Q4 2026 social media calendar: key dates and a week-by-week plan

What are the key Q4 2026 dates for social media?

The big ones are Halloween on Saturday 31 October, Diwali on Sunday 8 November, Veterans Day and Singles' Day on 11 November, Thanksgiving on Thursday 26 November, Black Friday on 27 November, Cyber Monday on 30 November, GivingTuesday on 1 December, Hanukkah from 4 to 12 December, then Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Not every date suits every account. A retailer lives on Black Friday and Cyber Monday; a nonprofit on GivingTuesday; a local business on Small Business Saturday. Pick the four or five that fit your audience and give them proper campaigns, rather than a token post for every date on the list.

For the full list of smaller observances, with hashtags, our social media holidays calendar has every month of 2026.

When is Black Friday 2026, and when should you start posting?

Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November, so the shopping weekend runs from Thanksgiving on the 26th to GivingTuesday on 1 December. Start teasing offers in the first half of November, have every post for the week scheduled by 20 November, and keep the weekend itself for replies and live updates.

Many shoppers plan before the day, so the weeks before matter as much as the weekend. Use early November to build interest: what is coming, who it is for, and how to get early access if you offer it.

From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, post more often than usual but keep each post simple: the offer, the deadline and where to buy. Plan one post for when each offer ends, because last-chance reminders are often the most useful posts of the weekend.

A week-by-week Q4 plan from 26 October to 31 December 2026

Spend the last week of October on goals and Halloween, the first three weeks of November building and scheduling Black Friday content, the week of 23 November running the shopping weekend, early December on GivingTuesday, Hanukkah and gift posts, mid-December on last-chance posts, and the final two weeks on greetings and your year in review.

The plan assumes you post a few times a week on each network and lift the pace around the shopping weekend. Shift the weeks to match your own launches, and drop any date that does not fit your audience.

How to post over Christmas and New Year without burning out

Schedule your greetings and any sale posts before the holidays start, cut your posting pace to what one person can monitor, and decide in advance who checks comments and messages on which days. Posting less over Christmas is fine; leaving a question or complaint unanswered for a week is what hurts.

A short rota works well: one person checks replies once or twice a day on the days the team is off, with a saved list of answers to common questions such as delivery times and opening hours.

Postify can publish everything you scheduled while you are away, and from the Plus plan, comments and replies from your networks land in one inbox, so whoever is on the rota does not need to open every app.

How to plan Q4 posts in a scheduler

Put the key dates in your calendar first, then work back from each one: when the teaser goes out, when the main post goes out, and when the reminder goes out. Schedule each post as soon as it is approved internally, so the busy weeks are about replies, not production. A queue keeps the everyday posts flowing between campaigns.

In Postify, you schedule each post for an exact date and time, or, from the Plus plan, add everyday posts to a queue that fills your weekly time slots. Repeating posts, also from the Plus plan, suit recurring formats such as a weekly gift idea through December.

If you use your own AI assistant, such as Claude or ChatGPT, Postify's MCP server lets it draft and schedule posts in your Postify account. Every plan includes it. For the calendar layout itself, columns, content pillars and a monthly checklist, use our content calendar template.