Holiday shopping will bring droves of shoppers and dollars to the Mall of America over the next several weeks.
Jill Renslow is the mall's chief business development and marketing officer and joined Vineeta Sawkar on the WCCO Morning News.
"So, it's about constantly changing that mix of brands and really watching the trends," Renslow explains. "We see a lot right now with Asian beauty, blind box collections, K-pop, fandom culture. So we really pay attention to what consumers are trending towards and making sure we can bring those brands to market, especially the first to market brands."
Renslow says the MOA has added 140 tenants in the last five years, including 31 just this year.
And despite a heavy shift to online shopping, Renslow says shoppers still hit the mall for Black Friday, and that day Thanksgiving is still popular.
Black Friday Weekend at the mall runs November 27–29, 2026, with shopping offers, entertainment, programming, and special activations planned throughout the weekend.
"We had 235,000 people come through the Mall of America on Black Friday," Renslow adds. "It was the busiest in our history in 2025, and we are always set to break those records. We have some really exciting things planned, but this is actually going to be the tenth year that we stay closed on Thanksgiving, and open our doors at 7:00 a.m. on Black Friday for everybody to enjoy that fun tradition."
This marked an 8.5% increase over 2024 for the Mall of America, and surpassed its previous pre-pandemic peak from 2019. And that makes the MOA a bit of an outlier by pivoting heavily toward entertainment, dining, and exclusive retail.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) reported 85.7 million online Black Friday shoppers85.7 million online Black Friday shoppers compared to 80.3 million in-store shoppers last year. While some physical retail categories and department stores saw modest stabilization or slight traffic upticks around the U.S. (around 1% to 8%), traditional mall and day-of crowding continues to lose share to digital shopping.
You can see a full list of events over the holiday season by clicking here.
