Government · UK · Office for National Statistics
UK Online Retail Share Falls to 28.3% in July 2026
The share of UK retail spending done online fell from 29.2% in June 2026 to 28.3% in July, after retailers ran summer promotions earlier than usual and pulled demand forward into the previous month.
Source published Summarised
Key findings at a glance
- 28.3% of Great Britain retail sales were made online in July 2026, measured by value.
- 29.2% of retail sales were made online in June 2026, the month before the fall.
- 3.9% fall in online spending values over the month to July 2026.
- 6.5% higher online sales values in July 2026 than in July 2025, despite the monthly fall.
- 11.0% growth in online spending values in the three months to July 2026 against the same period a year earlier.
- 3.0% rise in online spending values in the three months to July 2026 against the three months to April.
- 1.1% rise in retail sales volumes in the three months to July 2026 against the three months to April.
- 0.5% fall in retail sales volumes over the single month of July 2026.
- 1.6% higher retail sales volumes in July 2026 than in July 2025.
- 1.3% fall in non-food store sales volumes over the month, led by clothing retailers.
- 0.1% below the pre-pandemic February 2020 level, where July 2026 sales volumes still sit.
- 56.9% response rate on the Retail Sales Inquiry for July 2026, covering 88.4% of sample turnover.
What the report covers
The Office for National Statistics published its first estimate of Great Britain retail sales for July 2026 on 21 August. The release covers both the quantity of goods bought (volumes) and the amount spent (values), split by sector, and it carries a separate internet sales series that reports what share of total retail spending happened online. It is the standard monthly read on UK consumer demand, and the online series is the closest thing the UK has to an official ecommerce penetration figure.
Headline volumes rose 1.1% in the three months to July 2026 against the three months to April, and 3.0% against the same three months of 2025. The monthly picture is the opposite: volumes fell 0.5% in July after a 0.7% rise in June, which was itself revised down from an initially reported 1.0%. Non-food stores fell 1.3% over the month, with clothing the clearest drag.
The online series moved the same way. Online spending values fell 3.9% over the month while total spending fell only 0.6%, so the online share of retail dropped from 29.2% to 28.3%. Retailers gave the ONS a consistent explanation: promotional activity ran earlier than usual, so June absorbed sales that would normally have landed in July. The ONS found corroboration in its own price data, noting in the July 2026 consumer price inflation release that the proportion of discounted clothing items fell between June and July this year, the reverse of what happened over the same weeks in 2025.
What this means for UK marketers
Read on its own, a drop from 29.2% to 28.3% looks like shoppers stepping back from online retail. The year-on-year numbers say otherwise. Online spending values were 6.5% higher than July 2025 and 11.0% higher across the quarter, while total sales volumes rose just 1.6% on the year. Online is still growing considerably faster than retail as a whole. What changed in July was timing, not direction.
That distinction matters commercially, because the timing shift is the actionable finding. If a meaningful share of the market discounted in June and you held to a July plan, you spent your promotional budget into a market that had already bought. The ONS clothing data makes this concrete: discounting was heavier in June and lighter in July, which is the opposite of last year's pattern. Anyone whose paid media calendar was built from last year's dates was structurally late.
Three practical responses. First, stop judging performance month on month against the same month last year when the promotional calendar has moved underneath you. A rolling three-month comparison is the honest read, and it shows a market up 1.1%, not down. Second, treat competitor discount timing as a monitored input to paid media planning rather than an annual assumption. Third, if promotions are arriving earlier each year, the site needs to be able to take them earlier, which is a merchandising and ecommerce build question about how quickly you can stand up a campaign landing page and a pricing change.
The wider backdrop has not moved much. Our earlier report on the June 2026 online share reaching a four-year high covers the run-up to this reading, and the ONS finding that 59% of Britons are still cutting back on non-essentials explains why promotions carry so much weight in the first place. In a market where discounting drives the demand curve, the date you run the offer is doing as much work as the offer itself.
How they got the data
The figures come from the ONS Monthly Business Survey, Retail Sales Inquiry, which samples retailers across Great Britain (not the whole UK, so Northern Ireland is excluded). For July 2026 the response rate was 56.9% based on returned forms, 3.4 percentage points below the twelve-month average, though those responses covered 88.4% of total turnover in the sample population, which is 1.7 percentage points above average. In other words fewer firms replied, but the large ones did.
All headline figures are seasonally adjusted using the X-13ARIMA-SEATS method, applied at industry level and then aggregated. These are accredited official statistics, independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation. Two caveats are worth carrying into any analysis. Early estimates are revised: June 2026 volume growth was revised down from 1.0% to 0.7% in this very release. And the volume series tracks non-store retailing, which is mostly online but also includes market stalls, while the 28.3% online share comes from the separate internet sales values series. Full detail sits in the ONS Retail Sales Index quality and methodology report.
Government · UK
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From Office for National Statistics · published 21/08/2026