Confectionery sales hit $55 billion in the U.S. last year, and new industry data shows a quarter of Americans have already bought their Halloween candy before October even starts. That’s according to the National Confectioners Association’s 2026 State of Treating report, released alongside a companion analysis of Halloween-specific buying habits.
The headline number isn’t really about Halloween on its own, it’s the full-year candy market, which the NCA breaks into chocolate ($28.4 billion, or roughly 52% of sales), non-chocolate candy ($22.5 billion), and gum ($4.1 billion). Halloween is just the biggest single occasion inside that number, and the data suggests the shopping window for it is wider than most people assume.
Key Points
- 99.8% of U.S. households bought some form of confectionery at least once in 2025, according to the NCA’s data, which the trade group sources from Circana and Euromonitor.
- About one in four Americans buys Halloween chocolate and candy before October begins, per the NCA’s supplementary Halloween data, with the bulk of shoppers still stocking up during the month itself.
- Halloween chocolate and candy sales reached $7.4 billion in 2024, up 2.2% from the prior year, and accounted for nearly 18% of all confectionery retail sales that year.
- 94% of consumers say they plan to share their Halloween candy with friends and family rather than keep it to themselves.
- 89% say they specifically want seasonal shapes, colors, and flavors rather than generic candy.
- 44% of confectionery shoppers overall say they eat candy more than once a week, and shopping habits differ sharply by generation: 48% of Gen Z say they discover new candy through TikTok, while 58% of Boomers still find new products by browsing store shelves.
John Downs, the NCA’s president and CEO, tied the numbers to the broader mood around the holiday in the organization’s own release: “Chocolate and candy are at the heart of the Halloween season…making it a holiday unlike any other.”
Some of the finer data points are oddly specific. 83% of parents admit to sneaking candy out of their kids’ trick-or-treat hauls, and even candy corn, a divisive treat in its own right, gets its own behavioral breakdown: 58% of fans eat it one kernel at a time, and among those, 28% start at the narrow white tip while 15% work in from the wide yellow base.
The early-shopping pattern matters for anyone planning a Halloween haul, since it means the good stuff, favorite brands, specific flavors, anything limited-edition, is already moving off shelves before the jack-o’-lanterns show up at the store. If a quarter of the country has already made its first candy run, waiting until the last week of October increasingly means picking from whatever’s left rather than what you actually wanted.
