With Halloween landing on Saturday this year (31 October), retailers are being warned incidents of theft in their stores could rise by as much as 2.5 times the level experienced in 2025.
The data comes from the latest analysis from store intelligence solution providers, SAI. As Halloween continues to grow as a key trading day, it said consumer spending is also expected to rise significantly.
The firm added that take-up by shoppers is on the increase, with 46% of UK shoppers planning to celebrate the occasion, increasing to 78% among families.
Higher footfall
However, while Halloween is now one of the biggest sales events of the UK retail calendar, heightened footfall in-store alongside ongoing economic pressures on household finances mean the event has become a growing target for theft.
New data from the company’s SAI One Platform, which analyses insight from over 1,000 UK retail locations and inputs from over 30k cameras daily, showed in 2025 (where the occasion fell on a Friday), Halloween shoplifting rose by 67% on the daily average.
This year, with Halloween on a Saturday - consistently one of the week’s highest risk days for retail crime - shoplifting is forecast to rise 150% year-on-year.
Partial payment
Partial payment, where a customer only pays for part of their basket while intentionally leaving other items unpaid, is expected to make up the majority of shoplifting attempts on Halloween (58%).
This is followed by grab-and-go theft (33%) and item switching, where a shopper deliberately selects a lower-priced product at self-checkout in place of a higher-value item (8%).
Golden gateway
Clare Hoole, head of UK at SAI, said: “Often regarded as the gateway to the Golden Quarter, Halloween provides retailers with an early opportunity to kick off their peak trading campaigns. But with that potential reward comes risk - and the darker side of Halloween is becoming a growing challenge for retailers wanting to capitalise on seasonal spending.
“Surges in footfall, combined with colleagues focused on servicing busier stores, can create more opportunities for theft…”
“Surges in footfall, combined with colleagues focused on servicing busier stores, can create more opportunities for theft, while more sophisticated offending behaviours - such as partial payment - become harder to detect.”
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