a very expensive game of dress-up.

americans were projected to spend $920 million dressing up their pets for halloween. kids’ costumes? $1.5 billion.

the numbers

halloween costume spendingprojected u.s. spending · 2026

0$1.5b

kids’ costumes$1.5b

pets’ costumes$920m

one tag = $100m · partial tag = $20m

source: national retail federation ↗

pets, compared with kids

projected pet costume spending was 61.3% of projected kids’ costume spending. the difference was $580 million.

920 ÷ 1,500 × 100 = 61.3%pet spending as a percentage of kids’ spending

1,500 − 920 = 580 million dollars. these are total national projections, not spending per pet or per child.

data & sources

source notes & data table

nrf’s survey, conducted by prosper insights & analytics, asked 7,889 consumers about their halloween shopping plans on september 1–9, 2026. these are national spending projections based on plans, not final spending totals. “pets” includes all pets, not just dogs. both rows use the same dollar scale. one equal-size price tag represents $100 million; the pet row ends with one fifth of a tag, representing $20 million. unfilled tags show the remaining distance to $1.5 billion.

halloween costume spending · 2026
category	projected spending (usd millions)
kids	1,500
pets	920

source: national retail federation ↗ (opens in a new tab)
september 22, 2026