The Steam Autumn Sale 2026 runs October 1-8, 2026. That is the official date from Valve’s Steamworks events calendar, published in the second-half 2026 schedule announcement in January 2026. If you searched for this expecting late November: the Autumn Sale is not a Black Friday sale anymore. Valve moved it to early October starting in 2025, and the 2026 calendar keeps it there.
The rest of this post covers what that move means for your Q4 plan, who is eligible, how opt-in works, how the 30-day discount cooldown interacts with the sale, and a prep checklist that works backward from October 1.
Steam Autumn Sale 2026 dates on the official Steamworks calendar
Here is the official second-half 2026 lineup that matters for a fall release or a fall discount, straight from the Steamworks documentation:
| Event | Dates | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Autumn Sale | Oct 1-8, 2026 | Seasonal sale (major) |
| Cooking Fest | Oct 12-19, 2026 | Themed fest |
| Next Fest (October edition) | Oct 19-26, 2026 | Demo event |
| Steam Scream Fest V | Oct 26 - Nov 2, 2026 | Themed fest (horror) |
| Auto-Battler RPG Fest | Nov 16-23, 2026 | Themed fest |
| Winter Sale | Dec 17, 2026 - Jan 4, 2027 | Seasonal sale (major) |
Steam sales historically start and end at 10am Pacific; Valve’s announcements list times per event, so confirm the hour in your Steamworks dashboard rather than assuming.
Two things jump out of that table. First, October is crowded: a major seasonal sale, a fest, a Next Fest, and Scream Fest all inside 32 days. Second, no seasonal sale sits anywhere near Black Friday, and the gap between the Autumn Sale’s end and the Winter Sale’s start is about ten weeks. That does not make November empty, though. In 2025 Valve ran its first-ever Steam Black Friday event over November 24 to December 1, announced well after the seasonal calendar, and for 2026 Valve has said late-November discounts will route through the Special Offers hub. More on that below. Our 2026 sales events overview covers the full year; this post stays on the Autumn Sale.
The Autumn Sale is one of the two short seasonal sales at 7 days, versus 14 for Summer and 18 for Winter. Shorter sale, same storewide traffic spike: plan your visibility pushes (patch, announcement, social) for the first 48 hours, when front-page features and browse traffic peak.
Why the Autumn Sale is in October now
From its introduction through 2024, the Autumn Sale was a Thanksgiving-week event. Valve moved it in the 2025 calendar, framing the change as spacing sales and themed fests more evenly across the year. The dates tell the story:
| Year | Autumn Sale dates | Days before that year’s Black Friday |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Nov 21-28 | 3 |
| 2024 | Nov 27 - Dec 4 | 2 |
| 2025 | Sep 29 - Oct 6 | 60 |
| 2026 | Oct 1-8 | 57 |
The 2025 sale ran September 29 to October 6, which PC Gamer called “two months earlier than usual” when it went live. The old schedule stacked two major sales within roughly three weeks of each other (Autumn in late November, Winter in mid-December); the new one spaces the four seasonal sales roughly evenly across the year. Steam Awards nominations, which traditionally ran during the November Autumn Sale, did not move to October with it. In 2025 they ran November 24 to December 1 alongside the new Black Friday event, then voting happened during the Winter Sale as usual.
One practical consequence for anyone reading old marketing advice: every guide written before 2025 that says “hold your deep discount for the Thanksgiving Autumn Sale” is describing a sale that no longer exists on that date. Check dates against the Steamworks calendar or our sale calendar tool, which tracks the official schedule and shows how far you are from each entry deadline.
Who is eligible and how opt-in works
Seasonal sales are opt-in, and the mechanics are simple. Per the Steamworks docs, any game released at least 30 days before the event start can participate with a discount. For the 2026 Autumn Sale that means a release date of September 1, 2026 or earlier.
Opting in happens in the Discount Management page of your Steamworks app dashboard. When Valve opens entry for an event, the event appears there as a row; you type in a discount percentage and save. That is the whole process. There is no application and no fee. Your game then gets the sale discount, the storewide green discount tag, and inclusion in whatever browse and personalization surfaces Valve builds for the sale.
Three eligibility wrinkles that catch people:
- Release cooldown. A game released inside the 30-day window before October 1 cannot join. If you are launching mid-September, your first seasonal sale is the Winter Sale.
- Price increase cooldown. Raising your base price triggers a 30-day block on all discounts, with no seasonal exemption. A price increase on September 10 locks you out of the Autumn Sale entirely.
- Missing the entry window. Valve sets a deadline for entering your discount, listed on the Discount Management page and in the partner email for each event. Enter your discount the day the event appears in your dashboard. There is no advantage to waiting, and people forget.
Discounts for seasonal sales are set per-package. If you sell a base game, a deluxe edition, and a soundtrack bundle, check each one. A discounted base game next to a full-price deluxe edition is a common and avoidable mistake. Bundle-level pricing has its own logic, covered in our bundle strategy guide.
The 30-day cooldown and the seasonal exemption
The rule that shapes everything around a seasonal sale: a product cannot be discounted within 30 days of another discount. That is the current Steamworks discounting rule as of my check in July 2026. (Older posts around the web still say 28 days; that is stale.)
