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Amazon's annual Prime Day sale took place in July, but rumors are heating up about a second event later this year.

Jared DiPane is a Managing Editor of Commerce @ CNET, helping find and deliver all the best deals on products you love and some you never knew about. Previously, he managed commerce content & initiatives for Digital Trends, Mobile Nations, & Future PLC. When not working, he's likely spending time with his family, building something, or over analyzing his next purchase.

Adam Oram is a Deals Writer at CNET. He studied Media at Newcastle University and has been writing about technology since 2013. He previously worked as a Senior Writer at iMore, Deals Editor at Thrifter, and as an Apple Genius. His spare time is spent watching football (both kinds), playing Pokémon games, and eating vegan food.

Amazon Prime Day took place in July 2022 and Amazon claimed it to be one of the company's best shopping events to dates. Since its inception back in 2015, Amazon has held Prime Day once a year but this year things may be different. There are a few rumors circulating that a "Prime Early Access Sale" could be coming in October to give holiday shoppers an early start.

It's still unclear whether this will be a full Amazon Prime Day style event with 48 hours of discounts or if it will just be a kickstart of the holiday shopping season ahead of Black Friday . Let's break down everything we know about Amazon Prime Day and what we've heard about the rumored Prime Early Access Sale.

Given the success of Prime Day, we've seen regular rumors that Amazon could move to a twice-a-year format in order to juice sales in the summer and the fall. Ahead of this year's official Prime Day event in July, we saw reports that Amazon plans to hold a second Prime Day-like sale  later in the year with Amazon said to have informed certain third-party merchants about a "Prime Fall deal event." 

Later in July, it was again reported that Amazon is planning a second Prime Day-like deals event for October. The event, said to be called Prime Early Access Sale according to internal documents seen by Insider, is expected to run for two days and is described as a "high velocity" sales event that will offer, "early access to exclusive high caliber-T5 quality deals when Prime members least expect it."

As it stands now, this is all rumor. It wouldn't be overly surprising to see Amazon try to get out ahead of the competition in October before the Black Friday month-long sales kick off in November.

Though it's unlikely to take the "Prime Day" moniker in official advertising, recent reports point to an October timeframe for Amazon's second Prime-exclusive sale of 2022. The event has not yet been officially announced, though it's expected to be a two-day event similar to Prime Day. 

Historically, Amazon has held its Prime Day sales each July with just a couple of deviations from that regular schedule. Notably, in 2020, Amazon pushed its Prime Day sale to October due to the COVID-19 pandemic before returning it to the summer in 2021 in a slightly earlier June spot. Prime Day moved back to July in 2022, though it seems Amazon may be earmarking that October slot once again for its rumored Prime Early Access Sale.

As a reference, here are the Prime Day dates from previous years:

Amazon has been hosting its annual Prime Day sale since 2015. Originally, it was a 24-hour sales event to celebrate Amazon's 20th birthday. The "Prime" in the name refers to Amazon's subscription service, which offers free delivery on many products in as little as one to two days, and which has now expanded to encompass the Netflix-style Prime Video service and various other Amazon-related perks . 

Prime Day soon became a version of "Black Friday in July" for Amazon, allowing the retailer to have a branded 48-hour shopping extravaganza in an otherwise sleepy retail season. Unlike Black Friday, however, the Prime Day branding lets Amazon differentiate its summer sale from competitors while selling Prime memberships and Amazon-branded hardware such as Echo speakers and Fire tablets , which encourage customers to stay in the Amazon ecosystem. The fact that the sale also allows Amazon and its partners to clear out inventory and warehouse space ahead of the holiday shopping season doesn't hurt, either.

The idea behind Prime Day is a simple one: Subscribers to Amazon's Prime service can get exclusive discounts on thousands of products and services across the site during a limited period of time. The products, while still available to non-Prime members, will have extra savings for members, dropping many of their prices down to new all-time lows. 

When you're logged in to your Prime account and looking at a product landing page, you'll see the discounted price if it's on sale. You don't need any special coupon codes, nor is there a need to use a specific payment method in order to get the discounts.

We expect the rumored Prime Early Access Sale to work similarly, though the name suggests that non-Prime members may be able to get in on the action at some point.

Similar to Prime Day 2022, it is expected that October's Prime Early Access Sale will run for two days though an official timeframe, or even the event's existence, has not yet been confirmed by Amazon

We don't yet know in which regions and countries Amazon will launch its Prime Early Access Sale, though it's likely that if you had access to Prime Day 2022 then you will be able to take part in the rumored October sale. 

Amazon expanded the reach of Prime Day in 2022 by bringing it to Poland and Sweden in July, with customers in Egypt experiencing a Prime Day for the first time this year too. For reference, here's the full list of countries that participated in Prime Day 2022:

Just like Prime Day, we expect that the Prime Early Access Sale will require a Prime subscription to nab Prime-exclusive pricing, though the name of the event does leave open the opportunity for non-Prime members to snag the deals at a later date with your Prime membership merely granting early access. Since the event has not been officially announced, the finer details are yet to be revealed. 

Amazon earlier this year raised prices on Prime membership . It's now $15 a month ($139 a year).

Each year, we see retailers like eBay, Best Buy and Walmart kick off July sales in order to try and compete with Amazon Prime Day and 2022 was no different. Given the rumored Prime Early Access Sale's proximity to Black Friday sales, it's possible that we'll see several weeks of sales ahead of the traditional Black Friday weekend as was the case back in 2020 when Amazon moved its Prime Day sale to October due to the pandemic. 

Though Prime Day 2022 is over and its best deals have long since expired, we can use it to gain some insight into the sort of deals we might see during Amazon's rumored Prime Early Access Sale in October. Below are a few of our top picks from Prime Day 2022. 

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