2 days a year every US Walmart shuts, and roughly 10 department clocks run inside the ones that are open.
Walmart holiday hours have a clean national answer at the top and a messy local one underneath. All US stores close on Thanksgiving Day, and all US stores close on 25 December: the company states both on its own help pages. Every other day the store trades, but a Supercenter is not one clock. The pharmacy, the Vision Center and the Auto Care Center each open later than the doors do.
What you need
9 itemsHow to check the hours near you
Take the two closures as settled
Every US store closes on Thanksgiving Day, and every US store closes on 25 December. Both sentences come from the company's own help pages, and both are restated each year.
Remember that pickup and delivery stop too
The Thanksgiving notice is explicit that online collection and delivery pause with the shops and resume the following day. A closed store cannot pick an order for anyone.
Read the store page, not the brand
A Supercenter listing gives main hours of roughly 6am to 11pm and then names the departments separately. Those lines are the useful part of the page.
Check the pharmacy independently
One store page showed the pharmacy and the Vision Center opening at 9am against a 6am store opening, with the Auto Care Center at 7am. Three hours is enough to waste a journey.
Watch the eve rather than the day
Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are where the closing time moves, and no national notice covers them. That figure is entered on the store page and is worth reading the same morning.
If something goes wrong
The store was shut on Thanksgiving
- Cause
- Every US store closes that day as a matter of company policy
- Fix
- Plan around it annually. Pickup and delivery stop as well, so an online order will not rescue the day.
The pharmacy was closed while the store was open
- Cause
- Department hours are set separately and start later
- Fix
- One store page showed a 9am pharmacy opening against 6am for the shop. Read the department line before travelling.
It closed early on Christmas Eve
- Cause
- No national statement covers the eve, so stores set their own time
- Fix
- Check the store page that morning. Christmas Eve is the least documented day of the season at every retailer here.
A delivery slot vanished on a holiday
- Cause
- Fulfilment runs from a store that is closed
- Fix
- Book before the closure or after it. Slots return when the stores do, which the company states directly for Thanksgiving.
The Auto Care Center would not take a booking
- Cause
- Service departments run shorter hours than the shop
- Fix
- Treat it as an appointment rather than a walk-in. The listing shows a 7am opening at one store against 6am for the doors.
Two nearby stores kept different hours
- Cause
- Formats and markets differ even under one owner
- Fix
- Look up each store page. Company ownership makes the closures uniform without making the timetables identical.
What’s fixed, and what actually varies
One company runs every store, so the closures are genuinely national. Everything inside the building is a different matter.
Fixed
- All US stores close on Thanksgiving Day
- All US stores close on 25 December
- Online pickup and delivery pause with the stores and resume the next day
- Stores are company-operated, with no franchisees to disagree
- Each store page lists department hours separately from the main hours
Varies
- Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, none of them stated nationally
- Main store hours, which differ between formats and markets
- Pharmacy hours, which start later and finish earlier than the store
- Vision Center and Auto Care Center hours
- Sensory-friendly and other scheduled sessions inside opening hours
- Whether an in-store concession keeps the store's timetable
Open your store's page in the store finder and read past the main hours. The departments are listed underneath, and on a holiday those are the numbers that catch people. A prescription or a tyre fitting is a different appointment from a grocery run, even inside one building.
How Walmart compares
Three retailers that own every store, compared on what they will say and how far it reaches.
| Chain | Days closed nationally | Where it is stated | What still varies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walmart | Thanksgiving and 25 December | The help centre, restated yearly | Departments inside each store |
| Target | Thanksgiving and Christmas Day | A corporate fact sheet | Daily hours, store by store |
| Kroger | Most stores on Christmas | A holiday hours page | Pharmacy hours on every date |
A national closure is possible only where one company employs everyone in the building.
Walmart and Target close on the same two days and say so in different places, while Kroger covers more dates and commits to fewer. None of the three publishes a Christmas Eve closing time.
Two national sentences, and ten local clocks
This is the cleanest holiday answer in the whole group, and it lasts exactly two sentences. All US stores will be closed on Thanksgiving Day. All US stores will be closed on 25 December. Both appear on the company's own help pages, restated for each year as it comes.
Getting there took a while. The first Thanksgiving closure came in 2020, and in June 2021 the company announced it again, with Dacona Smith, then chief operating officer for the US business, framing it as a way of thanking staff for the year they had had. What began as a pandemic measure settled into an annual habit, and the notice now reads as routine.
What the two sentences do not cover is everything else. Christmas Eve gets no national closing time. New Year's Eve gets none either. And a Supercenter is not one clock: a store page checked in September 2026 listed main hours of 6am to 11pm, then the pharmacy and the Vision Center opening at 9am, the Auto Care Center at 7am, the bakery at 7am, the deli at 8am, financial services running 7am to 10pm and the service desk 7am to 9pm. Sensory-friendly shopping had its own window of 8am to 10am.
So the practical failure at this chain is not arriving at a locked shop, because the two closed days are well publicised. It is arriving at an open shop three hours before the department you actually needed. Read the store page rather than the brand, and read past the first line of it.
Questions people ask
Is Walmart open on Thanksgiving?
Not at any store. The company states that all US stores close that day, and online pickup and delivery pause with them, resuming the following day.
Is Walmart open on Christmas Day?
Closed everywhere. Stores shut on 25 December, stated on the company's own help pages alongside the Thanksgiving closure.
What time does Walmart close on Christmas Eve?
Nothing national covers it. Stores set their own time for that evening, so the store page is the only place with a figure.
Does the pharmacy open when the store opens?
They are not. One store page showed the pharmacy and the Vision Center opening at 9am against a 6am store opening, and department lines are listed separately for that reason.
When did the Thanksgiving closure start?
In 2020, and it was announced again in June 2021 by Dacona Smith, then chief operating officer for the US business. It has been repeated since.
Will pickup and delivery run on a closed day?
They stop. Those orders are fulfilled from stores, so a closure ends them, and the company says service resumes the day after Thanksgiving.
Is this page an official Walmart holiday hours list?
No. It quotes what the company publishes and what one store page showed. The store finder holds the times that apply to an address.
Can this site tell me whether my local Walmart is open?
No. Nothing here reaches a store's system. Use the store finder and read the department lines as well as the main hours.