Surge In Online Shopping Fuels Biggest-Ever Christmas Grocery Sales

The UK's Christmas grocery spend hit £19.6 billion in the four weeks to 27 December 2025, with online emerging as the fastest-growing channel and taking a greater share of festive shopping, according to data from NielsenIQ (NIQ). 

Online sales were up about 9.9% year-on-year over Christmas, significantly outpacing the total market, and driving the e-commerce share to 13.5% of sales, compared with 12.6% last year. 

Around 29% of UK households bought groceries online during the four-week period, NIQ data identified. 

This underlines that digital shopping has become a mainstream way to do the bulk Christmas shop, rather than serving as just a top-up channel. 

Category-wise, fresh food accounted for 32% of online shopping sales in December, growing by 9.9%.

Retailer-wise, Ocado was the fastest-growing operator for the second Christmas running – with sales rising by 12.8%, while Lidl was the fastest growing store-based retailer, recording a sales increase of 9.4%. 

The convenience of shopping online clearly benefited many UK shoppers over the 2025 Christmas period, noted Mike Watkins, Head of Retailer and Business Insight at NielsenIQ.

“By taking advantage of booking delivery slots in advance, shoppers could do a ‘big Christmas shop’ online, including fresh foods, which helped drive growth,” Watkins explained.

“This was then supplemented with in-store visits in the last few days before Christmas, allowing shoppers to search for further seasonal discounts, treats and indulgences.” 

Overall Grocery Performance

Total UK grocery market spend over the four-week Christmas period reached about £19.6 billion, the highest on record and up by 2.5% year-on-year. 

Total Till sales at UK major supermarkets grew by 3%, NIQ said.

Sales peaked at £5.3 billion in the week ended 20 December 2025, marking the biggest spending week of the year.

The overall growth across the festive period was value-led, supported by heavier use of promotions, while underlying volumes were flat to slightly negative. 

Unit volumes were marginally down (around 0.2%), indicating that higher spend came mainly from price inflation and trading up rather than more items in baskets.

In terms of category performance, NIQ said fresh food sales grew 4.9% alongside sales growth in soft drinks, snacks, and confectionery. 

Intense competition drove retailers to make significant price cuts to win-out the category in the last week before Christmas. 

Frozen foods also saw an increase of 1.2%, NIQ found.

Promotions & Shopper Behaviour 

The share of sales on promotion rose to about 27% in December, compared with 25% in November, as shoppers chased deals to manage constrained budgets. 

This points towards cautious, planned shopper behaviour as households focused on buying only what was needed, using seasonal price cuts, but still allocating some spend to treats and trading up in key categories. 

The figures from NIQ suggest that UK shoppers are now structurally more comfortable with online grocery for big seasonal events. 

This will raise the retail bar for availability, service levels, and fulfilment economics for Christmas 2026.