The Steam Autumn Sale starts October 1 at roughly 10 AM Pacific and runs through October 8. That date comes from Valve's official Steamworks schedule, not a leak. One correction to the old mental model first: the Autumn Sale used to double as Black Friday in late November, but Valve moved it to early October starting in 2025. This year Black Friday gets its own Special Offers hub on the store, with dates still unannounced. So after this week-long sale, the next storewide event is the Winter Sale on December 17, two and a half months later.
Everything left in 2026
| Event | Dates | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Autumn Sale | Oct 1-8 | Storewide seasonal sale |
| Cooking Fest | Oct 12-19 | Themed fest, cooking/restaurant games |
| Next Fest | Oct 19-26 | Free demos of upcoming games, not discounts |
| Steam Scream V | Oct 26-Nov 2 | Horror fest, timed for Halloween |
| Auto-Battler Fest | Nov 16-23 | Auto-battlers |
| Black Friday hub | Late November, dates TBA | Aggregated publisher discounts |
| Winter Sale | Dec 17-Jan 4 | Longest sale of the year, ~3 weeks |
The distinction worth holding onto: seasonal sales discount most of the catalog at once, while fests only discount games in one genre and ship a wave of free demos. Next Fest is for finding next year's breakout early, not for buying.
Three mechanics to know before you buy
First, sale prices don't move. Valve killed flash deals and daily rotations back in 2015; the discount you see in the first hour is the discount on the last day. There's no strategic reason to wait once you've decided.
Second, refunds don't change during sales. Fourteen days from purchase, under two hours played, same as always. Buying the wrong edition or a game your machine can't run has a safety net.
Third, discount percentages tend to repeat across consecutive sales. A game at 33% off in October will most likely be 33% off again in December. The exception is titles fresh off a big update or a 1.0 launch, which sometimes take their first real cut at a seasonal sale.
How to check if a deal is actually a low
The store page's percentage is measured against the list price, not against history. SteamDB and IsThereAnyDeal keep full price curves for every game, so you can see in ten seconds whether this is an all-time low or a rerun. For multi-store comparison, IsThereAnyDeal also tracks authorized resellers like Humble and Fanatical.
The lazy version is the wishlist: Steam emails you when anything wishlisted goes on sale. Load the wishlist during fest demo weeks and let Valve do the price-watching.
What to buy, in three buckets
The evergreen classics. These return to the discount table every sale and hit all-time lows regularly: Stardew Valley, Terraria, Hollow Knight, Balatro, Hades, Disco Elysium, The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring. The catch is that "on sale" and "at its lowest" are different things for games that discount this often; check the curve before assuming.
First cuts on this year's releases. Strong 2026 titles and post-launch hits like Hollow Knight: Silksong tend to take their first discount at a seasonal sale if they discount at all, and the next matching price usually waits for winter. Whether a specific game participates is a store-page check on October 1.
Games that never go on sale. Factorio is the famous case: the developers have a public no-discount policy, so waiting for a sale on it is pointless. Some small, stubbornly full-priced indies sit in the same bucket; their wishlist emails never fire because there's nothing to announce.
Three things to do tonight
Fill the wishlist while demos are easy to browse. Run your shortlist through SteamDB so you know each game's all-time low. Set a budget, because "day-one price equals whole-sale price" means you have a full week to choose and no reason to panic-buy at 10 AM Pacific.
Sources
- Valve's Steamworks event schedule as tracked by GameBrief and KRAB.GG
- SteamDB price history and IsThereAnyDeal
Actual sale lineup is confirmed on the store page October 1.