Back-to-school shopping report 2026

• Back-to-school budgets are up 11.7% to $489 per child, outpacing 4% inflation, with middle-income families now driving the biggest gains.
• Inflation concern holds steady at 64% of parents – nearly unchanged from last year – and lower-income families feel it most, spending roughly $188 less per child when worried versus unconcerned peers in the same bracket.
• Discretionary spending fell to 56% of budgets, down from 60%, marking the second consecutive annual decline.
• Value-seeking has turned systematic: among inflation-concerned parents, one in three plans to use three or more cost-saving strategies simultaneously.
• Walmart surged 22 percentage points to nearly 80% of shoppers – the highest any retailer has reached in JLL's survey history – while dollar stores cracked the top ten for the first time.
• July is the peak shopping window; centers without active back-to-school promotions are already behind.
   

Back-to-school shopping is one of retail's most reliable rituals. Every summer, millions of parents pull out the school list, take stock of what survived last year, and begin the annual exercise of filling the gaps: notebooks, backpacks, new shoes, a calculator that actually works. It is purposeful shopping, list-driven and deadline-bound, with a child's first day of school as the immovable finish line.

In 2026, that calculation is more deliberate than ever. Parents are spending more this season than last, but the story behind that number is really about how hard they're working to make sure it counts.

JLL surveyed 1,022 parents in May 2026 to understand how they're approaching the season: where they plan to shop, what they're willing to spend, and what's driving their decisions.

Parents plan to spend an average of $489 per child on back-to-school this season, up from $437 last year. That 11.7 percent increase is meaningful and runs well ahead of the current inflation rate of around 4 percent.

The composition of the growth has also shifted. Last year, high-income households – those earning over $150,000 – led the surge, growing budgets by 27 percent. This year, the biggest gains are coming from middle-income families, those earning between $50,000 and $150,000, who raised their budgets by roughly 20 percent to reach $495 per child. Lower-income families barely moved, up less than 4 percent to $459. At the top, high earners are still spending the most at $659, but their growth rate has moderated to 14 percent.

Rising prices continue to shape how parents think about every purchase even when it isn't the first thing they mention.

Roughly 64 percent of parents say inflation will impact their back-to-school shopping this year. That figure is nearly unchanged from last year, meaning the concern has not eased with time. What has changed is who is feeling it most acutely.

High-income parents are now the least inflation-anxious of any income group. Their concern dropped 18 percentage points in a single year to just over 52 percent. The cushion of higher earnings and equity-market gains insulates this group from the practical bite of a 4 percent inflation rate. They can absorb it. Lower-income parents cannot. Families earning under $50,000 are now the most inflation-concerned of any tier, with two-thirds saying it will impact how they shop. Among those who are very concerned, the effect on budgets is direct and measurable: worried low-income parents spend about $188 less per child than their unconcerned peers in the same income bracket.

An interesting finding is that moms register inflation concern at nearly 70 percent, compared to about 59 percent for dads. That gap helps explain many of the behavioral differences between the two groups.

Back-to-school spending plans are up, but the share of that spending going toward discretionary items – the extras beyond the required school list – has declined for the second consecutive year.

The average parent now allocates about 56 percent of their back-to-school budget to discretionary purchases, down from roughly 60 percent last year. More dollars are flowing in; a smaller proportion of them are going toward non-essentials.

The sharpest pullback is at the top of the income ladder. High-income parents allocate just over 57.1 percent of their budgets to discretionary goods, the biggest decline of any income tier. They're spending more in absolute dollars but also shifting more of their dollars toward necessities. – a signal that even comfortable households are recalibrating in the face of renewed price pressure.

Discretionary options – like apparel and accessories beyond replacements of clothes and shoes that no longer fit, tech upgrades that aren't strictly required, premium versions of what could be bought more cheaply – are competing harder for a shrinking share of the total wallet.

