Singles' Day: the complete guide
How a 1993 dorm-room joke became a ¥1.7-trillion shopping season, and how to make the most of it.
Origin: four bare sticks
The date 11/11 is written with four "1"s, which look like four bare sticks (光棍 guānggùn), Chinese slang for single people. Students at Nanjing University are credited with celebrating an "anti-Valentine's" Bachelors' Day around 1993. In 2009, Alibaba's Taobao Mall (now Tmall) ran an 11.11 promotion with just 27 merchants. Sales reached about ¥50 million, and a retail phenomenon was born.
Timeline & sales data
| Year | Milestone | Reported GMV |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | First promotion, 27 merchants | ~¥50M (Alibaba) |
| 2012 | Alibaba files "Double 11" trademarks (later heavily disputed) | ¥19.1B (Alibaba) |
| 2015 | Global gala; 68.7% of sales on mobile; shipments to 232 countries | ¥91.2B (Alibaba) |
| 2019 | Peak single-day era | ¥268.4B (Alibaba) |
| 2020 | Festival extended to 11 days; peak of 583,000 orders/second | ¥498.2B (Alibaba) |
| 2021 | Last year Alibaba published a total (~US$84.5B) | ¥540.3B (Alibaba) |
| 2024 | All-platform estimate; +26.6% YoY | ¥1.44T (Syntun) |
| 2025 | Multi-week campaign; "rational, value-focused" shoppers; +14.2% YoY | ¥1.695T (~US$238B, Syntun) |
Alibaba figures cover its platforms only. Syntun figures are third-party estimates across all major e-commerce and live-stream platforms, so the two series aren't directly comparable. Sources: Alizila, Queue-it, China Skinny, CNBC.
How the modern festival works
- Pre-sale and deposits (预售 / 定金): from mid-to-late October you can lock in a price with a small deposit and pay the balance in the first 11.11 wave.
- Multiple waves: most platforms now run several sale windows from late October through 11 November, and some extend past it.
- Threshold coupons (满减): "spend ¥300, save ¥50" stacks with store discounts. Use our coupon stacker.
- Live-stream shopping: hosts and influencers sell live with exclusive codes. It's a huge share of sales.
- Price guarantees: many platforms promise to refund the difference if the price drops within the period. Check each platform's rules.
- Midnight drops: flash deals go live at 00:00 Beijing time (UTC+8), which is 11:00 am the day before in New York.
Singles' Day dates 2026–2030
| Year | Date | Day | Starts (Beijing) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 11 Nov 2026 | Wednesday | 00:00 UTC+8 |
| 2027 | 11 Nov 2027 | Thursday | 00:00 UTC+8 |
| 2028 | 11 Nov 2028 | Saturday | 00:00 UTC+8 |
| 2029 | 11 Nov 2029 | Sunday | 00:00 UTC+8 |
| 2030 | 11 Nov 2030 | Monday | 00:00 UTC+8 |
Singles' Day outside China
Cross-border marketplaces and many Western, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern retailers now run 11.11 sales, often as a warm-up to Black Friday. For shoppers outside China, the key things are import duties, shipping times (order early for holiday gifts) and avoiding counterfeits.