Etsy Cyber Specials 2026: the 25% Rule, the 27 October Opt-In, and the Price-History Rules Your Discount Has to Pass

Etsy’s Cyber Specials sales event runs from 23 November to 1 December 2026. Etsy’s Help Center says that to be considered for its marketing features you had to “opt in by October 27 and offer at least 25% off”. You can still join after that date. The rule with legal weight is a different one: a 25% discount has to be taken off a price you were charging before the sale.

Everything below is quoted from Etsy pages read on 4 November 2026: the Help Center’s How to Participate in Sales Events on Etsy (last edited 2 October 2026) and How to Set Up Sales and Discounts for Your Shop (edited 15 October), the Seller Handbook’s Welcome to Holiday HQ (dated 2 November) and Understanding Truthful Advertising and Discount Practices (12 January 2026), and the Share & Save Holiday Promo Terms. The legal quotes come from the texts of the laws, not from summaries. None of this is legal advice, and Etsy says the same of its own guide.

What are Etsy’s Cyber Specials, and when do they run in 2026?

Cyber Specials is Etsy’s site-wide sale around Cyber Monday. Holiday HQ calls it “Etsy’s biggest sale event of the year, running November 23 to December 1”. You join by creating a sale for the event’s dates, at shop level or for chosen listings. That is a Monday-to-Tuesday window, so it covers Black Friday (27 November) and Cyber Monday (30 November).

To join: Shop Manager → Marketing → Sales and discounts → Join Etsy’s next sales event, pick the event, choose your discount and the listings it covers, and save. On the Etsy Seller app it is More → Marketing → Sales & discounts, then the same steps. If you take part, Etsy says your shop “may be featured in Etsy marketing materials, and can be included in search results related to the sale.”

What did the 27 October date and the 25% rule control?

Etsy’s marketing features only. The Help article’s opening line ties both conditions to being “considered for Etsy marketing features”, and the same page says you can take part in the event “even if it’s already started”, as long as you set up the sale before it ends. Two Etsy pages put the deadline differently:

Read together, the opt-in window for the event itself is open, and the 27 October date only applied to the marketing features. By the Help article’s wording, a shop that opts in now has missed the feature consideration; Holiday HQ doesn’t mention features at all. For the UK, the Help article adds: “offer up to 30% to be eligible for inclusion in Etsy’s marketing for the sale.” It doesn’t say whether a UK shop offering 25% counts. If you are a UK seller and want to be featured, offering the full 30% is the reading that meets both wordings.

Etsy also says it is “not always able to tell sellers directly that they’re being featured”. Its suggestion is to subscribe to all of Etsy’s seller emails (Your account → Account Settings → Emails) and follow its social channels. And you don’t need a feature to benefit. Etsy says most featured items link to a page of similar items, so a relevant listing that ranks well in Etsy search may show there. What its merchandising team looks for, and how event placement differs from everyday sales, is in does running a sale boost Etsy search ranking.

How does a Cyber Specials sale combine with your other discounts?

It doesn’t add to them. Etsy’s sales article says that when more than one sale applies to a listing, “only the highest discount will be used”. Free shipping is the exception: it combines with a price discount. The rules that matter during the event, from the same article:

One more rule from Etsy’s event article. To change the discount once the sale is set, Etsy’s route is to end it early and create a new sale. And Etsy encourages keeping the sale running for the whole event, though ending early is up to you.

Does Share & Save pay more during Cyber Specials?

Yes, from 20 October. Etsy’s holiday promotion terms raise the Share & Save refund from 4% to 6.5% of the order total from 20 October 2026 to 4 January 2027 (both at 9:00 AM Eastern Time). The 6.5% is “in lieu of, and not in addition to” the usual 4%. Three conditions from the terms and Etsy’s Help article:

• Both the click and the purchase must happen inside the promotion period.
• Eligibility. The terms say the promotion is for “sellers who receive this promotion invitation from Etsy” and stay enrolled. The Help article says “all sellers enrolled”. If you unenroll during the period, orders placed while you are out earn nothing.
• Where the link goes. Links you send in Etsy Messages or put in listing descriptions don’t count. Social posts, bios, email lists and newsletters do.

Holiday HQ suggests getting your links before the event starts. How the standard 4% refund is worked out, and why an Offsite Ads click can cancel it, is in our Share & Save guide.

Can you raise prices before Cyber Specials and then discount them?

Not to make the discount look bigger. Etsy’s policy forbids that, and so do the US and EU rules below. Etsy’s discount guide says you may not manipulate “pricing history” or “discounts or sale timing” to trigger strikethrough pricing, and that a struck-through price must be “the genuine, usual price”, offered “for a substantial period”, and sold “in reasonable quantities”.

What each law says, from its own text:

The two standards differ. The FTC asks whether the higher price was a real, sustained asking price. The EU rule is a calculation: whatever your lowest price was in the 30 days before the discount starts is the “before” price, even if you charged it for only one day. Etsy’s guide also lists the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Canada’s Competition Act and France’s Code de la consommation. We haven’t summarised those here. Etsy’s guide reminds sellers that the legal requirements of the places “to which you sell” apply, not only their own.

A worked example (our numbers, not Etsy’s)

A print sells at $30 all autumn. On 10 November the seller raises it to $40, then joins Cyber Specials at 25% off on 23 November. Buyers see $40 struck through and $30 to pay.

• Under the EU rule, the prior price is the lowest price in the 30 days before 23 November, which is 24 October to 22 November. That is $30. Against $30, the “25% off” is no reduction.
• Under the FTC guide, 13 days at $40 resembles the guide’s own example of a “fictitious former price”: a retailer raises fountain pens from $7.50 to $10, keeps that price for “only a few days”, then advertises the cut back to $7.50 as a bargain.
• Under Etsy’s policy, it is a change to pricing history made to trigger strikethrough pricing, which the guide says you may not do.

If 25% off your current price is more than your margin can take, two options stay inside these rules: skip the marketing-feature bar and join the event with a smaller discount, or put fewer listings in the sale.

Does Cyber Specials affect a sale you run in December?

In the EU, it can. Because the prior price is the lowest price in the 30 days before a new reduction, your Cyber price becomes the price to beat for a while after the event. If your Cyber discount runs to 1 December and a member state uses the minimum 30 days, a new reduction starting on or before 31 December has 1 December inside its window, so it must show the Cyber price as the prior price. From 1 January the window no longer reaches the event. Count from your own dates, and check the period in each country you sell to, because the directive sets 30 days as a minimum.

Article 6a(5) lets member states treat a reduction that steps up as one reduction, so the price before the first step stays the prior price. Germany’s PAngV § 11(2) does this for a reduction that rises “ohne Unterbrechung” (without interruption). Etsy’s way of changing a discount is to end the sale and start a new one. Neither law text, nor Etsy, says whether that gap breaks the chain, so the simplest course is to pick your discount once, before 23 November.

A checklist before 23 November

1. Check each listing’s price history. If a price went up since 24 October, your EU buyers’ prior price is the lower figure.
2. Pick one discount and keep it for the whole event. 25% is the Help article’s bar for marketing features (30% in the UK).
3. Join under Marketing → Sales and discounts, and confirm no other sale on the same listings is set higher.
4. Get your Share & Save links now and use them in posts and emails, not in Etsy Messages or listing descriptions.
5. Set processing times and shipping profiles you can meet in Cyber week. The carrier cutoffs are in our 2026 holiday shipping dates.

Holiday HQ’s other advice for the season is about listings: clear titles “in the words holiday shoppers actually use” and all 13 tags. If you are updating listings before the event, the free generator at /generate drafts a title, 13 tags and a description from a short product description.