Peak season is not a different job. It is the same job - pick, pack, label, hand over, answer the customer - at a multiple of the usual volume, in the same hours, partly by people who started on Monday. Most of what goes wrong in it was already wrong in October, at a volume where nobody noticed.
This checklist counts back from Black Friday, Friday 27 November 2026 - the day after the US Thanksgiving holiday, which is Thursday 26 November this year S1 - with Cyber Monday on 30 November. It is written for a store that packs its own orders, a few hundred to a few thousand a month, shipping mostly within the EU. With less than four weeks to go, start at “Four weeks out” and take four things from the six-weeks list with you: the capacity sum, a stock count, the packaging order and the 30-day before-price rule.
The dates that matter this year
| Date | What it is | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Sat 24 Oct / Wed 28 Oct | Start of the 30-day look-back for a discount beginning 23 / 27 November | The before-price you show must be your lowest of at least the previous 30 days S2 |
| Mon 23 Nov – Sun 6 Dec | DHL Paket's “Peak-in-Peak” period in Germany, usually Black and Cyber Week, by DHL's own description S3 | A carrier's definition of when its network is fullest |
| Fri 27 Nov | Black Friday S1 | Orders spike. Parcels mostly do not, yet |
| Mon 30 Nov – Tue 1 Dec | Cyber Monday and the day after | Last year's European parcel peak fell on the same two weekdays S4,S5 |
| Thu 17 – Tue 22 Dec | DHL Paket's 2026 Christmas posting deadlines from Germany: 17 December to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, 19 December to Poland, 22 December within Germany S19 | The only 2026 cut-offs published when we checked |
| 17–20 Dec (2025 dates) | Last year's Christmas cut-offs for lockers, postal and Baltic cross-border parcels S6,S7 | The last hand-over that arrived before Christmas. Baltic 2026 dates not yet published |
| Mid-Dec – Jan | Returns from peak orders | 14 days to withdraw, then up to 14 more to send the goods back S8 |
Checked on 5 November 2026: DHL Paket had published its 2026 cut-offs S19; Omniva, Lietuvos paštas / LP EXPRESS, DPD in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Germany, Venipak, Smartposti, Latvijas Pasts, InPost, Poczta Polska and DHL Express had not, so the 17–20 December row shows last year's. S6,S7
The fourth row is the easy one to miss. Black Friday is when customers order; the parcels hit the network after the weekend. Geopost, the group behind DPD, recorded its busiest day of the 2025 season on Monday 1 December - Cyber Monday - with 12.2 million parcels across Europe. S4 DHL sorted more parcels in Germany in 24 hours on Tuesday 2 December than ever before: about 12.4 million, against 6.7 million on a normal day. S5
For a store packing its own orders, the equivalent this year is Monday 30 November and Tuesday 1 December. That is reading two carriers' network data onto a small shop's calendar, not a measurement of small shops, but the logic is direct: everything ordered over the weekend wants to leave on Monday.
How big the peak gets
Carriers are the best source on how much more arrives at peak, because they count parcels.
What Baltic carriers said about peak 2025
2×
Smartposti volume, November and December
“The number of parcels sent via SmartPosti doubles every year in November and December compared to regular months.” Smartposti Estonia, 13 November 2025. S9
Up to +50%
LP EXPRESS at peak
Parcels through LP EXPRESS lockers and the postal network increase “by up to 50 percent” during the peak, according to Lietuvos paštas, November 2025. S6
133,000
Parcels sorted in one day in Kaunas
An all-time record for Omniva's largest sorting centre in the 2025 peak, while its Riga lines “operated beyond their defined capacity limits”. S10
Each figure is a carrier describing its own network. None is a count of any one shop's orders.
The large networks saw the same at scale. InPost processed more than 15 million parcels across Europe on the busiest day of the 2025 season. S11 Geopost delivered 392 million parcels across Europe in November and December 2025, up 9.1%, with DPD Poland up 15.1%. S4
Paysera, a payment processor for more than 13,000 e-shops, reported Baltic online spending on Black Friday 2025 up 27% on an average November day S12 - its own merchants only, with no further method published. Our reading: spending up 27% on one day and parcels doubling over two months describe a season with a spike in it. DHL Express said much the same: “Peak season demand is increasingly being spread out over the entire period.” S5 Plan for six weeks, not one.
Six weeks out: stock, SKUs and packaging
Mid-October. Everything here takes longer than the weeks left if you leave it.
- 1
Do the capacity sum
Take this October's daily orders times your multiplier and divide by the orders one person packs in an hour. At 200 orders on the Monday and 20 an hour - both assumptions to replace with your own - that is ten packer-hours before anyone has picked an item or answered an email.
