When Does The Steam Halloween Sale Begin?

If you have your eye on a particular game that's available through Steam, you might want to hold off on buying for the time being. Halloween is just a few days away, and usually, Valve likes to host a short Halloween Sale for the occasion. Now, we know when the Halloween Sale will kick-off and when the rest of the major Steam sales for 2021 will be happening.

While we usually have to rely on third-party websites like SteamDB to reveal or predict the dates for upcoming sales, this time around, the confirmation comes from Valve itself. On the Steamworks Documentation website (as reported by Eurogamer), Valve confirms that the Steam Halloween Sale will kick off on Thursday, October 28th, and run through Monday, November 1st.

The database doesn't list start and end times, but given that the Steam store refreshes at 10 AM PT/1 AM ET each day, that will almost certainly be the start time on the 28th and the end time on the 1st. The Halloween Sale is smaller-scale than many of Valve's other Steam sales throughout the year, and it will likely be limited in scope to horror and other spooky games given the theme.

This Steam Documentation entry gives us more dates for upcoming sales between the Halloween one as well. For example, the Steam Autumn Sale will run from November 24th to the 30th, and then at the end of December, we'll get the big Winter Sale. Not only will the Winter Sale last longer than the Halloween and Autumn Sales – Valve says it begins on December 22nd and ends on January 5th – but much of Steam's catalog will be discounted during it.

Expect nominations for the annual Steam Awards to open during the Autumn Sale, with voting to take place during the Winter Sale. In the more immediate future, we've got the Halloween Sale kicking off tomorrow, so it's probably a good idea to wait on making any new purchases until the sale is live just in case the game you're looking to buy gets discounted.