IKEA closed its Harajuku and Shinjuku urban stores after just five years

IKEA closed its two compact city-centre stores in Tokyo's Harajuku and Shinjuku districts on 8 February 2026, just five to six years after opening. The stores were part of IKEA's global strategy to test smaller urban formats that could serve city dwellers who could not easily reach the brand's large suburban warehouses. IKEA Harajuku opened in June 2020 with a convenience store instead of a cafeteria, while IKEA Shinjuku followed in May 2021.

The closures were described as a 'business optimisation' for the greater Tokyo area, with IKEA Shibuya designated as the brand's main downtown hub. The two stores had been popular for their easy train station access and Swedish food takeout, but their compact format limited the product range and the stores struggled to achieve the sales density needed to justify Tokyo's prime retail rents.

The closure marked the end of IKEA's multi-store urban format experiment in Tokyo. The Harajuku and Shinjuku stores had been opened with great fanfare as part of IKEA's city-centre expansion strategy, but the economics of operating multiple compact stores in one of the world's most expensive retail markets proved unsustainable.