China's 618 Shopping Festival Sees Flat E-Commerce Sales from Cautious Shoppers
By Reuters | 22 Jun, 2026

Prolonged discounts and cautious households subdued one of the world's largest retail events, gross merchandise value (GMV), a common measure of sales from e-commerce platforms including Alibaba's Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo and Douyin, logged 863.6 billion yuan ($127.48 billion), little changed from last year's 855.6 billion yuan.

China's mid-year "618" shopping festival, once a showcase for the country's booming e-commerce sector, has drawn to a fanfare-free close as prolonged discounts and cautious households blunt the impact of one of the world's largest retail events.

Gross merchandise value (GMV), a common measure of sales from e-commerce platforms including Alibaba's Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo and Douyin reached 863.6 billion yuan ($127.48 billion), almost flat with last year's 855.6 billion yuan, according to data provider Syntun on Monday.

The festival, originally a single-day event celebrating JD.com's founding on June 18, 1998, has evolved into a month-long affair spanning all major e-commerce platforms. Syntun's data is based on sales recorded over a 37-day period from May 13 to June 18.

In recent years it has become harder for major shopping festivals in China to garner the excitement they once did, as the longer sales periods and broader consumer malaise impact their willingness to open their wallets and spend on non-essentials, even at a discount.

Chinese retail sales fell 0.6% year-on-year in ​May, the first decline since ⁠December 2022, when the world's second-largest economy was still under strict COVID-era restrictions.

During the three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday that ended on Sunday, official figures showed that China recorded 124 million domestic tourist trips, up 4.4% year on year. Total domestic tourism spending reached 44.5 billion yuan, up 4%, indicating a slight decline in per capita spending.

According to Syntun, Alibaba's Tmall remained the largest e-commerce platform by GMV during the festival, followed by JD.com and Douyin, which is owned by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

JD.com said the number of customers placing orders throughout the 618 shopping festival reached a new high, without giving an exact number of orders or details about the festival's total sales revenue.

If food delivery and group buying are included in the shopping festival, GMV reached 934 billion yuan, Syntun said, up 4% year on year.

($1 = 6.7745 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Sophie Yu in Beijing; Casey Hall in Shanghai, Editing by William Maclean)