Peak-season inbound ship-by planner.

Peak-season inbound ship-by planner: what it does

Amazon publishes its holiday inventory dates as dates by which shipments must arrive. A seller deciding when to book a pickup needs the other end: the last day the carton can leave the warehouse. This planner subtracts, in order, your safety cushion, a check-in allowance, the carrier's transit time and your prep time from Amazon's arrive-by date. Every one of those four numbers is yours, so nothing here pretends to know how long your lane takes.

Read the date against the shipment type you chose in Send to Amazon. In Amazon's 2026 holiday announcement the dates differ by type: the AWD date is two weeks before the Amazon-optimized FBA date, and the minimal-splits date falls between them. Once the planner shows a ship date, test your stock level against it with the FBA inventory runway planner and price the extra units sitting in the warehouse with the FBA storage fee calculator.

Worked example

A seller picks FBA with Amazon-optimized splits, whose arrive-by date is October 28, 2026. She allows a 3-day cushion, 3 days for Amazon to check the cartons in, 5 days of carrier transit and 2 days of prep. The cushion moves the target to Sunday, October 25, 2026; check-in moves it to Thursday, October 22, 2026; transit puts the last ship date at Saturday, October 17, 2026; prep means starting on Thursday, October 15, 2026. That is 13 calendar days in total. On October 26, 2026, the day these dates were checked, that ship date was already nine days past, so the useful answer for her is a faster carrier service or the smaller-first-shipment route, not another date.

How it is calculated and sources

Last ship date = arrive-by date, minus cushion days, minus check-in days, minus transit days. Start-prep date = last ship date minus prep days. All counts are calendar days with no weekend or holiday adjustment, so if your carrier does not move freight on weekends, add days to the transit figure. Amazon's announcement says shipments "must arrive by" the dates; it does not say whether that means delivered to the dock or checked in, so the check-in allowance is left to you. Days left are measured from your device's date.

Source read on 2026-10-26 (as of that date):

• Amazon Seller Central forums: "Holiday 2026: Same fees, same eligibility, earlier deadlines" (posted by Amazon's News_Amazon account, US store). Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday: AWD October 14, 2026, FBA with minimal shipment splits October 21, 2026, FBA with Amazon-optimized shipment splits October 28, 2026. The same post gives the holiday peak fulfillment fee period as October 15, 2026 to January 14, 2027. The page shows only a relative posting date.

What this does not cover

• Prime Big Deal Days deadlines (September 2, 9 and 16, 2026): they have passed, so the planner offers the Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday dates and a field for your own date.
• Other Amazon stores. Amazon's European announcement lists different dates.
• Whether Amazon will accept a late shipment for the event. The announcement's dates are the only rule this page uses.
• Carrier rates or transit times: take those from your carrier.