Is Kmart still open in 2026?
Yes, barely. As of 2026 there are three Kmart stores left, and only one of them is in the 50 states.
The mainland survivor is in Kendale Lakes, an area of southwest Miami. It runs out of the building's former garden center and carries a limited selection of clothing, appliances and household goods. It is a fragment of a store rather than a discount department store.
The second is a big-box store in Tamuning, Guam, which opened in May 1995 and covers about 170,000 square feet. That makes the largest Kmart on earth a store most Americans will never see. The third is a big-box store in Charlotte Amalie, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, at Tutu Park Mall on St. Thomas.
Kmart.com is still trading and still ships to the 50 states plus APO and FPO addresses, so for almost every American the answer to "is Kmart still open" is now a website rather than a parking lot.
Who owns Kmart now?
Transform SR Brands LLC, which does business as Transformco, owns Kmart. It is privately held, so it publishes no store counts and no sales figures.
Kmart got there through Edward Lampert. His hedge fund, ESL Investments, bought up a large share of Kmart's debt while the retailer was in Chapter 11, and that debt converted into control when the company came out. In February 2019 a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved the sale of the most valuable pieces of Sears Holdings to Lampert, and those assets, including 202 remaining Kmart stores, went into Transform SR Brands.
Transformco has spent the years since subtracting rather than adding. Closures cut the chain to under a dozen stores by early 2022. In July 2026 its logistics arm filed a Pennsylvania layoff notice to shut a 2.2 million square foot warehouse at 1 Kresge Road in Falls Township, cutting 147 jobs, with a final day of September 16, 2026. The address is a fossil of the founding company, S. S. Kresge, incorporated in 1899.
How Kmart went from 2,486 stores to three
Kmart hit its peak in 1994 with 2,486 stores worldwide. Then Walmart beat it on price, Target beat it on presentation, and the stores themselves got old.
On January 22, 2002, Kmart Corporation and 37 of its U.S. subsidiaries filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, case number 02-B02474. All 2,114 Kmart stores stayed open that day, held up by a $2 billion debtor in possession financing package. The company blamed a collapse in fourth quarter sales, the evaporation of the surety bond market and a loss of supplier confidence.
Chief executive Charles C. Conaway said Kmart would use the filing to "make a fresh start and reposition Kmart for the future." In 2005 Kmart and Sears merged into Sears Holdings Corporation, which filed for bankruptcy of its own in 2018. Two chains that had each been the largest retailer in America ended up losing together.
The last full-size Kmart closed on October 20, 2024
The final full-size Kmart in the mainland United States stood in Bridgehampton, New York, on the east end of Long Island. It closed on October 20, 2024.
The setting was odd enough to make national news. A discount chain built for the Midwest ended its mainland run in the Hamptons, in a store that had outlived more than 2,000 American Kmarts. Shoppers cleared the shelves of toys and shoes in the final weeks, and the red sign came down.
What was left after that was the small Miami store, plus the stores in Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. That pattern is familiar from the rest of the era's big-box collapse. RadioShack and Circuit City both ended as brand names attached to a website and a handful of licensed outposts, and Kmart followed the same track: the logo survives the leases.
The U.S. Virgin Islands lost two Kmarts in one summer
In 2024 the U.S. Virgin Islands still had three Kmart stores, more than the entire mainland. That did not last.
Transform KM LLC issued a notice dated May 9, 2025, saying it would permanently cease operations at the Sunny Isle store on St. Croix, affecting about 96 employees, with severance set at one week per full year of service. The store closed in early July 2025, roughly a month ahead of what most of the staff expected. It was already the second St. Croix closure, after the Sunshine Mall store in Frederiksted shut in 2023 following about 30 years on the island.
The Lockhart Gardens store on St. Thomas went next, closing on August 16, 2025 after a liquidation sale that included the fixtures. That left Tutu Park Mall as the only Kmart in the territory, and one of only three anywhere.
What happened to the Blue Light Special
The Blue Light Special ran from 1965 to 1991. A rotating blue light was rolled out to a rack or a bin, a loudspeaker said "Attention, Kmart shoppers," and whatever sat under the light was cheap for a few minutes. It was a flash sale decades before anyone used that phrase.
Kmart retired it in 1991 and then kept exhuming it, with revivals running as late as 2015. None of them worked, because the thing that made the original land was scarcity of information. In 1978 a shopper had no way of knowing whether $6.88 for a set of towels was a real deal. By 2015 the same shopper could check three prices on a phone while standing under the light.
That, more than any single bad quarter, is what replaced Kmart. Walmart took the price position, Target took the taste position, and Amazon took the browsing. The blue light was left announcing discounts to people who could already see every price in the country.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Kmart stores are left?
Three, as of 2026. One small store in Kendale Lakes, Florida, one big-box store in Tamuning, Guam, and one big-box store in Charlotte Amalie in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Where is the last Kmart in the United States?
The last Kmart in the 50 states is in Kendale Lakes, Florida, in the Miami area. It operates out of the former garden center of a much larger Kmart and sells a narrow range of clothing, appliances and household goods. The Guam and U.S. Virgin Islands stores are in U.S. territories, not states.
Can you still shop at Kmart online?
Yes. Kmart.com is still operating and ships to all 50 states plus APO and FPO addresses. For most of the country the website is the only Kmart there is.