Nearly every parent in the survey plans to use at least one cost-saving strategy this season. The range of those strategies reveals just how systematically parents are approaching the problem of spending more while feeling stretched.

Hunting for sales and coupons remains the dominant approach, with two-thirds of parents planning to use it. Buying fewer products, focusing only on what's truly needed, is the strategy of more than 43 percent of parents this year.

Below those headline behaviors is a rich set of secondary tactics. About 28 percent of parents will reuse existing school supplies rather than replace them. Another 21 percent will buy less expensive or more basic versions of the items they need: the store brand instead of the name brand, the adequate backpack instead of the preferred one. And roughly 14 percent of parents plan to buy secondhand where they can, a behavior that skews strongly toward younger parents and has been climbing for four years.

What distinguishes 2026 is not any single strategy but the intensity of the commitment. Among the 64 percent of parents who say inflation will impact their shopping, a third plan to use three or more cost-saving methods simultaneously. Hunting deals, buying fewer items, and trading down on quality, all at once, across a single shopping season.

The parents who are unconcerned about inflation, roughly 14 percent of the total, look like a different consumer entirely. They spend nearly double what the worried majority spends, and they are far less likely to hunt deals or trade down. The gap between these two segments is one of the wider spending divides in the dataset.

The intensified focus on value rewards retailers who can offer the most for the least.

Walmart's share of parents’ shopping destinations climbed more than 22 percentage points in a year, reaching nearly 80 percent of all parents surveyed – the highest level by any retailer in the history of JLL’s back-to-school survey. Walmart shoppers, when asked what factors drive their store selection, over-index heavily on saving money and completing the entire school list in one trip, which are the two factors parents rank highest overall.

Mass merchandisers as a category now reach more than 83 percent of back-to-school shoppers. Dollar stores entered the top ten retailers for the first time, climbing about 10 percentage points to reach nearly 32 percent. The parents shopping dollar stores are concentrated heavily among lower-income households; close to 60 percent of dollar store shoppers in this survey earn under $50,000. These are families for whom every line item on the school list requires a real trade-off, and dollar stores are meeting that need in a way they weren't part of the conversation for even a year ago.

A notable shift driving store selection this year is the rise of list completion as a decision factor. The share of parents who named "has the full school list" as a reason for choosing a store rose from 29 percent to 35 percent. That one-stop mentality directly benefits mass merchandisers, which carry both school supplies and apparel, and it is most pronounced among parents shopping for multiple children, where the logistics of multiple store trips compound quickly.

The market is pulling hard toward the value end of the spectrum. The middle tier, retailers who are neither the cheapest nor the most specialized, are absorbing pressure from both directions.

July is the peak shopping window, and it's here now. Last year's early-shopping surge reversed; only about 36 percent of parents started before June this year, down nine points from 2025. July accounts for more than a quarter of planned shopping starts, followed by August. Promotional investment deployed right now reaches the largest share of in-market parents at any point in the season. Centers and retailers that haven't yet activated back-to-school promotions are behind.

BOPIS is the clearest short-term basket lift available. Parents who use buy-online, pick-up-in-store spend roughly 39 percent more per child than the overall average. This channel skews toward higher-income, purposeful shoppers who are still actively in market. Frictionless pickup, strategic product placement near pickup points, and clear signage are direct levers on basket size through the end of the season.

The mall audience is smaller but high-value. Enclosed mall shoppers average $613 per child, 25 percent above the overall average. More than half of high-income parents still plan to visit a mall. These are not bargain shoppers. They're there for selection, experience, and specialty – and they're spending accordingly.

The value orientation running through this year's data is already showing up at the register. Centers anchored by mass merchandisers, dollar stores, off-price, and accessible apparel are capturing traffic – that won't change. Retailers and centers that haven't yet activated back-to-school-specific promotions should do so now, with messaging anchored on savings, one-stop convenience, and list completion. These are the factors driving store selection in 2026, and they favor straightforward value communication over aspirational positioning.