Four Leading Holiday Gift Wishes in the US, 2026
Key Findings
🏆
Gift cards leads in share wishing to receive category (%) with 47 in 2026.
📊
Average share wishing to receive category (%) in 2026: 35 · median: 34.50.
↔️
Gap in 2026: Gift cards is 2× larger than Personal care or beauty items.
About This Dataset
Four Leading Holiday Gift Wishes in the US, 2026
Gift cards lead the four categories reported in NRF’s release at 47%, followed by clothing at 44%, books and other media at 25%, and personal care or beauty items at 24%. The question concerns gifts people want to receive, not gifts they plan to buy for others.
NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics surveyed 8,094 US adults on October 1–7, 2026; the reported margin of error for the overall survey is ±1.1 percentage points. The release reports selected results, not the complete questionnaire. These are stated intentions ahead of the winter holidays, not observed purchases or a forecast of sales by channel.
Wish lists can contain several categories. These responses do not measure spending shares, retail revenues or the number of gifts purchased. The four categories are the quantified leading wishes in the press release; no values have been invented for other products.
Sources checked October 26, 2026. Equal values represent ties; display order does not break a tie.
NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics surveyed 8,094 US adults on October 1–7, 2026; the reported margin of error for the overall survey is ±1.1 percentage points. The release reports selected results, not the complete questionnaire. These are stated intentions ahead of the winter holidays, not observed purchases or a forecast of sales by channel.
Wish lists can contain several categories. These responses do not measure spending shares, retail revenues or the number of gifts purchased. The four categories are the quantified leading wishes in the press release; no values have been invented for other products.
Sources checked October 26, 2026. Equal values represent ties; display order does not break a tie.
Analysis
Gift cards lead clothing by 3 percentage points. Books and other media exceed personal care or beauty by only 1 point; the release does not provide the information needed to establish significance of that small difference.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- NRF / Prosper Insights & Analytics — October 20, 2026 holiday survey
- Coverage
- 4 entities · 2026 · 4 observations
- Measure
- share wishing to receive category (%)
- Last updated
- 26 October 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values use the measure and unit named on this page. Consult the dataset description and cited source for coverage, definitions and any unit conversions. Displayed values may be rounded for readability.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 2026.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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