American families are about to blow past every back-to-school spending record on the books. K-12 households are projected to spend a combined $43.3 billion this year, and college families are expected to cross $100 billion in back-to-school spending for the first time ever, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2026 back-to-school survey.

Both totals jumped from 2025, when K-12 spending sat at $39.4 billion and college spending was $88.8 billion, per the same NRF release. NRF and its research partner, Prosper Insights & Analytics, have tracked the season every year since 2003, according to NRF’s own back-to-school research hub — meaning this is the first time in more than two decades of data that college spending alone has broken into nine figures.

Key Points:

• K-12 households: $43.3 billion total spending, averaging $863.86 per family, up from $858.07 in 2025 — NRF
• College households: $103.5 billion total spending, averaging $1,437.79 per family — the first time the category has topped $100 billion — NRF
• 62% of shoppers had already started buying by early July 2026, down slightly from 67% in 2025 but well above 55% in 2024 — NRF
• Electronics is the single biggest category for both groups: $293.11 per K-12 family and $341.95 per college family — WSLS

“Shoppers are keeping value front and center as they look for ways to make their dollars go further,” NRF Chief Economist Mark Mathews said in the organization’s official announcement.

The bigger story might be timing rather than totals. Roughly a third of shoppers, 32%, had already started buying supplies in early June this year, according to NBC Connecticut’s reporting on the survey, months before most districts even post a supply list. Fifty-four percent used a major June sales event — Prime Day, Walmart Deals, and Target Circle Deal Days among them — specifically for school-related purchases, according to NBC Bay Area’s coverage.

Then vs. Now

There’s no reliable receipt trail for what a Trapper Keeper and a five-subject notebook cost a family back in the Velcro-flap heyday of the early 1980s — that math mostly lives in memory, not a database NRF or anyone else has published. What is documented is the shape of the ritual itself, and it has changed completely. The one-weekend scramble through a single department store’s school-supply aisle, list in hand, has been replaced by a two-month stretch of scattered purchases timed to whatever sale hits first.

The split confirms it: about 26% of shoppers started more than two months out, while the share nearly doubles, to 44%, among those who wait until the final month, per NBC Bay Area — two very different shopping styles standing in for what used to be one shared trip. Of those who hadn’t finished buying, 46% said they were holding out for better deals rather than grabbing everything at once, according to NBC Connecticut.

The dollar totals will keep climbing as electronics and dorm furnishings crowd out the pencil-and-notebook basics that used to define the season. What hasn’t changed is the calendar pressure parents feel every August — it just starts a lot earlier than it used to, and it’s spread across a lot more receipts.