Lowe's Opens Five Stores in 2026, Leads with In-Store Digital Features

Lowe's is adding five stores in 2026, and the first one tells you something about where the company's physical retail strategy is heading.

The Port St. Lucie, Florida location, opening in early June, will be a 94,000-square-foot store with a 30,000-square-foot garden center attached. It's the city's second Lowe's and the chain's 133rd in Florida, according to Retail Dive's reporting.

Digital Features Front and Center

The more interesting detail isn't the square footage. Lowe's is loading the new store with QR codes that connect shoppers to a style quiz, a budget calculator, and a 3D visualizer. Enhanced digital signage is in, and so are self-service paint kiosks and dedicated buy-online-pick-up-in-store zones.

Lowe's is also rolling out redesigned kitchen and appliance showrooms at the new location, an upgrade it plans to bring to some existing stores later this year. That's a meaningful signal: the new store isn't just a prototype for net-new locations, it's a testing bed for retrofitting the broader fleet.

Expansion Against the Grain

The context here matters. A UBS report cited by Retail Dive estimates roughly 40,000 U.S. retail stores will close over the next five years, hitting department stores and specialty retailers hardest. Big-box players like Lowe's, Walmart, and Costco are expected to absorb the displaced traffic and take share.

Lowe's had previously signaled plans to open 10 to 15 stores per year over the next several years, so five new locations in 2026 is a modest pace. The company also cut 600 corporate and support roles earlier this year. On the financial side, Lowe's projected full-year sales growth of 7% to 9% for the year and reported Q4 net sales up 10.9%, with comparable sales rising 1.3%.

Why It Matters

For retail media watchers, the in-store digital buildout is the thread worth pulling. QR codes tied to conversion tools and expanded digital signage are exactly the infrastructure that eventually feeds an in-store retail media offering. Lowe's One Roof Media Network already sells on-site and off-site inventory, and physical touchpoints like these widen the surface area for that business. Every new store Lowe's opens with this kind of digital layer is one more location that could eventually carry ads, collect first-party signals, or close the loop on attribution.