Easter’s Gone Luxe and the Chocolate Is Driving

Easter used to be a foil-wrapped bunny, a department-store dress and a brunch reservation someone forgot to make until Thursday.

In 2026, it looks more like a luxury-commerce obstacle course: a pre-ordered hotel chocolate sculpture here, a click-and-collect designer egg bag there; a tea seating, a spa booking, maybe even a cacao-farm itinerary if your ambition and credit limit run high enough.

Easter, in other words, has become a payments story in pastel clothing: less a single purchase than a chain of taps, deposits, confirmations and highly intentional sugar.

The scale backs that up. The National Retail Federation says Easter spending is expected to hit a record $24.9 billion in 2026, with consumers budgeting a record $195.59 per person. Candy is the leading category, with 92% of shoppers planning to buy sweets and $3.5 billion expected to go to candy alone.

The National Confectioners Association adds the clincher: 92% of Americans who celebrate Easter include chocolate and candy in the festivities. So yes, Easter remains a family holiday rooted in tradition. It is also a chocolate-powered retail event with real transactional heft.

On the buy side, five standouts capture the mood best.

First, Louis Vuitton’s Yellow Egg Bag: a 2.3-pound edible handbag from Maxime Frédéric, priced at 250 euros (about $289), with click-and-collect in Paris and a broader Easter collection available in New York, Paris, Seoul and Singapore. The product fully commits to the proposition that luxury chocolate should also function as fashion theater.

Second, Fortnum & Mason’s Easter Pralines & Ganache Selection, which costs 175 pounds (about $231). Weighing 4.4 pounds, this chocolate is less “basket filler” than “boardroom-level confectionery strategy,” with hand-crafted miniature eggs made for the host who believes abundance is a design principle.

Third, Claridge’s Milk Chocolate Easter Egg, at 70 pounds (about $92), made even better by its Art Deco backstory: inspired by the hotel’s gold entrance doors and filled with vanilla-and-buckwheat praline and caramel.

Fourth, Mandarin Oriental Paris’ La Ruche, a 75-euro (about $86) beehive-shaped Easter egg available by pre-order. This treat turns the hotel’s rooftop beehives into a sculptural, honey-caramel chocolate flex.

Fifth, Neuhaus’ Limited Edition Spring Voyage, at 36 euros (about $41), earns its place because Michelin-starred chef Marcelo Ballardin built five Easter eggs around flavors from five continents, turning candy into a tiny grand tour.

The experience side is where Easter really starts behaving like a luxury vertical.

Start with Claridge’s Easter Afternoon Tea, served Friday to Monday (April 3-6), with the seasonal version priced from 125 pounds (about $165) per person. The experience turns the holiday into a Mayfair ritual of silver service, seasonal pastries and inherited glamour. Then there is Mandarin Oriental Paris’ Easter Brunch on Sunday (April 5), where the hook is gloriously unsubtle: a seasonal menu followed by an Easter dessert and chocolate buffet, plus an egg hunt.

For fashion people, Le Café Louis Vuitton and Le Chocolat Maxime Frédéric at the 57th Street store turn Easter into a designer-snacking pilgrimage, with the first library café in the U.S. upstairs and fashion-coded chocolate downstairs.

For spa maximalists, The Spa at The Hotel Hershey is offering Whipped Cocoa Baths, Chocolate Fondue Body Wraps, Cocoa Facials and Cocoa Massages, which is as close as grown-ups can get to being placed in an Easter basket.

And for the full passport-stamp fantasy, Project Chocolat at Rabot Hotel in St. Lucia lets guests tour cacao groves, graft trees, taste fresh cacao pulp. That is not dessert. That is chocolate with a boarding pass.

That, really, is the Easter payments play. The holiday is still sentimental and communal. But it is also increasingly premium, experience-led and built around modern commerce mechanics: pre-orders, reservations, click-and-collect and destination bookings. Easter used to ask one essential question: do you start with the bunny’s ears? In 2026, it asks another one: Would you like to put the bunny on your gold card?