Lidl has fired the first shot in this year’s Christmas dinner price war, with a complete festive meal for £1.39 a head — and Aldi has answered with a fresh round of price cuts announced today.
Lidl’s dinner, announced on November 5 and 6, costs £11.11 for eight people, or £1.39 each, and will be in stores from December 19 to 24 nationwide, for all shoppers — not just Lidl Plus loyalty members. The centrepiece is a Birchwood British small turkey, 3kg, at £8.85.
The rest of the list is priced to the penny: potatoes, 2kg, sprouts, 500g, carrots, 1kg, and parsnips, 500g, at 9p each; sage and onion stuffing, 170g, at 45p; Yorkshire puddings, a 15-pack, at 46p; and meat gravy granules, 300g, at 99p. Lidl says the produce prices are 100% funded by Lidl itself, so producers are unaffected.
Aldi cuts again
Aldi, meanwhile, announced further price cuts in the UK today, November 8, slashing the price of more than 30 household grocery staples, according to retail analysts IGD. The full item list has not been published in full, so shoppers should check in store — but the move follows Aldi’s announcement on November 2 that 881 products are now cheaper than in October 2025, with a further 1,072 unchanged in price.
Examples from that earlier round include 10 thick smoked bacon rashers, down 46p to £1.79, and grated mature cheddar, down 30p to £1.89. Aldi has invested £340 million in price cuts on more than 1,000 products since the start of 2026, it said in September. UK grocery inflation reached 2.5% in the four weeks to October 4, up from 2.3%, according to Worldpanel by Numerator.
Who is cheapest overall
A Which? basket check in October 2026, of 87 items, found Aldi the cheapest at £154.34, with Lidl at £157.17 with loyalty (£157.21 without), Tesco at £181.77 with loyalty (£187.31 without) and Sainsbury’s at £182.90 with loyalty (£191.56 without) — meaning Tesco costs £27.43 more than Aldi even after loyalty discounts.
For households, the practical question is whether the cuts show up on the products they actually buy: a 9p bag of sprouts helps, but only if the rest of the trolley has not gone up by more. Shoppers planning a Christmas shop should compare basket prices rather than single-item deals — and with both discounters now fighting over the festive meal, the grocers’ price war is likely to intensify in the run-up to Christmas.
