KFC closed more than 200 U.S. locations over the past 15 months, according to reports from parent company Yum! Brands. Most of the closures involved franchised locations. While its U.S. footprint declined, KFC continued expanding internationally.
KFC’s U.S. Store Count Declines
According to Yum! Brands, the chain’s parent company, KFC experienced 207 store closures in the U.S. from January 2025 to March 31, 2026. The data comes from the parent operator’s ‘Restaurant Units Activity Summary’ from last year.
According to the information from the 2025 summary, the company shuttered 161 locations across the country during the year. All of these closures included franchised restaurants, no company-owned outlets. During the same year, 15 new locations opened, which included 12 franchised and three company-owned restaurants.
While the chain ran 3,669 U.S. outlets at the beginning of 2025, the number came down to 3,523 by the year-end. This reflected a net decline of nearly 146 locations, which continued the next year.
According to the Restaurant Units Activity Summary from 2026, KFC shut down 46 outlets between January and March 2026. In the same period, it launched five new restaurants.
As a result, the company’s restaurant count dipped from 3,523 at the start of this year to 3,482 by the end of its first quarter. Combined, the two reports show 207 U.S. restaurant closures during the period.
According to The Street, there are also certain public sources that show a larger number of KFC store declines. One of its states that the value came down from 4,089 on July 14, 2025, to 3,784 on July 14, 2026. This shows that the chain faced 305 closures in the U.S. over one year.
KFC’s official website currently lists 3,786 U.S. locations.
Closures Came While KFC Expanded Globally
Yum! Brands states in a report that the chain opened 2,986 gross restaurants across 105 countries during 2025. It added further 648 gross restaurants globally during this year’s first quarter.
In total, KFC’s worldwide restaurant count grew from 33,897 by 2025 to 34,332 by March 31, 2026.
According to the parent operator, the chicken brand had around $36.4 billion in sales in 2025, which grew from $34.4 billion in 2024. However, only 13% of this value came from the brand’s U.S. market. Around 27% of it came from China and 12% of it from the European market.
The recent data from different sources indicate that KFC is reducing its restaurant count in the U.S. while continuing to expand globally.
