Walgreens is continuing to close stores in 2026 as part of its ongoing turnaround effort — but the pace has slowed dramatically from earlier projections, with the pharmacy chain now expected to shutter fewer than 100 locations this year compared to an internal target of roughly 700 that was quietly shelved after the company went private in 2025.
Confirmed recent and upcoming closures span more than a dozen states. In Illinois, two Chicago stores and a Rockford location are closing. In Missouri, stores in Bridgeton and St. Louis are being shuttered. Closures have also been confirmed in Washington D.C., Brooklyn, Arlington Virginia, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Beaufort South Carolina — with several scheduled to close as soon as August 6. A Houston distribution center is also being shut down, a back-end operational consolidation that affects the supply chain for Texas stores. The closures reflect the continued difficulty of operating pharmacy retail profitably in urban neighborhoods where prescription volume is declining, competition from mail-order and digital pharmacy services is intensifying, and theft losses have become a significant operational burden.
"I'm here today because we're closing the store at 86th and Cottage Grove. But I just want to make sure everyone understands closing stores is not our goal. This is the last resort." — Walgreens Regional VP Reginald Johnson
The Chicago closure at 86th and Cottage Grove in the Chatham neighborhood illustrates the economic pressures driving many of the decisions. The store struggled with declining prescription sales combined with elevated theft — a combination that has rendered dozens of urban Walgreens locations financially unviable regardless of foot traffic. Walgreens has been candid that closure is a last resort rather than a preferred strategy, but the economics of some locations have deteriorated to a point where no operational adjustment can restore profitability. The Chatham closure drew particular attention because the neighborhood had few comparable pharmacy options, raising concerns about what some public health advocates call pharmacy deserts — geographic areas where residents lack convenient access to prescription medications and basic health supplies.
Walgreens originally announced plans to close approximately 1,200 stores over three years when it disclosed its turnaround strategy in October 2024 — a staggering figure that represented roughly 12% of its total footprint. The subsequent decision to take the company private in 2025 appears to have allowed leadership to recalibrate the pace, with the current expectation of fewer than 100 closures this year suggesting either that the worst-performing locations have already been addressed or that the private ownership structure has created space to pursue a more gradual restructuring.
Walgreens Boots Alliance was taken private in a leveraged buyout in 2025 after years of declining stock performance. The company operates thousands of stores across the United States and remains one of the country's largest pharmacy chains despite the ongoing closures. Its primary competitor, CVS Health, has also been closing underperforming locations in recent years as the retail pharmacy model faces structural headwinds from Amazon Pharmacy, mail-order prescription services, and the broader shift of healthcare delivery away from brick-and-mortar retail settings.
The Walgreens story is a window into what has gone wrong with urban retail in America over the past decade. Rising theft, declining foot traffic, and competition from digital alternatives have combined with the specific economics of pharmacy — thin margins on most prescriptions, heavy reliance on a small number of high-volume customers — to make the neighborhood drugstore model increasingly difficult to sustain in the communities that depend on it most. The slower pace of closures in 2026 may offer some relief, but the structural forces driving them have not changed. Fewer than 100 closures this year still means dozens of communities losing a pharmacy — and often, their only one.