Spooky season by the numbers: Halloween app trends for 2026

Halloween planning starts well before October. Platform data from The Trade Desk shows Halloween-related content consumption across the open internet climbing steadily in the months before the holiday—up 22% from July to August, another 25% into September, then 58% into October. According to the National Retail Federation's recent survey of U.S. consumers, 49% now say they start planning before October, up from just 34% a decade ago, and 74% plan to take part this year, up from 68% before the pandemic. U.S. Halloween spending is projected to hit a record $13.5 billion, up from last year's $13.1 billion.

Marketers now know consumers are planning earlier and spending more. To see exactly where that shows up, on which days, which markets, and which categories, we pulled Adjust's data from Halloween 2025 across the six weeks around the holiday.

Food and drink sessions were flat from Sunday through Thursday, then jumped on Friday and Saturday nights. The weekend before Halloween was one of the strongest of the whole ten-week stretch as October 25 was up 11%, just behind the single highest day in the data, October 4, at 13%.

Across all entertainment apps, installs were the strongest the weekend before Halloween—up 42% on Saturday, October 25 and 44% on Sunday, October 26. That same stretch also delivered entertainment's best YoY numbers of the month: installs were up 130% on October 25 and 100% on October 26, each compared with the same date in 2024. That's well above Halloween weekend itself as Friday the 31st came in at 18%, and Saturday, November 1 at 29%.

By country, the pre-Halloween Saturday isn’t a universal pattern for OTT, streaming and video content apps. The U.S. (+370%) and U.K. (+354%) both peaked on October 25. Germany saw its biggest lift a day later, on October 26 (+137%). Canada installs jumped to 342% on October 25, fell back to just 60% two days later, then climbed again over the following week to 537% on November 2.

Photo and video sessions don't drift toward a pre-holiday weekend the way entertainment installs do. Their strongest day is Halloween itself. To measure that growth properly, we compared Halloween sessions to the median of the four Fridays before it. We selected Fridays, because Halloween 2025 fell on a Friday, so this isolates the Halloween effect from the normal end-of-week bump every app sees.

Halloween is one night on the calendar, but the data shows the opportunity opens well before October 31 and, in some markets, lingers after it. Real-time, cross-channel measurement is what turns a single spooky night into a season of informed decisions.

OTT and streaming app activity surged in every market we looked at, but on different days. A single global send date would have missed at least one of those markets. With Adjust, you can see which day each market's installs and sessions actually peak and shift budget there directly.

Photo and video sessions saw a big boost on Halloween night, then faded back to normal within three or four days. Pulse alerts can flag a jump like that the moment it starts, and with Audiences you can build the segment of users showing up that night in each market, so the message goes out while the window is still open.

TrueLink can then send that user straight to the event, or promotion built for that specific night. This would be especially useful in a market like Mexico, where activity runs a few days past Halloween into Día de los Muertos. With Adjust's AI Solutions, you can ask a direct question about your own campaign like which market's spike just started, or how much of last night's installs are showing up as sessions today, then get a straight answer back.

If you want to see how Adjust can work for your Halloween campaign, request a demo today!