Record Store Day 2026: The Releases, the Results and What They Are Worth Now

Record Store Day 2026 was held on Saturday, April 18, 2026, in every participating country on the same day. It was the 19th Record Store Day since the first in 2008; the next, expected on Saturday, April 17, 2027, will be the 20th. Before that comes RSD Black Friday on November 27, 2026.

These are the ten best-selling Record Store Day 2026 albums in the US in RSD week, according to Luminate, with the formats and US pressing quantities where they were published:

* Quantity from the release notes on Discogs rather than the official list.

The best-selling singles were Taylor Swift's Elizabeth Taylor, Olivia Dean's Live at the BBC 7-inch, KATSEYE's Touch, Charli xcx's party 4 u, Tyler Childers' Live From Dinosaur World, John Coltrane's Tiberi Tapes preview, Sonic Youth's Diamond Seas, Gigi Perez, Sleep Token's liquid-filled Caramel and David Bowie's Hallo Spaceboy.

Other titles that drew attention: Bruce Springsteen's 5LP Live From Asbury Park 2024 (6,050 US copies), Madonna's The Confessions Tour, Ethel Cain's Inbred on vinyl for the first time, Joni Mitchell's For the Roses with its original rejected cover, Blur's Live at the Budokan, Muse's first two EPs on vinyl, and Robert Plant with Suzi Dian. In the UK, 15 releases — from The Cure, Fleetwood Mac and The Streets among others — raised money for War Child.

Yes — but it was not on the original list. When the list was published on February 4 there was no Taylor Swift title on it. Four weeks later, on March 2, 2026, Record Store Day announced a 7-inch of Elizabeth Taylor from The Life of a Showgirl on "Cry My Eyes Violet Glitter" vinyl, with the album version on side A and a "So Glamorous Cabaret Version" on side B.

It became the best-selling Record Store Day 2026 single in the US and went to number one on the UK Official Vinyl Singles Chart in RSD week; by the end of June it was the UK's best-selling vinyl single of 2026, with 16,500 copies. No pressing quantity was announced, and it was not scarce: more than 22,000 Discogs users list it in their collections, and the cheapest copies are being asked for around $10 — roughly what it cost in the shop.

In the UK it was the biggest Record Store Day yet; in the US it was a strong day in a softer week.

• UK: ERA, which runs Record Store Day UK, reported its "largest ever event", with sales up 25% on 2025 and record numbers of customers through the doors of more than 300 shops in the UK and Ireland.
• US, all shops: in the week ending April 23, 2026, Luminate counted 1.409 million vinyl albums sold, down from 1.482 million in the 2025 RSD week. Physical album sales overall rose slightly, to 2.276 million, because CD sales were up.
• US, independent shops: 1.15 million albums in all formats, down 9.3%, and 979,000 vinyl albums, down 11.6% on 2025.
• Shop by shop: many still had their best day ever — Rough Trade in New York for the first time outsold the original Rough Trade shop in London, Down In The Valley in Minneapolis sold more than 5,000 records over the weekend, and Looney Tunes in West Babylon, New York had 526 people in line at its 8 a.m. opening and its biggest online Sunday ever.
• Not everything sold: Newbury Comics expected to mark some titles down the next day.

One caution when comparing years: Luminate changed how it counts independent-shop sales in 2024, so 2026 can be compared with 2025 but not with the record RSD weeks of 2022 and 2023.

On October 2, 2026 — five and a half months after the day — we looked up all 173 US releases that Discogs flags as Record Store Day 2026 and recorded the cheapest copy for sale. We could read 171 of them, and 166 had copies on sale.

• The median 2026 release is asking $20.46. Half of them are asking less than $20 — less than most of them cost in the shop.
• Only 4 of the 166 ask more than $100. The highest is $155.75.
• For comparison, the median release from 2023, 2024 and 2025 is asking between $14.62 and $16.08 today: a few years on, most Record Store Day records settle below their original price.

The records collectors want most are the ones to watch. These are the ten 2026 releases with the most Discogs users who list them as wanted:

Want counts tell you more than scarcity does. Sleep Token's Caramel combines a large want list with a small number of copies for sale, and its price has followed. Jeff Buckley's Live à L'Olympia is wanted by more than 400 collectors too, but enough copies were pressed that the cheapest ones ask about $15. Among the other headline titles on October 2, 2026: Ethel Cain's Inbred was asking about $101 and Madonna's The Confessions Tour about $95, while the Pink Floyd 4LP asked about $60 and the KPop Demon Hunters HUNTR/X edition about $29 — both less than UK shops charged for them on the day (£88.99 and £51.99 at one UK shop).

These are asking prices, not sales, and they move. To check the exact pressing you have and what it is selling for, scan it with VinylAI; for how prices are worked out, see our guide to pricing records on Discogs.

Many of them, yes. Shops were allowed to sell their leftovers online from the Sunday after the day in the US and from the Monday evening in the UK, and plenty of titles are still on shop websites months later — in the US, Record Store Day points buyers to rsdmrkt.com, where participating shops list what they have left. RSD First titles may also reach general retail.

For the rest, the second-hand market is the place, and the data above is the reason not to hurry: most 2026 releases are now cheaper second-hand than they were in the shop. Before you pay, check the release on Discogs to make sure it is the Record Store Day edition — the RSD logo on the sleeve and the format notes — and compare a few sellers. Our guide to coloured vinyl helps when the only difference between editions is the colour of the disc.

• UK and Ireland: 312 shops, 500 releases, Olivia Dean as ambassador and Robert Plant named "Record Store Legend". Blur's Live at the Budokan was the highest Record Store Day title on the Official Record Store Chart.
• Germany, Austria, Switzerland: about 240 shops and about 500 releases; Till Brönner was the first jazz musician to be ambassador.
• France (Disquaire Day): 220 shops in more than 90 cities and 370 limited releases, with sales from 10 a.m.
• Netherlands and Belgium: 120 to 130 Dutch shops, Ilse DeLange as ambassador, a free single for the first 6,000 customers and about 250 in-store shows; in Belgium, Yong Yello gave away a 7-inch to the first 1,000 buyers.
• Spain: 71 participating shops.
• Italy: about 248 participating shops.
• Japan: 399 listed shops, with the actress Hikari Mitsushima as official muse and the band cero as supporters.
• Canada: Honeymoon Suite were ambassadors, with a Canada-only release.

How the event works in each country, and when leftovers go online there, is on the Record Store Day overview.

• RSD Black Friday 2026 — Friday, November 27, 2026. The November edition with a shorter list; the 2025 list was published on October 2.
• Record Store Day 2027 — expected Saturday, April 17, 2027. The 20th Record Store Day. The date is usually announced in early January and the list in early February.
• Record Store Day: how it works — the rules, the countries, every date since 2008.