• The messages. Write every text and template now. WhatsApp marketing messages are templates that Meta approves before you can send them, so submit them early. For texts, our 30 Black Friday text message examples are ready to adapt.
• The flows. Switch on abandoned cart recovery and order notifications and test them on a real order before the teaser goes out.

Phase 2: warm up, November 16 to 25

• Around Thursday, November 19: a teaser to every opted-in contact, with a way to join early access.
• November 23 or 24: a countdown or a wishlist reminder to the people who clicked.
• Wednesday, November 25, from 6 p.m.: early access opens for the sign-ups and your best customers.

Phase 3: sell, November 26 to 30

• Thursday, November 26 (Thanksgiving): schedule Friday's sends, prepare answers to the questions you expect, send no campaign to the full list.
• Friday, November 27, 8 to 10 a.m.: the launch, to engaged contacts who have not bought in the last 24 hours.
• Friday, midday to evening: a stock alert, then a last call, each to the people who clicked and did not buy.
• Friday to Monday: abandoned cart reminders that use the offer's deadline as the reason to come back.
• Saturday and Sunday: one message at most, to non-buyers or to buyers with a cross-sell.
• Monday, November 30: Cyber Monday, with something new: another category or a clear end to the weekend.

Phase 4: ship and follow up, from December 1

• Order and shipping updates for every BFCM order, and a delay notice if packing takes longer than usual.
• A holiday shipping cutoff. USPS recommends sending by Thursday, December 17 (Ground Advantage) or Friday, December 18 (Priority Mail) for expected delivery before December 25 in the lower 48 states, according to its 2026 holiday shipping dates. Subtract your packing time to set your own cutoff.
• Review requests once the parcel has arrived, and back in stock alerts for the products that sold out.

BFCM checklist

• Offer, end date and one discount code per send decided
• Segments built: engaged, best customers, last year's BFCM buyers, cart abandoners
• Consent recorded for each channel you will use
• Messages written; WhatsApp templates submitted to Meta
• Cart recovery and order notifications switched on and tested
• Send times set in each customer's time zone, inside 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. for US texts
• One person on replies over the weekend
• A report ready to compare each send on the orders it brought in

Which channel for which BFCM message

WhatsApp: Meta's per-user marketing limits page, read on November 9, 2026, states that WhatsApp does not currently deliver marketing template messages to users with United States phone numbers. RCS and iMessage: our RCS and iMessage pages.

For a store with customers on both sides of the Atlantic, the same BFCM campaign splits by country: SMS, RCS or iMessage to US numbers, WhatsApp to customers in Europe and the UK. Our Black Friday WhatsApp plan gives the WhatsApp side day by day, with Meta's fees and messaging limits, and our Black Friday text message examples give 30 texts for the SMS side.

Running BFCM with Kanal

Kanal is a messaging app for e-commerce stores that goes deepest on Shopify, used by 500+ brands. For BFCM, it covers:

• Campaigns on WhatsApp and by SMS, with the revenue of each send, and from the Scale plan, to segments built from your store's customers and orders.
• Automations: abandoned cart recovery, order notifications, back in stock alerts and post-purchase offers.
• Every channel from one app: WhatsApp on every plan; SMS, RCS and iMessage from the Scale plan, to the same segments.
• The weekend's questions: a shared inbox, and on the Scale and Business plans an AI agent that answers order tracking questions.

Kanal's pricing page: iMessage is included from the Scale plan too.

Source: Kanal pricing, read on November 9, 2026. Messages are billed on top: Meta's fees for WhatsApp, and SMS by destination country and number of segments. Kanal sends no email, so your email platform keeps that part of the plan.

To run the plan day by day, Kanal's BFCM 2026 calendar gives the sends of each day with their segments, WhatsApp templates ready to submit and a Claude skill that sets it all up in Kanal; it opens after a short form. The Black Friday WhatsApp playbook is a 9-page PDF with the 5 WhatsApp messages to send from November 19 to 30 and a checklist, and our ranking of Shopify BFCM apps covers the rest of the stack: upsells, reviews, pop-ups and loyalty.

BFCM 2026 at a glance

BFCM is four days on the calendar and a month of work around them: consent and messages ready by mid-November, a warm-up that finds your most interested customers, three focused days of sends, and a December of shipping updates. To see that plan on your own store, with WhatsApp and SMS from the same app, book a Kanal demo.