- 2
Buy the stock, then count it
Order against last year's sales by SKU, then count the shelf against what the store says. A wrong stock figure in October oversells in November, and every oversold order is a cancellation email on the busiest day of the year.
- 3
Give every sellable item its own SKU and barcode
Variants included. A packer who has never seen your range cannot tell two shades of the same jumper apart; a scanner can. If products share SKUs or have none, fix it now, not in the week a temporary packer needs it. Why that matters, in detail.
- 4
Turn bundles and gift sets into products
A bundle that exists only as a discount rule becomes three separate picks and a question at the packing table. Pre-pack the popular ones, give each kit its own SKU and barcode, and stock it like any other product.
- 5
Order packaging for more than the peak
Boxes, mailers, void fill, tape and - most often forgotten - label rolls. Your packaging supplier has a peak too. Running out of one box size at three o'clock on the Monday is a cut-off you set yourself.
- 6
Fix your prices 30 days before the discount
Under the EU's Omnibus rules, an announced price reduction must show the prior price: “the lowest price applied by the trader during a period of time not shorter than 30 days prior to the application of the price reduction.” S2 For a discount starting on 27 November that window opens on 28 October; for a Black Week from 23 November, on 24 October. Raising a price in late October does not raise the before-price you may show. Member States may vary the rule for perishable goods, new products and progressive discounts S2; this is a reading of the Directive, not legal advice.
Four weeks out: carriers, capacity and surcharges
End of October. What carriers publish for shops about peak comes down to one word: tell us. Smartposti's 2026 checklist asks online stores to report expected campaign-driven increases - “You do not need to provide exact forecasts” - to check that their courier collection schedule will cope, to test their integrations, and to tell customers the last date to order. S13
Then read the price list. Peak surcharges arrive on an invoice a month after the parcels left.
| Carrier | Peak charge | When |
|---|---|---|
| Omniva, Lithuania | 5% “seasonal index” on parcel machine and courier deliveries, for business customers on list or fixed contract prices unless the agreement excludes it S14 | “annually in November and December” |
| Omniva, Estonia | 7% seasonal index on parcel machine and courier delivery S15 | 1 November – 31 December 2025; no 2026 notice found on 5 November 2026 |
| DHL Express, Estonia | €0.30/kg time-definite within Europe, €0.15/kg day-definite international, €0.10/kg domestic; fuel surcharge on top S16 | 1 October 2026 – 5 February 2027 (domestic 1 November – 31 December) |
| DHL Paket, Germany | €0.19 per parcel, plus €0.50 per parcel “Peak-in-Peak”; returns included S3 | November and December; Peak-in-Peak 23 November – 6 December 2026 |
| DPD, Lithuania | No seasonal surcharge listed. Fuel surcharge 54.95% for November 2026, against 29.8% for November 2025 S17 | Fuel recalculated monthly |
List prices on each carrier's own page, 5 November 2026; your contract may differ. Omniva Lithuania's notice of 1 October 2025 calls the index temporary in its introduction and annual in its price section. S14
If your checkout shows a fixed shipping price, decide before the campaign whether you absorb the November difference or price it in. DHL Express's per-kilogram charges started on 1 October, not on Black Friday. S16
- 1
Send your carrier a forecast
One number per week from mid-November to Christmas; a rough one is fine. S13 Ask what your collection time becomes in peak, whether a second daily collection is possible, and what happens to parcels that miss it.
- 2
Set your dispatch cut-off from the collection time
If the courier comes at 15:00, your same-day cut-off is the last moment an order can still be picked, packed and labelled by 14:30. Put it on the product pages and in the order confirmation, and keep it all season.
- 3
Write down the Christmas cut-offs
DHL Paket has published its 2026 dates for business parcels on a regular pickup in Germany, for normal delivery by 24 December: Thursday 17 December to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and Saturday 19 December to Poland, on Europaket or Paket International Premium, and Tuesday 22 December within Germany. S19 The Baltic carriers had not published theirs by 5 November, so last year's are the guide: Omniva told senders in Lithuania to hand parcels to a courier or parcel machine by 20 December 2025, and by 19 December for Latvia and Estonia S7; LP EXPRESS named 20 December for its parcel machines and 17 December for the postal network within Lithuania S6; DPD in Germany set 17 December 2025 for parcels within Europe. S18 Omniva says every parcel it received by 20 December 2025 arrived before Christmas. S10 This year 20 December is a Sunday, so expect those dates to move. Your customer-facing cut-off is the carrier's, minus your packing time, minus a day.
