TikTok Shop’s U.S. business grew gross merchandise value 103% year-on-year to $11.8 billion in the first half of 2026, reclaiming its position as the platform’s largest market worldwide, according to a new report from Momentum Works and data analytics platform Tabcut. Globally, TikTok Shop GMV reached $50.3 billion in the first half of the year, up 92% year-on-year, putting the platform on track to clear $100 billion in GMV for 2026 as a whole, per the report.

Source: “TikTok Shop in the U.S. H1 2026”

Where Sales Actually Close

The report identifies a shift in how TikTok Shop converts sales in the U.S. The Shop tab’s share of attributed GMV rose from 36% to 51.4% over the period, while Live narrowed to 8.2%. Video, at 40.4% of GMV, continues to drive discovery, but the report found that transactions increasingly close on Shop rather than during livestreams. Momentum Works and Tabcut noted this marks a departure from the Live-led sales model that dominates TikTok Shop’s ecosystems in China and Southeast Asia.

Scale Broadens Across Sellers

More than 5,700 stores crossed $1 million in GMV during the half, an eightfold increase year-on-year, and 506 of those stores grossed above $10 million. The report frames this as evidence that a much larger base of sellers and creators is now reaching meaningful scale on the platform, beyond the top performers that previously concentrated GMV.

Competition Intensifies

Average prices fell in 21 of 27 categories tracked in the report, and eight of the top 10 influencers by GMV were new entrants to that ranking in H1 2026. Momentum Works and Tabcut characterized this as TikTok Shop U.S. becoming easier to enter but harder to win, and flagged that the growing volume of AI-generated video and livestreaming content is likely to intensify competition further.

A Different Playbook Than Asia

The report found that TikTok’s U.S. ecosystem is not simply replicating tactics from China and Southeast Asia. Many approaches that drive user time and conversion in those markets failed to translate in the U.S. At the same time, top U.S. influencers have developed a distinct set of Live-selling tactics even though Live accounts for a much smaller share of total GMV domestically than it does in TikTok’s Asian markets.

The Trajectory

TikTok Shop’s GMV has grown from under $1 billion five years ago to a pace that Momentum Works projects will put full-year 2026 global GMV at $123.5 billion. The platform’s growth accelerated further after the U.S. surpassed East Asia and Southeast Asia in 2024 to become TikTok Shop’s most lucrative market. Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines rank as the next five largest markets by GMV.

TikTok Shop enters the 2026 holiday season with substantially more selling momentum than it carried into the prior year, when the platform recorded $500 million in U.S. sales over Black Friday weekend alone.

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