Memorial Day 2026: What's Actually Worth Buying Early (And What to Wait On)
May 6, 2026
Memorial Day weekend is 19 days out — May 25 lands on a Monday this year — and the early sales have already started rolling in. If you've been watching your inbox, you've probably noticed mattress brands and patio retailers leaning hard on the "early access" framing. Some of those deals are real. Some aren't going to get any better than they already are. And a few categories you might be tempted to buy now are actually going to drop further in the next two weeks.
Here's the timing playbook, by category.
Buy now (early May)
These categories are at or near their best prices right now. Waiting for Memorial Day weekend itself usually means worse selection at the same discount.
Mattresses. This is the one category where Memorial Day genuinely lives up to the hype, and the early-May deals are already excellent. Mattress brands release new models in May, and the previous year's inventory gets cleared aggressively in the lead-up to the holiday — not just on the weekend itself. Discounts of 30–50% are common right now from DreamCloud, Nectar, Helix, and Saatva, and the popular sizes go out of stock before the actual holiday weekend. If you've been planning a mattress purchase, today is a better time to buy than May 25.
Patio furniture. Retailers like Home Depot, Lowe's, and Wayfair are already 20–40% off on outdoor sets. The best deals tend to be on complete sets, not individual pieces. Selection is the variable here — by Memorial Day weekend itself, the popular configurations are usually gone. If you see what you want now at 30%+ off, take it.
Grills. Same dynamic as patio furniture. Discounts will be similar all month, but the model you actually want gets harder to find as the weekend approaches. Weber, Traeger, and Char-Broil are all running deals already.
Wait until the weekend (May 22–25)
These categories will see their best discounts during the actual long weekend. Don't pull the trigger early.
Large appliances. Best Buy, Home Depot, and Lowe's stack the deepest appliance discounts onto the four-day weekend itself. Up to 40–50% off on select fridges, washers, dryers, and ranges — but the headline prices are typically reserved for Friday through Monday. The early-May appliance deals are real but modest by comparison. If you can wait two and a half weeks, do.
Apparel and summer clothing. Memorial Day weekend is when retailers actually start clearing summer inventory, not before. The early-week discounts are mostly cosmetic.
Luggage and travel gear. Modest improvement now, much better discounts during the holiday weekend itself. Samsonite, Away, and Travelpro all run their best sales on the weekend.
Don't buy at all (wait for Prime Day or Black Friday)
This is where most "Memorial Day blowout" emails actively waste your money. The discounts look fine until you compare them to what's coming.
TVs, laptops, and consumer electronics. Memorial Day is one of the worst times of the year to buy a TV. Prime Day in July typically runs 10–20% deeper on the same models, and Black Friday in November is deeper still. The "Memorial Day deal" on a 65-inch TV is almost always available again — better — within 60 days.
Headphones and earbuds. Same story. Wait.
Phones. Memorial Day phone deals are mostly carrier promos with strings attached. Real phone discounts come during Prime Day, around back-to-school in August, or with the new iPhone announcement in September.
How to actually make this work
Two things matter more than the percentage off:
Track the actual dollar price, not the discount percent. Some retailers — especially mattress brands — have been raising base prices throughout the year so the "50% off" looks bigger while the dollar price barely moves. The only way to catch this is to compare against historical prices, not against the inflated MSRP on the sale page.
Compare across retailers in real time. The same model often shows up at Home Depot, Lowe's, Wayfair, and Amazon at different prices on the same day. The retailer running the loudest sale isn't always the cheapest one.
That second point is exactly why we built Dealery. Instead of opening 10 tabs and trying to remember what you saw at Wayfair yesterday, you get every retailer's current price in one feed — sortable, filterable, and updated as deals change. Memorial Day is the kind of event where a few minutes of comparison saves real money on a single purchase.
If you're planning to buy anything from the lists above, set yourself a small reminder: a quick price check before you click "buy." The deals are real this year — just not all of them, and not all on the same day.