While more than 2,000 store closures have been announced in 2026 alone, discount and off-price chains are pushing aggressive expansion plans that put hundreds of new locations on the map, a bet that value-hungry consumers will keep showing up.
TJ Maxx is opening five new stores by the end of August in Montana, Arkansas, Oregon, Virginia, and Ohio, with two additional locations relocating. Ross Stores rolled out 47 new locations across 15 states and territories in June and July. Dollar General plans to add 450 stores this year. Aldi, the German-owned grocery discounter, is targeting more than 180 new stores across 31 states by December, pushing its U.S. footprint close to 2,800 locations.
The numbers tell a story that runs directly against the "retail apocalypse" narrative that has dominated business commentary for the better part of a decade. Brick-and-mortar retail is not dying. It is splitting, and the winners are the chains that give cost-conscious shoppers a reason to walk through the door.
Ross Stores is on track to open roughly 110 locations in 2026. The company currently operates 1,952 Ross Dress for Less stores and 376 dd's Discounts outlets. Richard Lietz, Ross Stores' executive vice president of property development, framed the push in straightforward terms.
Lietz told the Daily Mail:
"Each new opening allows us to deliver compelling value to even more customers while creating new jobs and making a positive impact in the local communities."
He added a blunter assessment of the market opportunity: "Off-price continues to grow, and we are well positioned to capitalize on them."
TJX Companies, the parent of TJ Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, Sierra, and HomeSense, is thinking even bigger. CEO Ernie Herrman announced in 2024 that TJX was targeting at least 1,300 additional stores globally across its portfolio. As of its first-quarter 2026 results, TJ Maxx alone operated 1,354 locations.
Aldi's ambitions stretch further out. Beyond the 180-plus stores planned for this year, the company has set a longer-term target of 3,200 U.S. stores by the end of 2028. That would represent a substantial jump from its current base of nearly 2,800.
The expansion wave is not limited to dollar stores and off-price racks. Nordstrom Rack is planting new locations in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, and California. Costco plans to open 26 net new warehouses during its 2026 fiscal year. BJ's Wholesale Club expects to finish the 2025, 26 period with 25 to 30 new clubs.
Target plans 30 new stores in 2026. Walmart is adding 20 through early 2027 and remodeling hundreds more. Barnes & Noble is targeting 60 new stores. L.L.Bean announced eight new locations. Even Starbucks, following a major restructuring, expects to add 150 to 175 net new company-operated U.S. coffeehouses this year.
That is a lot of concrete being poured and lease agreements being signed for an industry that pundits have been eulogizing since the mid-2010s.
Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at GlobalData, did not hold back. He told the Daily Mail:
"The whole idea of a retail apocalypse has always been nonsense. Retail has its stresses and strains, but it remains resilient and, at the moment, is actually seeing good growth."
Saunders pointed to a specific current driving the expansion: consumers shifting toward value channels. "There are some underlying currents, like the shift of more consumers into value channels, but that's beneficial for those players and has allowed them to expand," he said.
Elizabeth Lafontaine, director of research at foot-traffic analytics firm Placer.ai, echoed that assessment. She noted that discount chains "have performed well against the backdrop of economic uncertainty and the consumer's desire for strong inherent value."
Lafontaine described a consumer who is still willing to spend, but has become far more deliberate about where and how. "Consumers are becoming more discerning with their wallets at retail; a strong value proposition is necessary for them to spend," she said. She added that shoppers "are cross-shopping multiple retail chains more frequently to source the best deals and assortments that fit their needs."
The expansion numbers do not erase the pain on the other side of the ledger. More than 4,100 stores closed in 2025. Another 2,000-plus closures have already been announced for 2026. Big Lots filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2024, weighed down by heavy debt, inflation, and slumping customer spending.
Saunders used Big Lots as a cautionary tale. "Being discounter is no guarantee of success if you're not delivering for the customer," he said. Slapping a low price on merchandise is not enough if the shopping experience, the product mix, or the store itself fails to give people a reason to come back.
That distinction matters. The chains expanding most aggressively, TJ Maxx, Ross, Aldi, Costco, are not simply cheap. They offer what the industry calls a "treasure hunt" experience: rotating inventory, brand-name goods at steep markdowns, and a store layout that rewards repeat visits because the selection changes constantly. Dollar General, by contrast, scaled back its 2026 opening target to 450 stores from the 575 it had planned for 2025, a signal that even within the discount space, not every model is firing on all cylinders.
Lafontaine pointed to a strategic logic behind the geographic spread. Retailers are following population growth, changing demographics, and local spending habits into emerging and secondary markets. The goal, she said, is putting the "right locations to serve the right audiences with the right store formats."
That explains why TJ Maxx is opening in Montana and Arkansas, not just coastal metros. Ross Stores spread its 47 summer openings across 15 states and territories. Aldi's 31-state footprint for 2026 suggests it is pushing well beyond the Midwest and East Coast markets where it first established itself.
Lafontaine summarized the broader picture: "Expansion into new, growing markets has been successful for a lot of brands, as has the growth of discount and value-oriented chains." And she pushed back firmly on the idea that consumers have simply stopped shopping in person. "The consumer base still wants to shop," she said, "even if their wallets have tightened and their path to purchase has changed over time."
The lesson is not complicated. Americans did not stop buying things. They stopped overpaying for them. The retailers that figured that out are building. The ones that did not are boarding up windows.