Macy’s expects to shut roughly 150 department stores by the close of its 2026 fiscal year, the final stretch of a three-year retrenchment that has already darkened dozens of familiar mall anchors. The company casts the cull as a route back to growth, concentrating money and attention on a few hundred locations it believes can still pull a crowd. For the retiree who has carried a Macy’s card for decades and banked store rewards toward the next big sale, the question is narrower and more pressing: whether the nearest store survives the list, and what becomes of the points and certificates tied to it.
Inside the “Bold New Chapter” store cull
The plan Macy’s calls “A Bold New Chapter” dates to February 2024, when the company committed to closing about 150 underproductive stores over roughly three years while pouring investment into the 350 or so locations it intends to keep. The logic is to stop propping up money-losing square footage and spend instead on stores with the foot traffic to justify it. By Macy’s own timeline, the closures are meant to wrap up by the end of fiscal 2026, which makes this year the tail end of the retreat rather than its opening act.
The pace has been steady rather than sudden. Macy’s closed about 66 stores during 2025, and in early 2026 it confirmed the planned closures would continue, with another 14 locations set to go dark under the same strategy. Those latest closings stretch across a dozen states, from California and Texas to New York and New Jersey, and many began clearance sales as soon as the list became public.
Shoppers in affected markets often learn their store is on the closure list only when the liquidation banners appear in the windows. Because the cuts are concentrated in smaller markets and older malls, a single closing can leave a whole region without a nearby Macy’s, turning a routine errand into a longer drive or a shift to shopping online.
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What a closing store means for Star Rewards and gift cards
The money at stake for a longtime customer is not the merchandise but the rewards. Macy’s gift cards do not carry expiration dates and remain spendable at other Macy’s stores and online, so a card left in a drawer is not lost when a single location closes. Star Money and the reward certificates earned through the Star Rewards loyalty program and the Macy’s credit card are a different matter: they arrive in defined promotional windows and expire if they go unused, which turns a nearby closure into a deadline for anyone who was holding them for a particular store.
The practical move is to redeem any outstanding rewards before a local store’s final day, or to shift that spending online or to the next surviving location. Store-specific conveniences vanish with the building as well, including in-person returns, alterations, and buy-online-pickup-in-store, all of which force a longer trip once the closest Macy’s is gone. For an older shopper who prefers to handle merchandise before buying, that lost proximity is its own quiet cost, separate from any points left on the table.
Why Macy’s is thinning its fleet
The retrenchment is a bet that a smaller, better-funded Macy’s beats a larger struggling one. The company has steered spending toward a group of higher-performing stores it has reworked with updated layouts and staffing, and it reported that those locations grew comparable sales while the broader fleet lagged. In December, Macy’s said its sales had reached their strongest level in more than three years, a figure the company used to argue the turnaround is taking hold even as the store count falls.
The closures also track a longer shift in how Americans shop. Department-store chains have spent years ceding ground to online sellers and off-price rivals, and thinning the fleet is Macy’s attempt to match its physical footprint to the traffic that still walks through the doors. That may be sound corporate math, but it lands unevenly on customers who do not shop online, for whom a shuttered anchor is not a strategic adjustment but the loss of the store where they actually spend.
For customers, the tradeoff is blunt. A leaner chain may be financially healthier, but it also means fewer full-service department stores within easy reach, particularly in the aging malls and smaller markets that tend to land on closure lists first. The retirees most affected are often those in exactly those communities, where a Macy’s anchor has long doubled as a dependable place to buy clothing, cosmetics, and housewares without shipping fees or a screen.
Whether the shrunken footprint delivers the durable growth Macy’s is promising will not be clear until well after the last of the 150 stores locks its doors. What is already settled is the near-term arithmetic for the customer: a closure list that keeps expanding, reward balances that keep their own clocks, and a shrinking number of places to spend them in person.
Shoppers who want to know where they stand can check the company’s published closure lists against their local store and treat any reward certificate as money with a deadline attached. The stores on the 2026 list are the ones to watch, because once the clearance ends, the points tied to that address are worth only what gets spent before the lights go out.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed against primary sources by The Money Overview editorial team.
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