Seasonal sales get a specific exemption. You can run a custom discount within 30 days before or after a seasonal sale and still join the seasonal sale. So a discount in early September does not disqualify you from the October 1 Autumn Sale, and joining the Autumn Sale does not stop you from running a custom discount in late October for, say, a Scream Fest appearance if you qualify.
The exemption does not extend to the other cooldowns:
| Situation | Can you join the Autumn Sale (Oct 1-8)? |
|---|---|
| Custom discount ended Sep 20 | Yes — seasonal exemption applies |
| Released Aug 15 | Yes — outside the 30-day release cooldown |
| Released Sep 12 | No — release cooldown |
| Base price raised Sep 10 | No — price increase cooldown, no exemption |
| Launch discount currently running | No overlap — launch discounts run 7-14 days from release, and the release cooldown excludes you anyway |
Also current as of July 2026: standard discounts run 10% to 95%, launch discounts run 10% to 40% and must last 7 to 14 days from release. The full rule set, including edge cases like free-to-play transitions and DLC, is in our Steam discount rules guide.
Picking your Autumn Sale discount
The sale gives you traffic; the discount percentage decides conversion. Rough working rules, argued in full in our discount strategy post:
- First seasonal sale after launch: shallow, 10-20%. You are still selling to your wishlist backlog, and wishlisted users get an email when your game discounts. A median game converts around 12% of its wishlist on day one, and seasonal sale emails are how you reach the rest — see our wishlist conversion data.
- Each subsequent seasonal sale: step down roughly 5-10 points from the last discount, not more. Steam shoppers see discount history on third-party trackers, and a game that jumps from 20% to 60% in one step trains buyers to wait.
- Match the price point, not just the percentage. 20% off $14.99 reads differently than 20% off $29.99. If your base price is wrong, fix that first (outside the 30-day pre-sale window) — our pricing strategy guide covers where to set it.
The October date makes one sequencing question sharper than before: Autumn (Oct 1) and Winter (Dec 17) are now 77 days apart, comfortably clearing the 30-day spacing and leaving room for one custom discount in between. A reasonable Q4 ladder for a game launched earlier in 2026 is Autumn at 20%, a fest or custom discount in November at the same 20%, and Winter at 25-30%.
What the October date changes about your Q4 plan
If you internalized the old calendar, three assumptions need updating:
November is not a seasonal sale month anymore, but it is not dead. The published calendar shows nothing between November 2 (Scream Fest ends) and December 17. In practice, Valve ran a Black Friday event in 2025 (November 24 to December 1, with Steam Awards nominations attached) and has said 2026 late-November discounts will surface through the Special Offers hub. Plan your main spike for October 1, and hold a custom discount in reserve for late November — the seasonal exemption and the 77-day gap give you room either way.
Autumn Sale now lands before October Next Fest, not after your launch window. Under the old calendar, a common pattern was October launch, then Autumn Sale as your first discount five weeks later. Now an October 19-26 Next Fest demo runs after the Autumn Sale, and a game launching in late October or November waits until December 17 for its first seasonal event. That pushes the classic “launch, then first seasonal discount” gap to as long as seven weeks or as short as none, depending on your date. Model it with the launch date planner before committing.
Q4 releases get one seasonal shot, not two. A November release misses the Autumn Sale (release cooldown aside, it is already over) and hits only Winter. An early-September release (by September 1) gets both. If you are sitting on a near-finished game right now, that eligibility line is worth weighing in your launch date decision.
Prep checklist: working backward from October 1
Dates below are for the 2026 Autumn Sale specifically.
By September 1
- Release your game, if you want in. The 30-day rule is hard.
- Finalize any base price increase. After this date, a price raise blocks your discount with no exemption.
- Decide your discount percentage now, while you can still think about the whole Q4 ladder instead of one event.
September 1-24
- Enter your discount in the Discount Management page as soon as the Autumn Sale row appears, and check every package (editions, bundles, soundtracks).
- Run your store page through the free Steam Page Analyzer and fix what it flags. Sale traffic is cold traffic; your capsule, short description, and first two screenshots do the selling. The store page checklist is the manual version.
- Verify your tags. Seasonal sale browse pages slice by tag, and wrong tags mean wrong shelves.
- If you have a patch or content update near-ready, schedule it for October 1-2. An update plus a discount plus sale traffic compounds.
Week of September 28
- Confirm the discount shows as scheduled in Steamworks (it will list the exact start time).
- Prepare your announcement post and socials for October 1. Wishlist discount emails go out automatically, but an event post on your page feeds the followers feed too.
- Screenshot your own store page on day one. You want a record of what shoppers saw next to what your traffic did.
October 1-8
- Post your announcement within the first hours of the sale.
- Watch daily wishlist conversions and traffic sources in Steamworks Marketing & Visibility. The first 48 hours tell you most of what this discount level is worth, and that number sets your Winter Sale percentage.
October 9 onward
- Log results: units, revenue, wishlist conversions, and where traffic came from. Compare against the sale calendar entries you are considering next.
- Decide your Winter Sale (Dec 17) discount while the data is fresh. You have until roughly mid-November before that entry window closes, but the analysis is easiest now.
One last date worth repeating, because every stale blog post will tell you otherwise: the Steam Autumn Sale 2026 starts October 1, not the week of Thanksgiving. Valve publishes the calendar; check it, not habit.