Walmart’s Deal Week Grew Six Times Faster Than Prime Day Last Year

Walmart will run its summer Deals event from June 22 through June 28, opening online at 12:01 a.m. ET on June 22 and in stores at 6 a.m. local time, according to the company’s June 9 announcement. The dates put Walmart a day ahead of Amazon, whose Prime Day runs June 23 through June 26, and inside the same week as two other national events. Target has set its Circle Deal Days for June 23 through June 26, with early access for Circle 360 members on June 22, and Best Buy has confirmed to retail outlets that its Summer Tech Fest will run the full June 22 through 28 stretch. Four national sales now sit on one week, and Walmart’s opens a day before Amazon’s.

The reason that timing matters sits in last year’s results. Walmart ran its 2025 Deals event from July 8 through July 13, overlapping Amazon’s extended four-day Prime Day, and came out ahead on the metrics that track demand. Online spending on Walmart.com during the event grew 24% from the same event a year earlier, six times faster than Prime Day’s year-over-year growth, according to credit and debit card transaction data compiled by Bloomberg Second Measure. Over the same stretch, Walmart’s web traffic rose 14% while Amazon’s stayed flat, and Walmart’s app usage climbed 22% against Amazon’s 3%, according to Similarweb.

This year Walmart moved that same event off its traditional July slot and into the same June week as Amazon’s Prime Day. The Walmart+ early-access window now turns on specific items rather than a timed head start on the whole event. Eligible members get an online-only, curated set of high-demand products Walmart calls hot Deal drops during the first 24 hours, beginning 12:01 a.m. ET on June 22. Whatever is left opens to all customers at 12:01 a.m. ET on June 23, the same day Prime Day and Target’s event begin. That gives Walmart and Best Buy a full day in the window before Amazon and Target open, with a member-gated assortment sitting at the front of Walmart’s.

The 2025 data also shows where some of that demand came from. Bloomberg Second Measure found that 8% of Prime Day customers also shopped Walmart online during the event, up from 5% the year before. That overlap is small in absolute terms, and in 2026 it applies to two events that now run on the same days.

Walmart’s online business has kept expanding since that event. In its most recent quarter, U.S. Marketplace net sales grew close to 50% and Walmart Connect advertising grew 44%, according to the company’s first-quarter results reported in May. The channel suppliers are weighing for this window is a larger and faster-growing one than the year-old event figures alone convey.

For first-party suppliers, Deals event participation runs through the merchant and replenishment relationships that set deal nominations and placement, and those decisions are effectively locked this close to the open. The read for 1P teams is operational. A window that pulled this much demand last year is one to have inventory depth and OTIF reliability behind, and the hot Deal drop assortment concentrates member demand onto a narrow set of items for the first day, which raises the stakes on the specific SKUs Walmart selects. For third-party Marketplace sellers, the picture includes a cross-platform decision the 1P side does not face. Many of the same sellers run Prime Day deals on Amazon during the identical days, and a growing slice of Prime Day shoppers is also buying from Walmart online. How a seller splits promotional pricing, inventory, and fulfillment readiness across the two marketplaces is the live question, and the 2025 results weigh on the Walmart side of it. For both groups, that demand lands in a single compressed week, which is reason to settle Walmart Connect budget timing before the event rather than mid-event.

Walmart is also putting marketing weight behind the week. Its in-house creative team built the event’s marketing around a fictional boy band called Alwayz and an original song, “Catchin’ Feels,” which Walmart says is meant to tie the retailer more firmly to the idea of value at a moment when every major competitor is making the same pitch. The company that ran this event in July last year has moved it more than two weeks earlier, opening June 22, a day ahead of Prime Day, and put budget behind being remembered, while Walmart, Amazon, Target, and Best Buy all chase the same shopper across the same days.

One scope note so you can publish without second-guessing it: the new fifth paragraph is quarterly business growth, deliberately not framed as event performance, and it sits next to the event figures without blending into them. If you would rather keep the piece purely on the event and its overlap, strike that paragraph and the draft stands on its own. My recommendation is to keep it, because it is the one move that puts a 2026 primary number against the 2025 anchor.

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