With Christmas fast approaching, it’s definitely time to start planning your food for the occasion, which for many means writing a Christmas supermarket shopping list. A period synonymous with busy aisles, Christmas music blaring from store speakers and tussles over the last pack of maris pipers, it’s best to plan your shop to last you and aim for off-peak shopping times like early mornings or evenings.
You can take the hassle out of hosting by pre-ordering supermarket Christmas food to be delivered to your door. But no matter how organised you are, a last-minute dash to the supermarket on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day is almost inevitable — whether it’s for forgotten carrots or just a pint of milk. To avoid rocking up to shut store doors, here are the opening times of every UK supermarket over the Christmas and New Year period. It’s also always best to check your local branch as opening hours differ between locations and store size.
If this sounds like a nightmare before Christmas, there’s still time to order food for Christmas and we’ve rounded up the best festive food options across Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and more. We’ve also done the hard work for you with dedicated guides to choosing your Christmas turkey and finding this year’s best supermarket mince pies and best supermarket mulled wine – all rigorously blind taste-tested.
To help you plan, here are supermarket opening times from Christmas Eve (Wednesday, 24 December) to New Year’s Day (Thursday, 1 January):
Tesco
Sainsbury’s
Aldi
Lidl
Asda
Co-op
Waitrose
Marks and Spencer
Morrisons
We’ve approached Morrisons for details on its opening times this year, but we can expect similar to the hours last year:
For more festive fun, we’ve rounded up the best mulled wines for Christmas
