Papa Johns is closing stores: See a list of doomed locations for 2026 as the pizza chain reduces its footprint

More than three months after it announced plans to close hundreds of restaurant locations this year, Papa Johns International appears to have already made significant reductions to its national footprint. The pizza delivery and takeout chain has shuttered dozens of locations across at least 17 states in 2026 so far, according to a Fast Company analysis, with restaurants in Texas, California, Florida, and Arizona being hit especially hard. Other states with multiple Papa Johns closures include Michigan, North Carolina, and Virginia. Some of the stores that have closed were the only Papa Johns in town, such as a recently shuttered location in Scottsboro, in northeastern Alabama. Papa Johns, which has headquarters in Atlanta and Louisville, Kentucky, had 3,487 locations in North America as of the end of March, most of which are franchised. In February, the company announced it would close up to 300 locations through the end of 2027, with two-thirds of those closures expected this year. Why is Papa Johns closing stores? Papa Johns has been struggling with declining North American sales, likely for a few different reasons. For starters, consumer tastes are changing, and believe it or not, Americans may be eating less pizza. According to a January report by the Wall Street Journal, pizzerias in the United States are now outnumbered by Mexican restaurants and coffee shops. Meanwhile, competition among fast food brands is increasingly cutthroat, with younger consumers especially gravitating toward fast-growing chicken-focused chains such as Raising Cane’s and Dave’s Hot Chicken. For more health-conscious diners, there’s Sweetgreen or Cava, both of which have greatly expanded their fleets in recent years. Some challenges facing Papa Johns are sector wide. Restaurants more broadly have been battered by rising operating costs and increasingly price-sensitive diners, with a number of fast food franchisees being pushed into bankruptcy this year. Papa Johns is not even the