The Barnes & Noble book retail chain has announced plans to open 60 stores in 2026.
The company said the details on the locations and the opening dates are “being worked out,” although USA Today reports the new stores are being planned for California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Virginia, and Washington, with “several openings” during the first half of next year. Barnes & Noble opened 67 stores during 2025, and it also opened 61 stores in 2024 and 30 new locations in 2023.
In a statement, the company said, “Barnes & Noble is enjoying a period of tremendous growth as the strategy to hand control of each bookstore to its local booksellers has proven so successful. In 2024, Barnes & Noble opened more new bookstores in a single year than it had in the whole decade from 2009 to 2019.”
In addition to launching new stores, Barnes & Noble acquired two book retailers over the past year-and-a-half: the Bay Area’s nine-store Books Inc. in September and Denver’s seven-unit Tattered Cover Book Store chain in July 2024.
