Jamey Gordon, Managing Director, Looking Glass Group. Adjunct Professor, Schulich School of Business.
The short answer: if you sell on Amazon, your Q4 calendar is mostly a September calendar. The inbound deadlines for the October and November events land in September and October, and the fee changes kick in from Oct 1. Work backwards from the last receiving date and your buying decisions are due weeks before most brands make them.
A brand owner asked me this month when we should start planning for Amazon's Black Friday. The honest answer was that it had already started. Amazon published its holiday calendar in August and the deadlines moved earlier than the year before. Same fees as last year with less time to make it happen.
The dates that matter for Q4 2026
Sept 2 was the date AWD inventory for Prime Big Deal Days had to arrive. Sept 5 was the last day for the 50$ early discount on Black Friday deal submissions. Sept 16 is the date FBA inventory for Big Deal Days has to arrive, using Amazon-optimized shipment splits. Oct 28 is the date FBA inventory for Black Friday has to arrive.
Arrive means received at Amazon's dock. Not leaving your warehouse, not clearing the border, not sitting in a yard waiting for an appointment. If you are shipping from Canada, add the border and a week of buffer.
The fee changes that break last year's deal math
Storage jumps to 2.40$ per cubic foot on Oct 1. From Oct 15 every unit ships with a 0.32$ peak surcharge plus a 3.5% fuel surcharge on the fulfillment fee. None of those are large on their own. Together, on a deal you priced in August, they are the difference between a promotion that makes money and one that loses it in November.
Re-run the arithmetic before you submit any deal. Take your August landed cost, add the storage increase for the weeks the units will sit, add the peak and fuel surcharges per unit, and see what is left after the deal price and the referral fee. If the answer is a negative number, the deal is a marketing expense. Decide whether you want one.
How to build the calendar
Start from the last receiving date and work backwards. For Black Friday that is Oct 28. Subtract Amazon's receiving time in peak, the freight time from your warehouse or your factory, the border if there is one and the production lead time. That lands the last sensible purchase order in early October for most brands, and earlier if your product is made overseas. For the October event, with a Sept 16 receiving date, the buying window has already closed.
Then send the calendar to whoever books your freight. In my experience the deadlines are missed in the gap between the person who knows the date and the person who books the truck.
What to do this week
Confirm what is already booked against the Sept 16 and Oct 28 dates. Re-price every Q4 deal on the new fees. Put the storage increase in the model for anything that will sit past Oct 1. If a promotion does not survive the arithmetic, pull it now rather than in November.
If you want to see how we run this analysis for a client, our ecommerce advisory sample report walks through a real, anonymized assessment. Download the sample report
Sources: Amazon Seller Central holiday 2026 calendar as reported by CoreTrex (Aug 19, 2026), AMZBase Q4 checklist (Jul 30, 2026), DAM Law Firm Q4 seller guide (Aug 14, 2026), AMZ Scaler peak fees (Aug 18, 2026). Dates and fees cross-checked across three independent sources.