- 4
Connect a second carrier and print a real label on it
Not as a strategy, as insurance. Omniva got through last year's peak, but with its Riga sorting lines running beyond their defined limits. S10 On a network at its limit, one bad day becomes your bad week. A second carrier that is connected, tested and idle costs almost nothing to keep. More in why one carrier is never enough and getting a carrier business account.
- 5
Decide what you promise, and where you say it
Under the Consumer Rights Directive, if delivery by a date was essential to the sale - including where the customer told you so before buying - and you miss it, the customer “shall be entitled to terminate the contract immediately”. S8 “Order by 15 December for delivery before Christmas” is that kind of promise; make it only when the carrier's dates and your capacity support it. Not legal advice; national law adds detail.
Two weeks out: the packing station and extra hands
Mid-November. The volume is coming. What is left is how fast the station can pack, and how quickly someone new can pack correctly.
- 1
Lay the station out as a line
Shelves, then a picking trolley or batch crate, then the packing table, then the label printer, then one crate per carrier. Every order moves in one direction, and nothing sits on the table that is not being packed.
- 2
Pick in batches, pack one order at a time
Walk the shelves once for all of the morning's orders, summed by product, rather than once per order, and split the batch at the table. On a busy day the walking is where the hours go.
- 3
- 4
Train temporary packers on one job, with a check that does not rely on memory
Give each new person one task - picking or packing, not both - a one-page procedure with photos of the products everyone confuses, and an hour beside someone who knows the range. Then let the system catch what they will get wrong: scan every item against the order, so the wrong size beeps instead of shipping. Give each their own login, so a mistake points to a training gap, not an argument. More on why wrong items ship.
- 5
Treat the label printer as a single point of failure
Have a second printer, or at least a spare cable, a cleaned print head and far more label rolls than you think you need. Set the printer up on a second computer and print one label from it before the week, not during it.
- 6
Rehearse on twenty real orders
Pack twenty real orders with the whole peak team a week early, and time them. Whatever breaks on twenty breaks on two hundred.
The week itself: a daily rhythm
Monday 23 November to Tuesday 1 December. The job now is to make every day the same day.
- 1
Before the first collection: triage, then batch
Pull out every order that cannot ship as it stands - an address the carrier will reject, a locker that does not match the delivery method, an item out of stock - into one pile with one owner, who empties it before closing. Batch-pick the rest. Problem orders never reach the packing table, where they cost the most time.
- 2
Pack to the carrier's clock
Work in waves timed to the collection, not first-in-first-out from the morning. The wave before the last collection is the one that cannot slip.
- 3
Hold the cut-off
An order that arrives a minute after the published cut-off ships tomorrow, as the customer was told. Moving it for one order moves it for everyone.
- 4
Count out
Before the van leaves, count parcels against labels printed. A parcel labelled but never handed over is a “where is my order” email in three days; finding it now takes a minute.
- 5
Answer the inbox from templates
Most peak emails are one of four: where is it, can I change it, can I add to it, can I return it. Write the four answers before the week, with dispatch times and the tracking link, and answer in two fixed slots a day.
After the peak: the returns wave
Black Friday's returns arrive while you are packing for Christmas. Under the Consumer Rights Directive a customer has 14 days from receiving the goods to withdraw, then 14 days from telling you to send them back. S8 An order delivered on 1 December can be withdrawn until mid-December and posted back in the last days of the year. That is arithmetic on the Directive, not a measured return curve, but every peak order runs on it.
You must refund within 14 days of being told, though you may wait until the goods are back or the customer has shown proof of sending, whichever comes first. S8 In the last week of December that means refunds falling due while the receiving desk is closed, unless someone is on it. What a return actually costs, line by line, is in a separate article.
- 1
Settle your holiday returns policy before you sell
If you offer a longer window for gifts, say so in writing before purchase, and accept that it moves the wave into January. Smartposti's checklist for shops ends on the same point: make sure return information is up to date and easy to find. S13
- 2
Staff the receiving desk between Christmas and New Year
One person on part days may be enough, as long as parcels are opened, checked and restocked within a day of arriving - not left in a box while you reorder the same item.
- 3
Write down what happened while you remember it
Orders per day, the worst day, how long the queue took to clear, wrong items shipped, which carrier lost or delayed what. That is next year's multiplier, and the only planning number on this page that is entirely yours.
None of this is clever. Almost every item on the list is easy in October and impossible in the last week of November. The test, on the evening of 1 December: did every order that came in before the cut-off leave that day, and did any of them leave with the wrong thing in the box?