Albertsons-owned Safeway has closed at least a dozen stores so far in 2026, with locations in California, Oregon and Washington, D.C. shutting down as the grocery chain reshapes its footprint after its merger with Kroger collapsed.

The closures span several Albertsons banners, including Acme, Balducci’s, Randalls, Safeway and Vons. Confirmed Safeway locations include a store on West Jackson Street in Hayward, California, one on North Coast Highway in Newport, Oregon, and another on Maryland Avenue in Washington, D.C.

One closure carried extra weight for longtime customers. Safeway shut its Hechinger Mall location in Washington, D.C. on May 16, 2026, ending nearly 40 years of business at that address.

Most of the shutdowns come down to leases expiring rather than a broader retreat from any particular market, according to reporting on the closures. Albertsons has continued trimming its store count as it works through the fallout of a blocked $24.6 billion merger with Kroger, which courts in Oregon and Washington state rejected on antitrust grounds in 2024.

As of late February 2026, Albertsons still operated 2,244 retail stores nationwide, along with more than 1,700 in-store pharmacies and over 400 fuel centers, according to the company’s own count. The failed Kroger deal would have combined the two chains into a company with more than 5,000 stores and roughly 700,000 employees, a scale regulators said would have driven up grocery prices.

Albertsons has not published a single comprehensive list of every closure planned for 2026. Local media reports and city filings have been the main way individual store shutdowns come to light, meaning the full scope of the pullback is still emerging store by store.

For workers and shoppers, the pattern has been familiar this year: a notice posted in a storefront window, then confirmation weeks later that a Safeway that had served a neighborhood for decades will not reopen once its lease runs out. Shoppers who rely on a soon-to-close location generally get a few weeks of notice before the doors shut for good.