Hm has cut more than 600 stores since 2022 and ended the first half of 2026 with 4,038 locations, underscoring how quickly the company has pulled back from physical retail even as it keeps reshaping its brand lineup. The latest six-month report shows the scale of the retreat clearly: H&M Group had 4,702 stores at the end of 2022 and 644 fewer by the middle of this year.
The reason the move is drawing fresh attention is simple. Daniel Ervér said sales in the quarter were somewhat lower than planned, even as profitability and the stock-in-trade situation improved, which gives the store cuts a sharper edge than a routine clean-up. For readers searching Hm now, the report is the latest sign that the company is trying to protect margins while selling into a tougher market.
H&M closed 136 stores over the past six months alone, and the company said there were 163 fewer stores at the beginning of the second quarter than a year earlier and 128 fewer at the end of the quarter than at the same point last year. Those figures matter because they show the pace of change is not slowing; H&M is not just trimming a few weak outlets, it is steadily shrinking its footprint.
The Monki brand explains part of that drop. H&M shut down most standalone Monki stores, closed the brand and folded some of its products into Weekday, after having paired the two labels in 2023 as a single youth-focused hub. The company said the comparison with last year was affected by the closure of all Monki stores in 2025, when 43 Monki stores were open at the beginning of the second quarter and 32 remained by the end of it.
That leaves the company with a clearer but narrower path: fewer stores, fewer overlapping banners and more reliance on Weekday to carry the youth offer, while Cheap Monday is set to return with a small assortment of jeans. H&M also said the profitability improvement and increased inventory productivity were in line with its long-term work to lay the foundations for sustainable and profitable growth, even as sales fell 1% in the first six months of the year. The unanswered point is how far the trimming goes next, because the report gives the full scale of the cutback so far but not the next round.
