Has Walmart issued any official press releases in 2025–2026 about mass store closures in any U.S. state?

1. The claim that Walmart was closing many stores and Walmart’s response

Throughout early- and mid-2025 a number of websites published lists saying Walmart planned to shutter multiple locations across states — headlines and aggregated lists appeared on outlets such as About America, Merca20, TheFW, and others that reported dozens of closures or “mass” shutdowns ^{[4] [5] [6] [7]}. Those narratives were directly challenged when Fast Company and other mainstream outlets contacted Walmart; the retailer told Fast Company the circulating list of locations marked for closure was false and that the erroneous chain of reporting originated with a misreported story in another outlet ^[1]. Finance and major news aggregators relayed Walmart’s denial, quoting company spokespeople who said there were no plans to close stores in 2025 and pointing out that the closures cited in many stories actually occurred in 2024 ^{[3] [2]}.

2. What counts as an “official press release” and what the sources show

In the materials provided there is no verifiable Walmart press release announcing mass, state-level store closures for 2025–2026; instead, the public record in these sources shows corporate statements pushing back on viral lists and a corporate page that lists temporary closures related to weather and disasters rather than strategic mass shutdowns ^{[1] [3] [8]}. Walmart’s corporate “store closures” resource is framed around disaster response and operational status updates for weather events, not rolling announcements of permanent, state-wide closures ^[8]. Where independent coverage described many planned closures, Walmart’s own communications—reported by Fast Company and others—contradicted those lists ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Instances that might be mistaken for “mass closures” but are different

Some reporting conflated a handful of isolated 2024 closures, local store wind-downs, or routine operational adjustments with a broader corporate downsizing campaign; Fast Company emphasized that 11 reported closures were from 2024 and that Walmart was simultaneously building or converting new stores as part of expansion plans ^[1]. Separately, Walmart’s decision to close all U.S. stores on certain holidays (for example, December 25, 2025 was reported as a nationwide closure for the holiday) is a company-wide temporary shutdown for a day, not a mass permanent closure of locations in a particular state ^[9]. Those distinctions matter but were blurred in some headlines and social shares ^{[1] [9]}.

4. Why misinformation spread and who benefited from it

The spread traced back to a misreported article that other sites amplified without verification, illustrating a common traffic-driven incentive in digital publishing where sensational lists generate clicks and shares; Fast Company explicitly said the erroneous claim originated in a late-March story that was updated after Walmart contacted the editors for correction ^[1]. Outlets that repeated the lists without checking with Walmart later faced corrections or pushback from the retailer and fact-checkers, and mainstream coverage—such as Yahoo Finance’s synopsis of Walmart’s denial—helped tamp down the inaccuracy ^[3].

5. What this reporting leaves unanswered

Based on the provided sources it is clear Walmart publicly denied mass closure plans for 2025 and offered corporate pages for temporary, weather-related closures ^{[1] [3] [8]}, but the documents here do not include a comprehensive search of Walmart’s full newsroom for 2026 press releases; therefore this analysis cannot categorically state that no Walmart press release mentioning any store reductions or relocations was ever issued in 2026 beyond the cited materials. The strongest supported conclusion from the available reporting is that no verified Walmart press release announced mass, state-level permanent closures in 2025, and that viral lists claiming otherwise were debunked by Walmart and reporting outlets ^{[1] [2] [3]}.