Is RadioShack still in business in 2026?
RadioShack still exists in 2026, but almost nothing about it matches the chain Americans grew up with. The name, the website and the product line belong to Unicomer Group, a retailer based in El Salvador that bought the global brand in May 2023.
There is no RadioShack chain left to walk into in the United States. What exists is radioshack.com, a wholesale operation that sells into other retailers, and a network of independent stores licensed to hang the sign.
Modern Retail reported in May 2026 that the brand works with more than 170 resellers across 40 states, most of them independent shops or small regional chains. About 60 percent of revenue now comes from business to business sales, and the rest is split between the company's own site and online marketplaces.
The catalog runs to roughly 600 products, built around batteries, power adapters, memory and portable speakers, and about a third of the business comes from vintage styled goods. "Some of our most explosive sellers have been vintage items like turntables and radios," Luis Diego Cuestas, head of commercial for RadioShack, told Modern Retail in 2026. The brand is alive and the chain is finished. That is a strange answer, but it is the accurate one.
Who owns RadioShack now?
Unicomer Group owns it, through an affiliate called Global Franchising Corporation. Unicomer announced the deal on May 9, 2023, buying RadioShack's intellectual property and domains across about 70 countries, a list that includes the United States, Canada, Europe and China.
This was not a stranger walking in off the street. Unicomer took the RadioShack franchise in El Salvador in January 1998 and spent the next 25 years running RadioShack stores across Central America, South America and the Caribbean.
"This acquisition will allow us to start another phase of growth and innovation in the shopping experience with the latest technology," said Rudy Siman, director and vice president of franchises at Unicomer Group, in the company's announcement in 2023. Unicomer put the brand's reach at more than 2,000 points of sale worldwide.
The previous owner was Retail Ecommerce Ventures, a US firm that collected distressed retail names and picked up RadioShack in 2020. Under Unicomer the brand was relaunched in the United States in August 2024 as a product line rather than a store chain, which is why RadioShack batteries and cables now turn up in shops with no other connection to the old company.
When did RadioShack close, and how many stores are left?
RadioShack did not close on a single day. It closed twice, in two bankruptcies filed two years apart.
RadioShack Corporation filed for Chapter 11 on February 5, 2015 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The court approved the sale at the end of March 2015, and 1,743 stores went to General Wireless Inc., an affiliate of the investment firm Standard General, with Sprint taking counter space inside most of them. About 7,500 jobs were preserved in that deal.
The rescue lasted two years. General Wireless Operations filed its own Chapter 11 on March 8, 2017 with roughly 1,740 stores still trading, and said it would close about 200 of them immediately and evaluate the remaining 1,300. Sprint agreed to pay $12 million to wind down the co-branded leases. Very few of the 1,300 survived the review, and March 2017 is the date most people mean when they ask when RadioShack closed.
As for stores left in 2026: none owned by the company in the United States. The American footprint is the 170 plus authorized dealers, and the shops still trading under the name day to day are mostly in Central America, South America and the Caribbean.
How big did Tandy Corporation make the chain?
RadioShack began in 1921 in Boston, started by the brothers Theodore and Milton Deutschmann to supply amateur radio operators. The name comes from the term for the room that housed a ship's radio gear.
Charles Tandy is the reason it ended up on every corner. He ran a Fort Worth leather goods company, bought the small Boston chain in the 1960s, and rebuilt it around a format almost nobody else wanted: tiny stores, everywhere, stocked with the parts and accessories other retailers could not be bothered to carry.
The scale is easy to underrate now. Tandy Corporation's Form 10-K for 1999 counted 5,087 company-owned RadioShack stores in the United States on December 31 of that year, averaging about 2,300 square feet each, alongside a separate network of 2,099 dealer and franchise stores. That is more than 7,000 outlets selling batteries, connectors, antennas and phone cords.
Tandy also put the chain in the computer business. The TRS-80 arrived in the late 1970s and sold through the same stores that sold speaker wire, which dropped a leather goods company into the personal computer market at the same moment Commodore was chasing the same customers.
Why did the corner store model stop working?
Two forces hit at once. The parts and repair business shrank as consumer electronics became sealed, cheap and disposable, and the accessory business moved to online sellers who did not need a storefront on every commercial strip.
RadioShack's answer was cell phones. Carrier commissions were the richest thing a 2,300 square foot store could sell, so phones took over the shelves and the staff, and a parts retailer turned itself into a middleman in a market run by a handful of carriers.
That bet is what broke in 2017. Sprint's sales fell in the last quarter of 2016, the mobile commissions the company had counted on did not arrive, and the second Chapter 11 followed in March of the next year.
The squeeze was not unique to RadioShack. Circuit City and Fry's Electronics ran out of road in the same stretch of years, and neither of them was carrying thousands of small strip mall leases while it happened.
What happened to all the abandoned RadioShack stores?
Search for an abandoned RadioShack and you get a whole genre of photograph: a dim storefront with the sign still up, shelves half stocked, a handwritten notice taped to the glass. That look comes from how fast 2017 moved. A chain running about 1,740 stores announced immediate closures at 200 of them and put another 1,300 under review, so leases lapsed in waves instead of in an orderly wind-down.
The buildings were an awkward size. A 2,300 square foot box at the front of a strip mall is too small for a supermarket or a big box tenant and too plain to convert cheaply, so plenty of them simply sat.
Some RadioShack signs never went dark, and that is the part people misread. The dealer stores were always separate businesses. Tandy counted 2,099 of them in 1999, independently owned shops licensed to sell under the name, and they were not company assets in either bankruptcy. A working RadioShack in a small town in 2026 is usually one of those.
That history is also the current plan. "We identified a direct-to-consumer element through our own website and marketplaces, but we also knew the brand had a lot of history with B-to-B and local smaller dealers," Cuestas told Modern Retail in 2026. Signing up dealers is cheaper than opening stores, and it is the only way the sign gets back onto an American street.
Where to find one today
The old merchandise is what is left to collect. Tandy-era catalogs, store signage, Realistic-branded audio gear and TRS-80 accessories trade steadily on Etsy, where condition and completeness move the price far more than age does. Compare several listings before paying an asking price, and check whether a catalog is a full annual edition or a thin seasonal flyer, because the two are often listed at the same money.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many RadioShack stores are left in 2026?
In the United States, no RadioShack stores are company-owned. The chain ended with the March 2017 bankruptcy, and the US presence in 2026 is more than 170 authorized dealers and resellers across 40 states, according to Modern Retail in May 2026. Outside the United States the name is still on real stores, mostly in Central America, South America and the Caribbean, part of what Unicomer Group described in 2023 as more than 2,000 points of sale worldwide.
When did RadioShack close?
RadioShack closed in stages rather than on one date. RadioShack Corporation filed for Chapter 11 on February 5, 2015 and sold 1,743 stores to General Wireless that March. General Wireless Operations filed a second Chapter 11 on March 8, 2017 and began closing what was left, which is why March 2017 is the date usually given for the end of the RadioShack chain in the United States.
Does RadioShack still sell electronic components?
Partly. The RadioShack site in 2026 lists soldering irons, soldering stations, electronics tool kits and project kits, but not the drawers of individual resistors and capacitors the old stores kept. Luis Diego Cuestas told Modern Retail in May 2026 that soldering supplies, small components for repair and restoration, and DIY kits are part of the plan as the range grows from about 600 products toward 1,000.