UK Toy Chain Entertainer Store Closures: Full List 2026

At least 14 branches of The Entertainer have closed across the UK since January 2025. The final confirmed closure was Kidderminster’s Swan Centre store on 7 February 2026, where a 50% off storewide sale ran through the last day of trading. No further closures have been announced since.

The closures have been real, and the communities that lost local branches have felt it. But the business behind those closed shutters posted UK retail sales growth of more than 20% in both 2024 and 2025. It opened eight new stores last year. And as of this weekend, Britain’s largest independent toy retailer is sitting on an unanswered question about Sunday trading that has been building for 44 years.

Quick Summary

1. At least 14 UK branch closures confirmed, January 2025 to February 2026
2. Store count down from a 2023 peak of 165 to around 150
3. UK retail sales grew more than 20% for two consecutive years
4. Products now available in over 3,000 UK locations via Tesco, Matalan and M&S
5. New stores opened in 2025 and 2026, with more confirmed for later this year
6. Sunday trading trial ended this Easter weekend — no permanent decision announced

Which The Entertainer Stores Have Closed?

Below is every confirmed branch closure from January 2025 onwards, with dates and notes where available.

The cluster of January 2026 closures was not a planned programme. Multiple lease renewals fell in the same window, and each was assessed separately. CEO Andrew Murphy OBE confirmed in an October 2025 interview with Toy World Magazine that the chain had faced 70 lease events across its estate since its 2023 store count peak of 165. January 2026 was when several of those came due simultaneously.

The Hartlepool closure stands apart from every other entry on that list. That branch was removed because the landlord was redeveloping Middleton Grange Shopping Centre. The Entertainer had no role in that decision.

Why Is The Entertainer Closing Stores?

The consistent reason across almost every closure is a lease expiry combined with costs that made renewal unviable. When a lease runs out at a location where footfall has dropped and operating costs have risen, the business takes the view that renewing it at market rate no longer makes commercial sense.

A spokesperson for the Preston closure put the company’s position plainly:

“Sadly, it is a fact of retail life that shops sometimes have to close, as shopping patterns shift and cost growth outstrips sales increases.”

The Budget Impact Most Coverage Left Out

There is a specific cost event that has been largely absent from reporting on these closures.

The October 2024 Autumn Budget raised employer National Insurance contributions from 13.8% to 15%, effective April 2025. The threshold at which businesses start paying NI was also cut from £9,100 to £5,000. For a retailer running 150-plus stores with large frontline workforces, that is a significant and immediate increase in the cost of every lease renewal calculation.

Andrew Murphy told Toy World Magazine the NI changes had “tipped the balance” on lease decisions. Two planned new store openings were scrapped within days of the Budget announcement. Head office hiring was frozen at the same time.

That context reframes the wave of January 2026 closures. Lease renewals that might have been borderline decisions under pre-April 2025 cost conditions became clear ones once the NI hike was baked in.

Is The Entertainer Going Out of Business?

No. The trading data published through late 2025 and into 2026 points consistently in the opposite direction.

UK retail sales grew more than 20% in 2025, the second consecutive year of 20%-plus growth. Over the nine weeks covering Black Friday and December 2025, stores traded 3.5% ahead of the prior year. Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme in January 2026, Murphy said the performance was “comfortably ahead of the BRC reported performance for the non-food market.”

January 2026 accelerated further. In-store sales growth reached 15% year on year, running at five times the pace of online growth for the same period.

Murphy was direct on the question of store numbers at the London Toy Fair in January 2026:

“We’re not necessarily seeking to grow our shop estate overall. Our focus is on improving the overall estate quality: the right formats in the right units in the right location.”

His October 2025 forecast for the year ahead:

“My expectation is that we’ll exit 2026 with more shops than we enter with. This is the only year where we will be in a net deficit.”

The Ownership Change Behind Everything

On 26 September 2025, The Entertainer went through the most significant structural change in its 44-year history. Founders Gary and Catherine Grant transferred 100% of shares in TEAL Group Holdings — the parent company of The Entertainer, Early Learning Centre and Addo Play — to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT).

