Amazon has held an annual "Prime Day" sale for the past few years, with the most recent event occurring back in July. However, Amazon has now announced another store-wide sale event set for next month.

Related: How to Score a Cheap Amazon Prime Subscription for Prime Day

Amazon announced today that it will hold the "Prime Early Access Sale" on October 11-12, exclusively for Amazon Prime members. The sale will be live in Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Amazon says the event "gives members a chance to kick off the holiday shopping season early with hundreds of thousands of deals." There's no confirmation about what exactly will be on sale, outside of discounts on Amazon's own hardware products (like Echo speakers and Fire tablets), like every Prime Day. The company says, "deals from the list will drop throughout the event, offering deep savings across all top categories, including electronics, fashion, home, kitchen, pets, toys, and Amazon devices." It's not specifically labelled as a Prime Day event, but it sure sounds like one.

There are a few reasons why Amazon is holding a holiday-related sale two months before the typical holiday season. Spreading holiday shopping over a longer period is less of a logistical challenge for fulfilling and shipping orders, and there are still lingering supply chain problems from the COVID-19 pandemic. It's also a chance for Amazon to scoop up holiday shopping attention from competing stores, most of which already have major discounts throughout November and December. Starting your holiday shopping early has always been a good plan, but Amazon wants you to do it even earlier this year.

The sale items will be available at amazon.com/earlyaccess when the day arrives -- though there are some unrelated discounts already on the page.

Source: Amazon