Walk into a mall today and you’ll see the ghosts. You know the ones—those massive, windowless concrete blocks at the end of the corridor where the "Sears" sign used to glow in blue. For a lot of us, it feels like the company vanished into thin air overnight. But if you're asking when did sears close, the answer is actually a lot weirder than a single date on a calendar.
Honestly, it wasn't a sudden death. It was more like a slow, painful leaking of air from a tire that took twenty years to finally go flat. While the "big" moment everyone remembers is the 2018 bankruptcy, the truth is that Sears is technically still around, even if it’s just a shadow of its former self.
The Day the Music Stopped: The 2018 Bankruptcy
If you want a hard date to circle in red ink, it’s October 15, 2018. That’s when Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. At the time, they had about 700 stores left. People thought that was the end. The "Everything Must Go" signs went up, and the vultures started circling the real estate.
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But Sears didn't actually disappear then.
A hedge fund guy named Eddie Lampert, who had been running the show (and arguably driving it into the dirt), bought the assets out of bankruptcy through a new company called Transformco. Basically, he bought the company from himself to keep a few hundred stores alive. It was a "zombie" move that kept the brand on life support for a few more years.
When the Last Stores Started Flickering Out
The real "closing" has been a rolling wave of liquidations that hasn't actually stopped. By early 2024, the number of full-line Sears stores in the continental United States had dropped to single digits.
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As of right now, in early 2026, you can count the remaining Sears stores on one hand. It’s wild to think that a company that once had 3,500 locations is now down to just a few spots like El Paso, Texas, and Braintree, Massachusetts. Most people in the U.S. haven't seen an open Sears in five years. If you live in Illinois, the "home" of Sears, the very last store in the state—the one at Woodfield Mall—shut its doors in November 2021.
Why did it take so long?
Retail experts like Neil Saunders have pointed out that Sears didn't close because of one bad year. It was "death by a thousand cuts." They stopped painting the walls. They stopped fixing the elevators. They sold off their best brands like Craftsman and Lands' End just to keep the lights on.
- 2005: The Kmart merger (the beginning of the end).
- 2017: They finally stopped selling Whirlpool appliances after a 100-year partnership.
- 2018: The official bankruptcy filing.
- 2021: The last store in their home state of Illinois closes.
- 2024-2025: The old corporate headquarters in Hoffman Estates is literally torn down to build a data center.
The Physical Erasure of a Giant
You know it’s over when they start knocking down the buildings. In August 2024, demolition crews started ripping apart the 2.4 million-square-foot headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. That massive campus was once the heart of the American retail empire. Now? It’s going to be a 200-megawatt data center.
It’s sorta poetic, isn't it? The place where people used to plan the "Wish Book" catalog is being replaced by servers that probably power the very Amazon algorithms that killed the department store in the first place.
Is Sears Still Open Anywhere?
Kinda. If you’re looking for a "Sears," you might still find some Sears Hometown stores, which are smaller and mostly sell tools and appliances. But even those have been disappearing fast. Most of the original "Grand" stores are gone.
The website is still live, too. You can go to Sears.com right now and buy a lawnmower. But it’s not the same. It feels like a marketplace for third-party sellers, a ghost of the catalog that used to arrive on every American doorstep.
What You Should Do Now
If you still have an old Sears gift card or "Shop Your Way" points, use them immediately. There is no guarantee those systems will work a month from now.
If you’re a fan of their old house brands, remember that they aren't exclusive to Sears anymore. You can find Craftsman at Lowe’s and DieHard batteries at Advance Auto Parts. The brands outlived the store.
For those who want to see a Sears one last time for the nostalgia, you’d better book a flight to Florida or Texas soon. The real estate under those last remaining stores is worth more than the clothes inside them, and developers are already pitching plans to turn those final locations into apartments and condos.
The era of the "everything store" didn't end with a bang; it ended with a "For Lease" sign and a half-empty parking lot.