Prime Day is Amazon‘s annual shopping event solely for members of its Prime subscription service.
Unlike Black Friday and other holidays such as Memorial Day and Labor Day, which can also be great times to pick up a bargain, there’s no interesting history behind Prime Day – it’s simply a way for Amazon to push thousands of deals to its millions of subscribers.
It was first held on July 15, 2015, to mark Amazon’s 20th birthday, and immediately became a yearly festival of shopping excess. It’s traditionally been held in July, although the 2020 edition was moved to October due to Covid restrictions, and the 2021 instalment took place in June.
It’s a fully international event these days, too, with the 2024 Prime Day set to include 23 countries in July, plus India later in the year.
The other thing to note about it is that it’s no longer a single-day event, having expanded to be a 48-hour sale in 2017. This year’s Amazon Prime Day takes place on July 16-17.
In recent years Amazon has also run a second Prime Day event in October. We don’t know if it will do the same in 2024, but our guess is that it will do.
Of course, to take advantage of the deals you’ll need to be an Amazon Prime member, although if you’ve never used it before you can sign up for a 30-day Amazon Prime free trial to get access to the deals. This will also let you enjoy the other membership benefits, including free shipping, access to Prime Video and more.