Halloween has quietly become one of the most expensive nights of the American parenting calendar, and 2026 is no exception. Consumer spending on the holiday is expected to reach $13.5 billion this year, maintaining the record pace set in 2025 and cementing Halloween as a genuine retail season rather than a single-day event.
For parents, the interesting story isn't the headline number — it's what's inside it. Families are spending more deliberately than ever, shopping months earlier, repurposing what they already own, and funnelling their money toward a narrower set of purchases their kids actually care about. Here's what parents are planning to buy for their children this Halloween, and why.
The Big Picture: Parents Are the Engine
Nationally, the average celebrant plans to spend $115.14 this year, essentially flat against 2025's $114.45. That headline stability hides a wide spread.
Parents — and millennials in particular — are the ones pulling that average upward. PwC's 2026 consumer poll found the average Halloween budget rises to $368 among millennials, many of them parents juggling school parties, trunk-or-treats and neighbourhood events. When it comes to costumes specifically, parents plan to spend $74 versus $37 for non-parents, roughly double. On event tickets, the gap is the same: $52 versus $26.
Employer-benefits firm Empower's survey puts the same pattern in starker terms: Americans expect to spend an average of $296 on Halloween overall, with millennials at $522 and Gen Z at $435. Within that, parents' line items average out to roughly $56 per child in costumes and $58 on candy.
What Kids Are Asking to Be
The costume category is where the money meets the begging. Total costume spending is expected at $4.4 billion, with $1.5 billion of that on children's costumes alone — up from $1.4 billion in 2025.
Spider-Man Still Runs the Show
The single most requested costume in America is unchanged: Spider-Man. The NRF projects 4.6 million children will dress as the web-slinger this year, up from 2.3 million in 2025 — a doubling that speaks to a franchise in overdrive, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day in theatres. A further 2.3 million will go as another superhero.
PwC's poll found Spider-Man named nearly three times as often as the next most popular kids' costume, with other superheroes and Bluey rounding out the top three.
The Rest of the Top Five
Rounding out the NRF's children's top five: 2.2 million as a princess, then 1.6 million as a witch and 1.6 million as a ghost.
The 2026 Breakout List
Beyond the classics, a distinct cluster of new characters is driving real demand. Retailer trend reports for 2026 converge on a kids' costume list of KPop Demon Hunters, Spider-Man, Descendants, Minions and Toy Story.
Toy Story is a case study in how a film release resets costume demand. With Toy Story 5 in cinemas this year, Woody, Buzz, Jessie and Sulley costumes have flooded the mid-price tier — commonly $39.99 to $59.99 — and retailers are openly positioning them as group-family costumes.
Anime and gaming continue their climb. One Piece, Pokémon, Super Mario Bros., Minecraft, Moana and Harry Potter all show up repeatedly in retailer hot lists, and they're especially attractive to parents because they work for sibling groups and friend packs.
Age Matters More Than Ever
The costume market in 2026 is really three markets.
For preschoolers (2–6), the surprise trend is sensory-toy cosplay. The viral rise of squishies — NeeDoh stress balls and their many imitators — has produced a wave of pillowy neon tunics and bao-dumpling suits with steamer-basket hats, chosen as much for huggability as for recognisability.
For tweens (11–13), 2026 is a throwback year. A wave of Y2K nostalgia — Camp Rock 3, Hilary Duff's arena tour, the dELiA*s revival at Target — has made portable CD players, foam-padded headphones, handheld camcorders and landline phones into costume props, sometimes more desirable than the outfit itself.
For teens, horror and anime dominate, with Ghostface, Backrooms-inspired looks and Greek-mythology themes all flagged as trending.
Beyond the Costume: What Else Is in the Cart
Costumes get the attention, but parents buy a good deal more.
Decorations are now the single largest family category at $4.3 billion. Seventy-eight percent of consumers plan to buy them. The centerpiece purchase for a certain kind of household is the animatronic — a motion-activated, sometimes nine-foot-tall figure that turns a front yard into a walkthrough. Spirit Halloween, which runs 1,575 seasonal locations in the US, unveiled eleven new animatronic characters for 2026, and big-box rivals have followed with retro-themed pieces like motion-activated keytar-playing reapers. Prices for the marquee pieces run from roughly $349.99 for a nine-foot light-up figure to $549.99 for a seven-foot pumpkin-headed centrepiece.
Candy remains the universal purchase, at $4.1 billion and 96% participation — effectively every household that celebrates.
Smaller themed toys and accessories fill the gaps between costume and candy: light-and-sound character figures, Halloween-themed building sets, plush black cats and character figurines. These are the impulse buys that land at $15–$65 and often get opened before October 31.
Pet costumes are a real line item now, at roughly $920 million, with pumpkins, hot dogs and ghosts leading.
And a growing share of parents are buying a toy for themselves. Kidults now account for roughly a quarter of US toy sales, and 81% of parents say they're likely to add a toy or game for themselves to their shopping list — up from 72% the year before.
The Affordability Playbook
The most distinctive feature of Halloween 2026 is how carefully parents are shopping.
They started early. About half of consumers (49%) began Halloween shopping in September or earlier. PwC found 28% started in July or August, up sharply from 16% in 2025 — and millennials, many of them parents, lead that early-bird group.
They repurpose aggressively. Families with children are the most likely group to reuse what they already have: 60% repurpose costume items and 76% repurpose décor from previous years.
They're comparison shopping across income levels. Households earning $75,000–$150,000 are the most likely to compare prices (36%), while higher-income households watch hardest for coupons and sales (30%). Overall, 34% say buying with future reuse in mind is their main strategy.
They're mixing DIY with premade. A quarter of consumers plan to make costumes by hand — nearly matching the 30% buying ready-made — and AI has become a genuine planning tool, with parents prompting it to turn a cardboard box into a pet costume or plan a party on a fixed budget.
There's a concrete reason for all this caution. Tariffs are front of mind: 79% of shoppers expect Halloween prices to be higher this year specifically because of them. Candy costs have risen sharply — up more than 78% between 2020 and 2025 — and Bankrate economists calculate that a 2026 candy budget buys roughly 40% less candy by weight than the same money did in 2020.
What It Adds Up To
If you're building a realistic budget for one child this year, the data suggests a shape like this: $50–$75 on a costume if you're buying premade, less if you're repurposing; $30–$60 on candy to hand out, though that figure can climb fast; and $50–$100 on décor if you're adding to a collection rather than reusing last year's. That puts a typical family of four with two children in the $200–$350 range — consistent with PwC's $368 millennial average and Empower's $296 national figure.
Three forces are shaping 2026 more than any other. Franchise timing — a Spider-Man film, a Toy Story sequel, a KPop Demon Hunters phenomenon — determines what kids ask for, and parents mostly say yes. Cost pressure — tariffs, cocoa prices, narrower candy bags — determines how they buy it, which is early, comparatively, and with reuse in mind. And nostalgia cuts both ways: parents are buying Y2K props for their tweens while simultaneously reaching for the cowboys, princesses and ghosts they wore themselves.
The through-line is that Halloween has stopped being about a single costume and become a season-long family project. The $1.5 billion parents will spend on children's costumes is really the entry fee for a much larger set of purchases — décor, accessories, party supplies, pet outfits and the small themed toys that keep the excitement going for six weeks. Retailers have noticed. So have parents, who are now planning in August for a night in October.