Ramadan and Eid shopping: when the discounts actually land

Ramadan and the two Eids are the Gulf's second great shopping season, and unlike White Friday they move about eleven days earlier each year because they follow the lunar calendar. That drift is the single most useful thing to understand: a sale you remember from spring will, a few years later, fall in winter.

The two different moments

Ramadan itself leans toward groceries, home and hosting - the things a household buys to prepare. The run-up to Eid shifts to fashion, beauty, gifts and travel, as people buy for the celebration and the days off. Timing a fashion purchase for the Ramadan grocery peak, or vice versa, means shopping the wrong sale.

Because the dates move, follow the page

Rather than trust a remembered date, the sale-event pages here update to the current year, and the moon-sighting-dependent windows are shown as ranges rather than fixed days - because that is the truth of a lunar date. When a store is confirmed to be running an Eid campaign in your country, it appears there.