When Is the Next Steam Sale? Valve's Confirmed Dates Through Summer 2027

By Lowstamp Editor · 2026-08-29

Straight to the answer: the next Steam sale is the Autumn Sale, and it runs from October 1 to October 8, 2026. It opens and closes at 10:00 AM Pacific (1:00 PM Eastern), which makes it a short one, just seven days. After that comes the Winter Sale on December 17, the longest of the year, running all the way through January 4.

These dates aren't anybody's guess. Valve publishes them in advance in the official documentation it keeps for developers and publishers, usually releasing six months' worth at a time, anywhere from five to eleven months ahead. So there's no need to predict when the next sale might land. You can just look it up.

Valve's confirmed seasonal sale dates

As things stand, Valve has published dates through the Summer 2027 sale. Every seasonal sale opens and closes at 10:00 AM Pacific time, which is 1:00 PM Eastern.

Autumn Sale: October 1 to October 8, 2026 (7 days)
Winter Sale: December 17, 2026 to January 4, 2027 (18 days)
Spring Sale: March 18 to March 25, 2027 (7 days)
Summer Sale: June 24 to July 8, 2027 (14 days)

That 10:00 AM Pacific start matters more than it sounds. If you're on the East Coast, a sale that starts today has already been running for three hours by lunchtime. And because sales end at the same hour, the final day is really only a morning. If you plan to grab something on the last day, do it before 10 AM Pacific, not after dinner.

The thing most sites still get wrong: the Autumn Sale isn't in November anymore

This is the most important part of the page. Through 2024, the Autumn Sale landed in late November, right around Black Friday. Then in 2025 Valve moved it forward by almost two months, to late September and early October. This year's October 1 start follows that same pattern.

The problem is that the web is still full of older articles saying Steam's Autumn Sale happens in late November. Believe those and wait, and you end up waiting for a sale that already ended, and then you're stuck for another two and a half months until the Winter Sale in mid-December. That's a long time to sit on a game you could have bought cheaply.

Valve never explained the change publicly. But the practical upshot is clear: there's no Steam seasonal sale in November anymore. If you hear about a big Steam discount event in November, it's either one of the smaller themed sales described below, or an individual game running its own promotion.

Which of the four is actually the biggest? Length is your clue

The four seasonal sales don't carry equal weight, and the easiest way to gauge them is by how long Valve keeps them open. Longer sales tend to pull in more participating games and deeper cuts. Winter is the longest at 18 days, Summer runs 14, and Spring and Autumn get a week each.

Winter Sale (18 days): the biggest event of the year, with the widest participation.
Summer Sale (14 days): the other heavyweight. Big-budget releases tend to take their deepest cuts here.
Spring Sale (7 days): short and comparatively modest, but still clearly cheaper than a normal week.
Autumn Sale (7 days): similar in scale to Spring, with the feel of a last chance before Winter.

So if a game isn't urgent, aiming for Summer or Winter is the statistically better bet. But that's a general tendency, not a rule for any specific game. Plenty of titles hit their lowest tracked price during a Spring sale and then offer something unremarkable in December. More on that below.

The event that looks like a sale but isn't: Next Fest

Look at Steam's calendar and you'll see a big event called Next Fest three times a year. The name is loud and the whole storefront lights up for it, so it's easy to mistake for a sale. It isn't one. Next Fest is a festival of demos for games that haven't launched yet. It's not a place to open your wallet. It's a place to try things before you ever have to.

Next Fest: October 19 to October 26, 2026
Next Fest: February 22 to March 1, 2027
Next Fest: June 14 to June 21, 2027

There's actually a thrifty way to use it. Play the demos, wishlist the ones you liked, and when those games launch and eventually run their first discount, you'll be buying something you already know you enjoy. That's a much better feeling than refunding a blind purchase two hours in.

The themed sales that fill the gaps

Nothing much happens between the big sales, right? Not quite. Valve runs smaller events almost every month, each built around a genre or theme, discounting only the games that fit. They're nowhere near the scale of a seasonal sale, but if a game you've been eyeing happens to match the theme, the price can be just as good. Here's a sample of what's coming up.

PvE Survival Crafting Fest: August 31 to September 7, 2026
Party-Based RPG Fest: September 14 to September 21, 2026
Cooking Fest: October 12 to October 19, 2026
Steam Scream V (horror): October 26 to November 2, 2026
Auto-Battler RPG Fest: November 16 to November 23, 2026

Themed sales only touch games that fit the theme, which is exactly why the next big sale being two months away isn't as discouraging as it sounds. If the game you want is a horror title, Steam Scream in late October is effectively its sale. If it's a survival game, that window already passed at the end of August.

Knowing the dates doesn't actually get you a good price

If you've read this far and marked your calendar, you're halfway there. The other half is a slightly uncomfortable truth: a seasonal sale doesn't mean every game hits its cheapest price. A game can wear a 70% badge during the Summer Sale and still be more expensive than it was last December at 75%.

The reverse happens just as often. Some ordinary week with no sale attached, a game quietly drops below anything it has charged before. Every game has its own discount rhythm, and the seasonal sales are just a large wave rolling over the top of it.

What matters isn't the discount percentage. It's the gap between today's price and the lowest price we've tracked for that game.

Buy now, or wait for the sale?

In practice, four questions at the checkout screen are enough. Work through them in order and the answer usually falls out on its own.

Find the lowest price we've tracked for this game, and compare it to today's price.
If today's price is at or near that low, stop deliberating. Buy it.
If the gap is noticeably wide, count the days to the next big sale. Under two weeks is worth waiting for.
If you'd be waiting months, count the time you won't be playing as part of the cost. Saving five dollars isn't always worth three months.

Lowstamp handles the first two steps for you. Search for a game and you'll see today's price next to the lowest we've tracked, with the gap between them worked out into a plain verdict, a receipt stamp that tells you whether it's a good moment to buy. For step three, the countdown beside the page tracks the confirmed dates listed here. Star the games you're watching and you can check them all at once later, when prices have moved.

One thing to be upfront about: Lowstamp only started recording prices in June 2026. So the low you see here isn't the cheapest this game has ever been since release. It's the cheapest we've seen while watching. For older games in particular, there may well have been a better price before we started. That gets more accurate as our records grow, but for now it's worth knowing.

When does this calendar get longer?

Valve typically publishes six months of dates at a time, twice a year, in late January and mid-July. That means the Autumn and Winter 2027 dates will most likely surface around late January 2027. Until then nobody knows the exact days, and if you find a site that already lists them, those are estimates extrapolated from past years.

The dates here are taken directly from Valve's official event schedule for developers, and this page gets updated whenever new dates are announced. In the end there's only one thing to memorize: know roughly when the next big sale is, but when you're actually staring at the buy button, look at the game's price history rather than the calendar. That single habit does more than anything else to stop you overpaying.