Olive Young Sale 2026 Dates: When Is the Next One?

“When’s the cheapest time to hit Olive Young?” It’s one of the questions people planning a Seoul trip ask most often, and the answer is refreshingly clear. Four times a year, for exactly seven days, Olive Young runs its official sale — the Olive Young Sale, or 올영세일 (Olyoung Sale) as Koreans call it — and every year more foreign visitors book their flights around that one week. This guide pulls together the actual 2026 sale dates, the 2025 schedule, when the next December edition is likely to land, and, from a traveler’s point of view, exactly what you gain by shopping during the sale, based mainly on Olive Young’s official announcements.

When was the Olive Young Sale in 2026, and when is the next one?

In 2026 it ran three times — March 1–7, May 31–June 6, and August 30–September 5 — and the remaining December edition has no announced dates yet. Every Olive Young press release describes the sale as “a regular discount event held four times a year (March, June, September, December),” but the real dates show it’s more precisely seven days spanning the first week of that month. That’s why the June sale started on May 31 and the September sale kicked off in late August.

Olive Young Sale dates and size by edition — 2025 vs 2026 (based on Olive Young press releases and media reports)

What jumps out is the scale. The March sale nearly doubled from about 16,000 items in 2025 to about 30,000 in 2026, and September grew from around 20,000 to 34,000. Worth noting for planning, too: all three 2026 sales started on a Sunday and ended on a Saturday.

How much cheaper is it during the Olive Young Sale?

In its 2024–2025 sale announcements, Olive Young put the discount at up to 70%. But “up to” means exactly that — 70% applies to only some items. In the September 2025 sale, for instance, premium-brand products were discounted up to 30%. The three 2026 announcements didn’t list a maximum discount rate at all.

How good the sale actually feels comes less from a single discount figure and more from how it’s structured. Take the March 2026 sale as an example (per Olive Young):

• Today’s Deal: Each day, popular products from 6–7 brands get an extra discount for that day only. Over the seven days, 40-plus brands rotate through.
• New-arrival and steady-seller deals: Sale-only new launches, bundled with deals on reliable best-sellers.
• Double and gift sets: Twice the volume for the same price, or minis thrown in. The real per-unit price often drops further than the discount on the tag suggests.
• Coupons: Surprise coupon packs released on specific days (up to ₩40,000 for in-store use), plus first-come online coupons dropped daily at midnight, noon and 6 p.m.

What can foreign travelers get, and what can’t they?

Everyone gets the same shelf sale prices and Today’s Deals; member-only perks are off the table. According to the official guidance from Olive Young Myeongdong Global Town, the domestic membership requires Korean residency and a phone number in your own name, and the member special discount is exclusive to members with a Korean online mall account. Foreign customers are pointed to membership in the Global Mall (global.oliveyoung.com) instead — but that’s a separate store for ordering from overseas.

On the flip side, sale weeks often bring extra perks aimed at stores with lots of foreign shoppers. Olive Young manages about 110 stores nationwide where foreign sales are high — Myeongdong, Hongdae, Seongsu, Gangnam, Busan, Jeju and more — as global tourist-district stores, and since June 2025 it has run a “Bu¥ No₩” (“Buy Now”) promotion at these stores every sale, discounting a curated set of tourist favorites. In March 2026 it covered 15 items, including skincare devices, sheet masks and cleansing foams.

Olive Young discounts and perks: do they apply to travelers? (based on official guidance and press releases)

For reference, Olive Young’s domestic membership, Olive Members, splits shoppers into five tiers based on spending over the previous six months — from Gold (₩1,000,000 or more) down to Baby (under ₩100,000) — and hands out coupons by tier. There are also recurring member events like “Olive Day” (the 25th–27th of every month, per 2025 reports) and “Olyoung Pick,” which spotlights selected brands each month. Most of these only make sense with a member account, though, so for a short trip it’s realistic to leave them out of the math.

What actually sold well during the sales?

Data Olive Young released right after each sale shows that sale best-sellers track the season closely. June is about UV and sweat, September about at-home care and color makeup, and December about that year’s Awards winners.

Compare that with non-sale rankings and the picture gets clearer. Normally the No. 1 online seller is the Mediheal sheet mask 10+1 set (Olive Young online best-sellers, analyzed), while among overseas customers, creams surged in September (Global Mall Top 100, September 2026). In short, the two things worth buying on sale are “the steady-sellers you were going to buy anyway” and “season-only gift sets.” If you’re going in December, expect Awards winners and limited holiday gift sets to take center stage, as they did in 2025. In December 2025, global tourist-district stores even ran separate discounts on global-category winners chosen from overseas customers’ purchase data.

How should you plan your trip around the sale?

The first two or three days of the seven, ideally on a weekday morning, give you the best balance of stock and crowds. A joint analysis by Olive Young and Global Tax Free (GTF) shows the number of foreign visitors timing their trips to the sale is climbing fast, so tourist-area stores are bound to be busier than usual during sale week.

Here’s how to move during sale week without losing out.

Big Myeongdong flagship or neighborhood store — which is better? It depends on what you’re after. Large stores like Myeongdong Town have a wider range of stock, group tourist favorites near the entrance, and offer foreign-language staff, the instant tax refund and tourist-district-only deals (Bu¥ No₩). The catch: they’re the most crowded during sale week. Residential-area stores are quieter and stocked mostly with everyday essentials, but they may not carry the gift sets foreign shoppers love at all, and the instant refund is centered on “major stores,” so not every branch offers it. Why displays differ by store tier is covered in detail in Olive Young stores in Seoul: numbers and tiers.

How much do you really save when the sale and tax refund stack?

They stack. But the refund is calculated on the sale price you actually paid, not the list price. That’s because a tax refund simply returns the VAT included in what you paid. According to the official Myeongdong Global Town guidance, if you spend ₩15,000 or more and show your physical passport, you get the refund right in the store (instant refund), with a cap of ₩1,000,000 per receipt and ₩5,000,000 in total per stay. Hygiene products, shopping bags and the like aren’t eligible.

Refund amounts are set in steps by purchase bracket, so if a sale price drops your total just below a bracket, you can actually lose out. Here’s an example using the Global Tax Free refund table (as analyzed in an existing article on this site). The 30% discount below is an assumption for the calculation.

Example — ₩140,000 worth of products at list price, bought at 30% off (discount rate assumed; refund per GTF refund table)

The ₩75,000–99,999 bracket refunds ₩5,000, while ₩100,000 and up refunds ₩7,000 — so if you’re at the register in the high ₩90,000s, adding a lip balm or a single sheet mask is effectively free. The key point: the sale does most of the saving (30% in this example), and the tax refund adds roughly another 6–7% of what you paid on top. Exact refunds by bracket and the airport refund process are laid out in tables in Korea tax refund: what you actually get back.