Walmart's China hypermarkets fell from 412 to 261 — Sam's Club took over

Walmart brought the hypermarket to China in 1996 and for two decades the big box was the business. Then the count rolled over: 412 stores in FY2020, 283 by FY2025, 261 by the end of FY2026 — 151 closures in five years, over a third of the network. The 2025 wave alone closed at least nine doors by July, across Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wenzhou, Guiyang and Kunming; Nanchang lost its last Walmart. Exits came with lease expirations, severance packages and mall redevelopments — the Shanghai Jiangqiao store's 127 staff were reassigned or compensated before the site went to renovation.

The causes were structural. The low-rent deals that made 10,000-sqm boxes profitable expired, and renewals priced the thin-margin format out. Traffic left before the format changed: e-commerce and community group buying took the weekly stock-up trip. And the hypermarket sat between two Chinas — too generic for upgrading shoppers, too pricey for downgrading ones. Walmart had seen it coming and missed its first fix: a 2018 community-store push reached 20–30 locations and was discontinued in 2021 for poor fit, leaving no smaller format to step in when the big one faltered.

The retreat is managed, which is what makes it a case study rather than an obituary. Sam's Club went from 19 stores in 2017 to 63 by April 2026, with FY2026 omnichannel sales over ¥140 billion — more than 80% of Walmart China's revenue. E-commerce crossed 50% of sales; FY2026 China net revenue hit $24.6 billion, up 23%. Walmart sold its ~10% JD stake for ~¥26.6 billion in October 2024 and now runs three curves: compress hypermarkets, expand Sam's, scale digital. The world's largest retailer grew in China by shrinking the format it invented there.