Retail sales, Great Britain: November 2025

The quantity of goods bought (volume) in retail sales is estimated to have risen by 0.6% in the three months to November 2025 compared with the three months to August 2025. Clothing stores and computer and telecommunication retailers maintained a strong three-monthly performance. Furniture stores also rose following growth over the last five consecutive months.

Retail sales volumes are estimated to have fallen by 0.1% in November 2025, following a fall of 0.9% in October 2025 (revised up from a 1.1% fall in our previous publication) and a rise of 0.8% in September 2025 (revised up from a 0.7% rise in our previous publication). Non-store retailers' volumes dipped as demand for gold slowed, while supermarkets fell for the fourth consecutive month.

Sales volumes rose by 0.6% in the three months to November 2025 compared with the three months to August 2025. Sales volumes were up by 0.7% compared with the three months to November 2024. Sales volumes fell by 0.1% over the month during November 2025, following a 0.9% fall in October 2025, but rose by 0.6% compared with November 2024.

Volumes were down by 3.0% compared with their pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic level in February 2020.

These data are available in our Retail Sales Index dataset.

Sales volumes rose over the three months to November 2025. This was partly because of strong clothing sales in September. Within other non-food stores, computer and telecommunication retailers performed well, which these retailers attributed to new product releases across September and October. Within household goods, furniture retailers' sales volumes rose over the last five consecutive months.

Total sales volumes fell over the month to November 2025. Non-store retailers fell, with online jewellers reporting reduced demand following the price of precious metals stabilising. Supermarket sales volumes fell for their fourth consecutive month, with retailers reporting low footfall. However, this was partly offset by a rise of 1.0% in non-food stores (the total of department, clothing, household, and other non-food stores). Department stores' sales volumes rose, which some retailers attributed to longer Black Friday discounting, while retailers of footwear and leather goods also did well. Sales of automotive fuel recovered from last month's fall, returning to just above September 2025 levels.

Black Friday took place on 28 November 2025. This fell within our November reporting period, which covers the four weeks from 2 November to 29 November 2025, whereas in 2024 Black Friday fell into our December 2024 reporting period. We use seasonal adjustment methods to estimate for these regular impacts, including for recent events, such as promotions as part of Black Friday sales. We therefore advise our users to focus on the seasonally adjusted estimates, which can allow for the evolving changes to consumer patterns over time.

However, looking at our non-seasonally adjusted data (which do not adjust for Black Friday) sales volumes rose by 11.9% over the month to November 2025, compared with a rise of 4.4% in October 2025. As shown in the chart, when Black Friday falls into the November period there is normally a larger monthly rise in November than in either October or December.

November 2025 therefore showed a fairly typical Black Friday effect. The percentage increase on the month was higher than in 2022, roughly in line with 2021, but below that of 2023. Seasonally adjusted volumes fell by just 0.1% over the month, suggesting the Black Friday effect was slightly weaker than usual.

Our Public opinion and social trends, Great Britain: November 2025 release reported that around 3 in 10 adults (31%) planned to shop in the Black Friday sales; 19% reported that they intended to shop less than last year, while 10% intended to shop more.

We talk more about the treatment of Black Friday in our Wrapping up 'Black Friday': How the ONS captures the effect of a major shopping trend blog post.

The amount spent online, known as "online spending values", rose by 3.2% comparing the three months to November 2025 with the three months to August 2025, and by 6.7% compared with the three months to November 2024.

With the monthly series, online sales values rose by 0.7% over the month to November 2025, and by 8.3% when comparing November 2025 with November 2024.

Total spend (the sum of in-store and online sales) rose by 0.1% over the month. As a result, the proportion of sales made online rose from 28.4% in October 2025 to 28.6% in November 2025.

For November 2025, the Retail Sales Index (RSI) survey response rates were 61.2% based on returned forms, 0.3 percentage points below the average of the past twelve months. This accounted for 85.6% of total turnover coverage of the sample population. Historical response information is available in our Retail sales quality tables dataset.

Information on how we calculated the data, including strengths and limitations, and a glossary of relevant terms, is available in our RSI quality and methodology information (QMI).

Seasonal adjustment

Seasonally adjusted estimates are derived by estimating and removing calendar effects (for example, Easter moving between March and April) and seasonal effects (for example, increased spending in December because of Christmas) from the non-seasonally adjusted estimates.

We use the X-13ARIMA-SEATS approach to seasonal adjustment. Seasonal adjustment parameters are monitored closely and regularly reviewed. Improvements following our annual seasonal adjustment review have been implemented in this release. More information is available on our Seasonal adjustment methodology page.

Seasonal adjustment is applied at the industry level, and the seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by industry sector and total retail. As part of our quality assurance approach, residual seasonality checks are completed regularly by our time series analysis team on both the seasonally adjusted series and the indirectly derived aggregate time series. Based on current data, we find no residual seasonality in the main aggregate for monthly retail sales estimates.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in March 2015. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".