Key takeaways:
- Store closures in the U.S. declined from 2025, according to Coresight Research, with bankruptcies falling from 32 at midyear 2025 to just 10 at midyear 2026, driving much of the improvement.
- Store openings have also slowed, hitting their lowest midyear count since 2020, as retailers take a more selective approach to expansion amid tariff pressures and cautious consumer spending.
- Retail growth isn’t evenly distributed: value-focused chains and off-price retailers are adding locations, while apparel, department stores and electronics continue to shed them. Regionally, central and southern states are attracting the most new stores, while coastal and Midwestern markets contract.
U.S. store closures have dropped sharply compared to a year ago, and openings have also slowed to their lowest midyear point since 2020, according to new data from Coresight Research. But retailers aren’t so much rebounding as they’re pausing, reassessing and placing more careful bets.
Coresight’s midyear store openings and closures report, along with a separate analysis of how retail footprints are responding to domestic migration patterns, reveals details about where physical retail opportunities are growing and why the aggregate numbers only tell part of the story.
As of midyear 2026, Coresight tracked 3,321 store closures, down 44.1% from 5,941 at the same point in 2025. The net store loss narrowed by 94% year over year, from 1,765 stores to just 106.
One major factor is there have been far fewer bankruptcies in 2026. Coresight tracked 10 retail bankruptcies by midyear 2026, compared to 32 over the same period a year earlier.
“There were a lot of bankruptcies last year,” said Philip Moore, a Coresight Research analyst, in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “The number of bankruptcies is way down this year, so that explains most of the difference between how many stores closed last year and this year.”
The closures that are happening look different, too. The average size of a store closed in 2026 is 10,654 square feet, down 49.4% from an estimated 21,073 square feet in the first half of 2025. Large-format department stores and big-box retailers drove the 2025 closure wave; smaller specialty and discretionary retailers are doing more of the rationalizing now.
The apparel sector led all closures in the first half of 2026, accounting for 1,090 closures, or 32.8% of the total. High-profile bankruptcies drove much of that. Francesca’s filed for Chapter 11 and began nationwide closing sales, while Eddie Bauer’s North American operator announced plans to shutter nearly 200 stores after failing to secure a buyer. Convenience stores ranked second with 675 closures, largely tied to 7-Eleven’s ongoing network restructuring. Electronics came in third with 475 closures, most of them GameStop locations.
Openings Slow Due to Retailer Caution
Retailers opened fewer stores in the first half of 2026, too. Coresight tracked 3,215 store openings by midyear, down 23% from the same period in 2025. That’s the lowest midyear opening count since 2020.
Coresight’s central estimate projects approximately 6,428 closures and 4,482 openings for the full year, representing decreases of 30.1% and 19.3%, respectively, compared to 2025. Those figures are also a revision from Coresight’s start-of-year estimates of roughly 7,900 closures and 5,500 openings, with both closures and openings slightly lower than initially forecast.
Moore described the slowdown in new openings as a reaction to an unusually complex environment.
“It’s a period of transformation,” he said. “People are considering a lot of things at once, and when you have a risk portfolio that has a lot of inputs, you take a pause to see how things are going to move. People are trying to figure out what’s going on.”
Those inputs include the conflict in Iran and its effect on gas prices, tariffs and shifting manufacturing out of China, increased supply chain costs and the broader question of how AI-driven economic development will reshape local markets.
The retailers that are opening stores share a common profile: clear value propositions and proven formats. Discount stores led all sectors in openings, with 1,046 locations, driven by Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Five Below. Off-price apparel chains, including The TJX Companies, Burlington Stores and Ross Stores, followed, each continuing to expand as demand for discounted branded goods held firm.
Where Stores Are Opening
Coresight’s separate migration-focused report adds a geographic layer to the picture. Using its Store Intelligence Platform, which tracks openings, closures and active locations at the address level across more than 850 retail banners, Coresight mapped how retail footprints have shifted from 2019 to 2025 in response to domestic population movement.
North Dakota, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas and Texas recorded some of the strongest net store growth rates over that period, while New York, Hawaii, Washington, California and Illinois contracted.
Of the top 50 U.S. markets by store activity, 19 are in Texas alone, according to Moore. He pointed to the state’s business-friendly environment, absence of a state income tax and its early, aggressive pursuit of AI data centers as factors drawing businesses and residents alike, which in turn fuels retail demand.
“When you open a data center in your city, that’s billions of dollars flowing to the city,” Moore said. “And the banks in those markets are saying ‘Yes, please,’ when a small business goes to get a loan. That whole process percolates throughout the whole community.”
Luxury retail showed the strongest sector-level growth in the South, up 51.8% from 2019 to 2025, consistent with higher-income households relocating into Sun Belt markets. Discount and convenience formats, meanwhile, grew fastest in the Midwest rather than the South, a reminder that affordability-driven migration isn’t the only force shaping those categories.
The Coresight report cautions against treating migration as the only factor driving retail growth. For example, Maine recorded a 4% net positive migration rate over the period but also saw the steepest store decline in the dataset, down 17.9%.
“These differences highlight that retail footprint changes are influenced by broader factors, including sector trends, supply chain infrastructure, retailer strategy or market saturation,” reads the report.
The Structural Shift Underneath the Numbers
One of the more notable details in the midyear data is the size gap between stores opening and stores closing. In the first half of 2026, the average opening was 19,255 square feet, an increase of 3.2% year over year. The average closure was 10,654 square feet, down by nearly half compared to last year. Retailers are shuttering smaller, underperforming locations and investing in larger, experiential formats, particularly off-mall.
“Having a good consumer experience and becoming a destination has a higher probability as your square footage goes up because you just have room to do stuff,” Moore said. “I can have a meet-and-greet with a local author in the corner of the 20,000 square-foot store without having to move gondolas and take product out of inventory. If I just have a little tiny, 1,500 square-foot bodega, I don’t have room for an autograph table for my favorite author.”
Off-mall retailers accounted for 88.5% of all tracked openings and 52.3% of closures, underscoring a continued shift away from traditional enclosed malls toward freestanding and strip-center locations.
The market moved from net closures in square footage terms in 2025 to net openings in 2026, a swing of 73.8 million square feet year over year.
“The improvement reflects a more stable operating environment, as the decline in closures more than offset the slowdown in new openings,” reads the report. “However, the shift was driven primarily by fewer closures rather than stronger opening activity, suggesting that the market is stabilizing before moving into a more expansion-led phase.”
Who’s at Risk in the Second Half
Coresight expects the second half of the year to bring continued pressure on weaker discretionary retailers. Tariff costs, cautious consumer spending and financial stress among smaller, highly leveraged businesses could push more closures into the latter part of 2026.
Moore said retailers serving middle- and lower-income consumers in discretionary categories face the most exposure.
“The ones that feel it the most are the ones that can least weather it,” he said, pointing to rising gas prices and other non-discretionary costs that compress household budgets and leave less room for spending elsewhere. Discounters and off-price operators, by contrast, benefit as consumers trade down.
Department stores continue to face structural challenges regardless of the economic environment. The question for the second half isn’t whether closures will continue in that segment, but whether the space they vacate will be absorbed by stronger operators.
Coresight’s full-year outlook anticipates that U.S. retail sales growth will land around 4.4%, slightly below the firm’s initial forecast of 4.7%, with Fed rate cuts and gas prices among the variables shaping the final figure.
