Dollar General and Aldi logos.

Reuters

Store openings in the U.S. are expected to rise and store closures fall this year compared to 2025, with value retailers leading the growth as they continue to attract more of consumers’ dollars, according to an analysis by Coresight Research.

Overall, Coresight projects that U.S. retailers will close about 7,900 stores in 2026, a 4.5% drop year over year. That would represent the lowest number of store closures in the past three years.

The advisory group also expects retailers will open about 5,500 new stores, a 4.4% increase year over year.

So far, Dollar General, Aldi and Tractor Supply top the list for retailers with the most planned store openings this year, according to Coresight. On the other hand, GameStop, Francesca’s and Walgreens lead the way with the most planned closures in 2026.

John Mercer, head of global research of Coresight, said he expects some closely watched economic factors, such as high inflation and the slow housing market, to gradually ease in the coming year. He said retailers’ real estate plans also reflect “an incremental improvement over 2025 but not a major inflection point.”

Some themes for the retail industry persist and show in the data. Department stores and legacy retailers are slimming down their store counts. Value players including discounters, warehouse clubs and off-price chains are bulking up their national footprint. Successful and reinvented mall retailers, such as Abercrombie & Fitch and Gap, are squeezing out smaller specialty apparel retailers.

In the first few weeks of the year, there have already been some major store closure announcements. Video game retailer GameStop plans to shutter hundreds of locations, following a significant wave of previous closures. Women’s fashion chain Francesca’s, which sells clothing and accessories, is closing its nearly 460 stores as the company liquidates its business after a bankruptcy filing. And Amazon said it will shutter all Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go locations and turn some of those into Whole Foods Market stores, marking the end of the e-commerce giant’s latest brick-and-mortar experiment in the grocery industry.

Last year, store closures were expected to hit the highest level since the Covid pandemic. Yet the final tally came in at 8,270 closures — down from 8,825 in 2024 and 9,700 in 2020.

“We saw a lot of things we didn’t expect and a lot of things we didn’t expect were on the upside,” Mercer said.

Among them, higher tariffs didn’t ding consumer spending as much as feared because retailers imported early shipments and absorbed some of those higher costs. Affluent Americans, who have benefitted from strong stock market gains and rising property values, have kept spending and propped up the retail industry. They have been the thriving part of the so-called K-shaped economy.

Last year, retail bankruptcies drove much of the downsizing, with 32 retailers filing for bankruptcy last year. Rite Aid, Joann, Party City and Big Lots topped the list of the most shuttered stores last year.

Other drugstores contributed significantly to closures last year, too, with Walgreens and CVS Health each shrinking their store footprints.

Store closed permanently sign on a vacant Walgreens in San Francisco, Aug. 29, 2025.

Smith Collection/gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images

So far this year, two retailers have filed for bankruptcy: Saks Global, the parent company of luxury department stores Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus; and LKM Convenience, a Louisiana-based operator of convenience store brands Brothers Food Mart and Magnolia Express.

Shorter real estate supply

An expected slowdown of bankruptcies could tighten real estate demand, said Naveen Jaggi, president of retail advisory services for JLL, a commercial real estate company that works primarily in larger and fast-growing U.S. retail markets like Chicago, New York and Dallas.

Many of the retailers opening stores in 2026 hammered out their real estate deals back in 2024, a year when a large amount of space opened up because companies including Bed Bath & Beyond, Joann and Forever 21 shuttered stores after bankruptcy filings.

“We are looking at a world of dwindling supply,” he said. “That is going to become a challenge in 2029 and 2030.”

Similar to the housing market, construction of new strip malls has been sluggish because of higher labor costs and elevated interest rates. That tide may turn and developers could break ground more if labor and borrowing costs stabilize and retailers show they’re willing to pay enough to fund those builds, Jaggi said.

Not only are retailers competing for space with their closest peers, he said they’re also vying for square footage in the same strip malls with expanding food and beverage concepts and chains like Raising Cane’s, along with Pilates and fitness studios.

“Shopping centers that are trying to grow up and mature like to bring in those national name brands like Soulcycle,” Jaggi said. “You can pop out a GameStop and pop in a Soulcycle.”

As retailers open new stores, customers’ adoption of artificial intelligence chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and similar to discover merchandise or get shopping advice is challenging retailers to think about what they can offer customers in person, Coresight’s Mercer said.

He said for brick-and-mortar locations to complement retailers’ e-commerce offerings, a store needs to provide convenience and immediacy, offer ease of pickup or returns, give compelling enough discounts to offset downsides of in-person retail or become an experiential destination.

“Stores are great brand builders,” he said. “If you think about agentic commerce, it’s great for comparison shopping. Stores are a great way to build value in that brand and separate yourself from the race to the bottom on price.”

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