Pizza Hut, With Nearly 200 Illinois Locations, Closing 250 Stores

Another week, another big player in the food game announces store closings for underperforming locations. We've seen this happen before in Illinois and across the nation.

Although I prefer grabbing a pizza from local Northern Illinois joints, I totally get the nostalgia many people feel about Pizza Hut and other longtime national pizza places that have been around since we were kids. You may not visit them very often, but you like to know that they're there if you felt like it.

Pizza Hut lovers across the country got some sobering news this week when the company made the announcement that it plans to close about 250 underperforming locations across the United States in the first half of 2026.

That announcement came straight from parent company Yum! Brands during a February earnings call and is part of a broader “Hut Forward” strategy to modernize the pizza chain and reverse declining sales performance. The planned closures represent roughly about 3-4 percent of Pizza Hut’s US footprint.

Specific Locations May Have Already Been Selected, But The Company Isn't Naming The Soon-To-Close Spots Just Yet

According to an online search (that started to make me hungry), Illinois has around 199 Pizza Hut restaurants, placing it among the states with the most Pizza Hut locations.

Wisconsin’s exact count sits at around 100, but it also hosts a healthy number of Pizza Hut spots in cities and suburbs around Milwaukee and Madison. Many of these locations serve communities that rely on Pizza Hut for delivery, dine-in, and family dinners, so any closures would certainly be felt.

At one time, there was Pizza Hut and then everyone else followed, but not anymore.

Pizza Hut currently has about 6,700 locations nationwide according to recent estimates, but they trail Domino’s Pizza, which leads the sector with more than 7,100 US stores. Papa Johns, bringing up the rear, trails both with roughly 3,200 U.S. locations.

How Many Pizza Hut Locations Are In Our Neighboring States?

According to Pizza Hut's official website:

• Wisconsin: 102
• Iowa: 81
• Indiana: 168
• Missouri: 184
• Kentucky: 114