The move made The Entertainer the second largest employee-owned retailer in the UK, behind John Lewis. All 1,900 members of staff became indirect beneficiaries of the business.

Gary Grant, who opened the first Entertainer store in Amersham in 1981 at 22 years old, said on the day the transfer was signed:

“Today marks a momentous day for the Grant family. It feels like only yesterday that my wife Catherine and I opened our first store in Amersham, and we could only have dreamed what heights the business would reach.”

Murphy, speaking at the London Toy Fair in January 2026, acknowledged the weight of the transition: “Coping with losing the Grant family’s commercial skill and experience has not been easy.” Three senior executives, Chief Product Officer Brian Proctor, acting Chief Commercial Officer Heather Robbins and Director of Trading Sarah Cannon, all left the business in late 2025 as the new structure settled.

Sunday Trading: 44 Years of Sundays Closed — and a Decision Due Any Day

For its entire history, The Entertainer never opened on Sundays. Gary Grant made that call based on his Christian faith in 1981, and it held across every branch in the chain without exception for four decades.

Two days after the EOT transfer completed, that changed.

On 28 September 2025, a six-month Sunday trading trial launched across 150 stores. The chain created more than 200 new weekend sales assistant roles to support the extended hours. Over 10,000 job applications arrived in just five weeks.

The trial was scheduled to run until Easter 2026. That end date was this weekend, 4 to 6 April 2026.

As of today, The Entertainer has not announced whether Sunday opening will become permanent. The company said it would review commercial results and staff feedback before making a final decision. That announcement is now overdue. When it comes, it will either restore a founding principle or close it out for good.

New Stores Opening in 2025 and 2026

2025 openings:

• Gen5 concept stores at Bluewater (Kent), Cambridge, Rushden Lakes, Aberdeen and Edinburgh Gyle Shopping Centre
• First-ever outlet stores at Dalton Park, The O2 London and Gunwharf Quays Portsmouth
• The Bluewater store replaced the smaller unit The Entertainer had run there since 2011 and was shortlisted for Retail Week’s New Store of the Year award
• Edinburgh Gyle opened in December 2025, fulfilling a promise made publicly when the Cameron Toll branch shut in January of the same year

2026 openings so far:

• A 4,000 sq ft store at Churchill Square in Brighton opened in early March 2026, with a sensory play zone and the full current collectibles range
• On 2 April 2026, The Entertainer announced 12 additional Pop Mart Robo Shop vending machines rolling out to stores across the UK over the next six weeks, including Newcastle Metro Centre, Glasgow St Enoch, Manchester Arndale, Bristol Cribbs Causeway, Belfast, Leeds and Cardiff. The chain is now the UK’s largest Pop Mart retail partner, following the first Robo Shop launch at Bluewater in 2025.

More new locations are confirmed for later in 2026, though specific sites have not been publicly named yet.

Where to Find The Entertainer Near You

If a local standalone branch has closed, the range is accessible through several other routes:

• thetoyshop.com — full product range, home delivery, and 30-minute click and collect
• Tesco — Toy-Box concessions now operate in over 850 large Tesco stores and 2,000 Tesco Express locations across the UK and Ireland, covering more than 90% of UK shoppers
• Matalan and M&S — selected Early Learning Centre and Entertainer ranges in-store
• Deliveroo — the UK’s first national toy retailer Deliveroo partnership launched in December 2025

The store finder at thetoyshop.com lists every open standalone branch alongside the nearest Tesco concession for each area.

The branch closures between January 2025 and February 2026 reduced The Entertainer’s standalone footprint from 165 stores to around 150. New openings have been running alongside them throughout. A Brighton store opened last month. Pop Mart machines are going into a dozen more locations this month. January in-store sales came in 15% ahead of the prior year. And at the company’s Amersham head office, whoever makes the call on Sunday trading is now deciding whether a policy Gary Grant set in 1981 survives the business he built outlasting his ownership of it.