Aldi holds Which? cheapest supermarket title for 12 months

Aldi goes into Christmas with a year-long price claim that rivals will find hard to answer in one promotion.

Aldi said on 5 November that Which? had named it the UK's cheapest supermarket for a full 12 months, with the latest win for October 2026 based on 87 popular grocery items. Aldi described this as a record running back to November 2025. Which? records that Lidl was cheapest in July and October 2025, so the run began straight after Aldi's last defeat.

What loyalty prices did

In the October table published by Aldi, Aldi's list averaged £154.34.

Loyalty pricing still mattered, but mainly among the bigger grocers. Tesco's discount on the published figures moved Tesco from behind Asda (£183.47) and Morrisons to ahead of both. Which? found loyalty discounts on 18 products at Tesco, 21 at Sainsbury's and one at Lidl. Which? said the Lidl Plus app "barely made a dent", beating non-member Lidl prices by 4p on average.

That leaves Lidl as Aldi's closest challenger. At £157.17 with its loyalty discount, Lidl finished behind Aldi on the same table.

What the title does not show

The result needs careful reading. Which? says it cannot include the value of points, personalised discounts or other rewards, because these vary between customers. It also left Asda's Rewards cashback out of its main analysis because members do not receive a discount on the day. A regular loyalty shopper's real bill could therefore differ from these totals.

Which? states that its totals are not comparable between months or years, so this data cannot say whether the gap to Aldi is widening or closing.

Branded shopping is a separate contest. Which? now runs a separate branded tracker that leaves out Aldi and Lidl. In September, Tesco with Clubcard led that ranking of 219 branded groceries at £757.71, ahead of Asda at £760.36.

The timing is deliberate. In Aldi's release, Julie Ashfield, Chief Commercial Officer at Aldi UK, said: "We know that the festive season can be an expensive time of year, which is why so many families are starting their preparations early to help spread the cost."

Neither the release nor the Which? pages reviewed here measure what the title did for Aldi's sales, market share or margin. For rivals, that is the useful test. Does a year of cheapest-supermarket headlines move Christmas baskets, or do shoppers still split their shop for range, brands and loyalty rewards? For now, the evidence establishes a price position on one defined list, not a commercial result.