This year’s Saturday Halloween prompted a surge in store traffic, new data has shown, as shoppers’ adoption of Spooky Season continues to grow.
The latest figures from Sensormatic Solutions’ ShopperTrak Analytics platform, which captures 40bn store visits globally each year, showed that footfall on Halloween (31 Oct 2026) rose +29% year-on-year, while week-on-week it delivered a +13% boost to high street shopper traffic.
This represents a 4.6% increase on 2025’s figures, and a 3% weekly rise. As reported by Convenience Store last month, marketing firm Savvy suggested stores would see a boost in traffic as a result of the day the celebrations fell on this year.
Andy Sumpter, head of consulting and analytics at Sensormatic Solutions, said: “The timing of Halloween on a Saturday this year would have helped retailers capitalise on the event, which continues to grow in popularity with consumers.
“Even as consumer confidence remains shaky, Halloween shoppers put aside their purchasing hesitancy to get into the spirit of ‘Spooky Season’, prompting a rise in store traffic.”
Sharp rise
But it wasn’t all good news this Halloween. Following up on the prediction last week from intelligence providers SAI that shoplifting incidents across the spooky weekend could rise by 2.5%, the company has today revealed figures did indeed rise sharply - with retail theft going up 163% year-on-year.
The increase comes as Halloween continues to grow as a major retail event. Adoption among shoppers is rising, with an estimated 78% of families thought to have celebrated the occasion this weekend and consumer spending expected to have risen 6% year-on-year to £705m, SAI said.
Again, timing was everything. With Halloween falling on a Saturday, often one of the highest risk days for retail loss - the number of instances of theft compared to last year (when the event landed on a Friday) is thought to have amplified.
On top of this, SAI’s data also showed a rise in week-on-week shoplifting of +8%.
Time of day
Theft peaked between 11am and noon on Saturday 31 October, while London remained the biggest Halloween hotspot for retail crime (61%), followed by the South East (18%) and the South West (10%).
Clare Hoole, head of UK at SAI, said: “Halloween’s growing popularity is creating opportunities not only for retailers, but also offenders, as seasonal trading peaks become targeted periods for heightened retail crime.
”What’s increasingly evident is that theft is evolving.”
“What’s increasingly evident is that theft is evolving. Many incidents now occur within otherwise legitimate transactions, making them harder to identify and prevent through traditional methods or passive in-store surveillance systems.”
Partial payment, where a customer only pays for part of their basket while intentionally leaving other items unpaid, was the most common type of shoplifting experienced by retailers on Halloween, accounting for 62% of incidents, followed by grab-and-go (38%), according to SAI’s analysis.
“Halloween is often the first real test of peak-season operations. The trends observed this year suggest retailers should expect theft pressure to remain elevated throughout the Golden Quarter,” Hoole added.
“What we’re already seeing play out in-store reinforces the importance of real-time visibility in allowing retailers to prepare, prevent and react as they enter the busiest trading period of the year.”
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