Walmart fired the starting gun on Black Friday early this year. Its first sale of the season, Early Black Friday Deals, went live online at 12:01 a.m. ET on Thursday, November 12, and runs through Sunday, November 15, with in-store deals starting at 6 a.m. local time the same day.
This is only the first of three Walmart events. The main Black Friday sale follows during Thanksgiving week, November 23 to 29, and a Cyber Monday sale closes the run from November 30 to December 2. If you miss something this weekend, it is worth knowing the calendar — the same item may return in a later wave, and the deepest cuts tend to land in the main event.
There is one catch to the timing. Walmart+ members get the first 24 hours on a set of online-only hot Deal drops, and whatever is left opens to everyone at 12:01 a.m. ET on Friday, November 13. The hottest items — TVs and game-ready laptops especially — can sell out before the general window opens, so the early hours matter more than the headline dates suggest.
We checked the roundups against Walmart’s live listings on November 12, and four deals stood out as genuinely worth a look. The headliner is LG’s 65-inch C6 OLED TV, one of the biggest screen discounts in the opening drop. On the computing side, MSI’s Cyborg 15.6-inch gaming laptop with an RTX 5050 and 16GB of memory is the budget gaming pick of the event, and it is the rare laptop deal in this sale that is sold by Walmart itself rather than a marketplace seller.
The kitchen is where the sale is most consistent. Ninja’s Crispi 4-quart glass air fryer is one of the most widely confirmed cuts of the drop, and the larger Ninja Prestige Smart XL air fryer and countertop oven is the upgrade pick if you want one appliance to cover air frying and baking. Both showed up across independent roundups with matching listings on Walmart’s site the same day.
A word of caution before you buy: prices during these events move fast, and some roundups published this morning already list figures that no longer match Walmart’s live pages. We left out every deal we could not confirm in a second source, and the items above are the ones that held up across independent checks. Check the live listing and the seller — Walmart or the brand’s own store — before you check out, because marketplace sellers can show a different price on the same page.
The Bit Take: Walmart’s early sale is real, and the TV, laptop and kitchen picks above are the ones that survived a second check. The deals that matter most tend to go first, so if one of these is already on your list, the first 24 hours are the window — not the weekend.
Sources:
Tom’s Guide — Walmart’s early Black Friday sale just dropped: 25 deals I’m adding to my cart, November 12, 2026: https://www.tomsguide.com/sales-events/walmart-black-friday-deals-drop-nov-12-2026-shopping-editor-picks
Popular Science — Walmart early Black Friday deals: 82 picks, from $5 to $998, November 12, 2026: https://www.popsci.com/gear/gear-best-walmart-black-friday-deals/
CNN Underscored — Our favorite products are at their lowest prices in Walmart’s early Black Friday sale, November 12, 2026: https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/deals/walmart-black-friday-deals-2026-11-12?cid=external-feeds_iluminar_meta
Fabulessly Frugal — Walmart Early Black Friday Deals Are Live Now (November 12–15), November 12, 2026: https://fabulesslyfrugal.com/deals/walmart-black-friday-cyber-monday/
The Globe Buzz — Walmart Early Black Friday Deals Go Live: Offers and Sale Dates Through Nov. 15, November 12, 2026: https://theglobuzz.com/2026/11/12/walmart-early-black-friday-deals-live-november-2026/
TechAeris — Black Friday 2026 Tech Deals Hub, November 12, 2026: https://techaeris.com/2026/11/05/black-friday-2026-tech-deals-hub/
