Walgreens has now closed a dozen more locations in 2026 alone, stretching from Chicago to Seattle, as the pharmacy chain tries to right-size a footprint it admits grew too large.
The second-largest pharmacy chain in the country, trailing only CVS, is working through a downsizing campaign that began in 2024, when Walgreens announced plans to shutter roughly 1,200 stores by 2027. The company closed around 500 locations in 2025. A leadership change at Walgreens scaled back the 2026 target to roughly 100 closures, but the cuts keep coming, and the communities losing their neighborhood pharmacy are left to absorb the consequences.
As of August, The U.S. Sun reported twelve specific Walgreens locations have already shut their doors this year. The closures span nine states and the District of Columbia, Illinois, Missouri, New York, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington state, Wisconsin, and D.C., and hit neighborhoods in cities large and small.
Illinois took a disproportionate share of the pain. Two Chicago locations, one on East 71st Street on the South Side and another on South Cottage Grove Avenue, are gone, along with a store on East State Street in Rockford. Missouri lost two as well, in the St. Louis metro area: one in Bridgeton on St. Charles Rock Road and another on Chambers Road in St. Louis proper.
Milwaukee's closure stands out. The Walgreens at 2727 West North Avenue shut down last month, and it was not the first. That store marked Milwaukee's eighth Walgreens closure in just three years. For residents who depend on a corner pharmacy for prescriptions, flu shots, and basic household goods, eight closures in a single mid-sized city is not a corporate restructuring statistic. It is a hole in the daily routine.
Brooklyn lost a location on Court Street. Houston lost one on Greens Road. Arlington, Virginia, lost a store on South Joyce Street. Seattle lost one on South Jackson Street. A Walgreens on Connecticut Avenue in northwest Washington, D.C., also closed. And Beaufort, South Carolina, a small coastal city, lost its Ribaut Road location.
Walgreens has attributed the pullback to several forces. The company has said it expanded too aggressively and now operates more stores than it can support. Underperforming sales, expiring leases, and distribution center consolidation all factor into which locations get the ax. Ongoing theft and safety concerns at certain stores have also played a role, a problem that Walgreens and other major retailers have flagged publicly for years, particularly in cities where organized retail crime has surged.
Cost-cutting and improving profitability sit at the center of the strategy. Walgreens is also trying to adapt to changing consumer habits, a polite way of saying that foot traffic at brick-and-mortar pharmacies has declined as more customers fill prescriptions by mail or through digital platforms.
Even after the closures, the chain remains enormous. Data from ScrapeHero shows Walgreens still operates over 8,000 stores as of July 2026. But scale does not help the customer whose nearest pharmacy just locked its doors, especially in lower-income urban neighborhoods and smaller towns where alternatives are thin.
The original 2024 announcement set a pace of about 400 closures per year to reach the 1,200 target by 2027. After a leadership change, the specifics of which Walgreens has not detailed publicly, the company pulled back its 2026 plans to roughly 100 closures. That is a steep reduction from the 500 stores shuttered in 2025, but it still means dozens of communities will lose a Walgreens before the year is out.
Whether the remaining closures will be concentrated in certain regions or spread broadly is unclear. Inc. compiled the list of 2026 closures, and the twelve addresses published so far suggest no single state is being singled out, the cuts run coast to coast.
Open questions remain. Walgreens has not disclosed the total number of stores closed since the downsizing program launched. It has not said whether the roughly 100 figure for 2026 is a hard cap or a soft estimate. And the criteria for selecting individual locations, beyond the broad categories of weak sales, lease expirations, and safety, have not been made public.
Retail pharmacy closures are not just a business story. They are a public-health story. When a Walgreens closes in a neighborhood that already lacks a grocery store, residents, often elderly, often without reliable transportation, lose convenient access to prescription medication. The term "pharmacy desert" has entered the national vocabulary for a reason, and every closure on this list makes the map a little emptier.
Walgreens is not the only chain pulling back; CVS and other retailers have trimmed their footprints in recent years as well. But Walgreens' sheer volume, 500 closures in a single year, with more to come, puts it at the front of the trend. The company frames the retreat as a necessary correction after years of over-expansion. Shareholders may welcome leaner operations. The retiree in Milwaukee who just lost her eighth neighborhood Walgreens in three years sees it differently.
When corporations admit they grew recklessly and then ask everyday Americans to bear the cost of the correction, the balance sheet may get healthier, but the communities left behind rarely do.