Amazon’s Round Two: Prime Big Deal Days Coming in October

If you missed out on some of this year’s Amazon Prime Day deals, have no fear. The online retail giant has announced that its massive membership-only sales event is coming back for a second round this fall.

Although Prime Day has traditionally been a once-a-year affair, Amazon changed the game in 2022 when it followed up its July Prime Days with a new Prime Early Access sale in October. Now, it looks like that wasn’t a one-off, with the fall sale returning for an encore.

This year Amazon is dubbing the event Prime Big Deal Days, which sounds better, as an “Early Access” sale never seemed to make much sense as it was never clear exactly what members were getting early access to. Black Friday holiday deals, we presume, although Amazon never actually said that.

So far, Amazon hasn’t said too much about the shopping event other than the name and that it will be held sometime in October in 19 countries, including the US, Canada, and UK, along with Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, and Sweden. No specific dates have been announced, though, so it’s little more than a teaser at this point.

It’s also not clear exactly how Amazon will run things this time around. For this year’s main Prime Day, Amazon offered an all-new invite-only deal program where members could sign up in advance to get access to the most popular deals — those expected to sell out quickly. It was basically a lottery for access to those red-hot offers that typically sell out within seconds, going only to those who are the fastest on the keyboard.

How to Prepare for October’s Prime Big Deal Days

One thing that is certain is that, like every other Amazon Prime shopping event, you’ll need to be a Prime member to participate. There are a lot of other very good reasons to sign up for Prime, but Amazon also typically allows those with free 30-day trial memberships to participate as well, so if you’ve never used Prime before — or at least haven’t been a member recently — you may be able to cash in on some great deals without having to pay for a membership.

However, if invite-only deals are offered again like last time, you’ll already need to be a Prime member before you can sign up for those. Those began appearing up to three weeks before the July Prime Day sale, so be prepared to plan your membership carefully if you don’t intend to keep it once the Prime sale is over.

If the October event follows the same Prime Day playbook, we can expect Amazon to offer new products with deep discounts every 30 minutes throughout the sale period, which will likely run over two days (48 hours) like it did last fall. Some deals will probably be limited to only day one or day two of the event, and the same limited time “Lightning deals” should also appear.

However, we’ll likely see some big sales in the days and weeks leading up to the event in the form of early Prime Day deals. This is especially common with Amazon’s own products like the Echo speakers, Kindle e-readers, and Fire TV sticks, but it’s not exclusive to those.

Like last year’s “Early Access” event, the timing makes this effectively an advance Black Friday sale. Many of the deals we’ll see in October — especially on Amazon gear — are expected to be the same ones that could be opened to all at the end of November.

Of course, there’s expected to be much more to Prime Big Deal Days than merely gadgets and electronics. Prime Day encompasses everything product category that Amazon sells, which means appliances and other household items, shoes, clothing, jewelry, and much more will all be deeply discounted.

More significantly, other retailers will likely follow suit to compete with Amazon’s pricing, so keep your eye on Best Buy, Target, and Walmart for similar great sales and early Black Friday deals.

Stay tuned, as we’ll have more to share as Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days get closer, and try to highlight some of the best deals on Apple gadgets and accessories as the event kicks off in October.