Aldi is to invest £900m in its UK business, with 40 new stores planned for next year in the discounter’s most ambitious statement of intent on the British market to date. The programme adds to a year in which the retailer has already opened dozens of new sites.
Around 30 further stores are due to open before the end of this year, bringing the 2026 total above 40. The expansion forms part of a £1.6bn two-year programme announced in the autumn, covering both new openings and upgrades to Aldi’s distribution network.
From 1,000 stores towards 1,500
The German-owned supermarket currently trades from more than 1,000 UK stores and has set a long-term target of 1,500. The gap between those two numbers is a map of the towns and suburbs where the retailer believes shoppers still lack convenient access to its format.
Recent openings have included locations from East Sussex to Wales, part of a deliberate push beyond Aldi’s traditional heartlands. The company has said the target is about addressing gaps in its network rather than simply adding density where it already trades.
Giles Hurley, chief executive of Aldi UK and Ireland, has framed the mission in direct terms. “We’ve always believed that access to high-quality affordable food is a right, not a privilege,” he said, “and that’s why it’s our mission to make this a reality for customers up and down the UK.”
The openings also shift the pattern of the estate. Aldi’s newer stores increasingly sit in market towns and suburban fringes rather than city centres, formats that suit car-borne shopping and the weekly shop around which the discounter model is built.
What the money buys
The £900m commitment covers more than shopfronts. Distribution capacity is the quiet constraint on any grocery expansion, and investment in warehouses and logistics allows new stores to be stocked at the low costs that define the discounter model.
Each new store also brings construction work and permanent jobs to its local area, which is why councils tend to welcome the openings. For towns on Aldi’s list, the announcement is an economic event as much as a retail one.
The employment effect adds up. Each store typically brings dozens of permanent roles alongside the construction phase, and Aldi’s reputation for paying above the market rate for retail has made its openings consistently popular with local workforces.
The competitive stakes
For the wider grocery sector, Aldi’s continued expansion sustains the price pressure that has reshaped British food retail over the past decade. Rivals have responded with their own convenience and discount formats, and shoppers have been the principal beneficiaries.
The growth has been decades in the making. From a single British store in the 1990s, the discounter has climbed into the big four of UK grocery, a rise achieved almost entirely on the appeal of a simple promise: quality goods at prices the incumbents struggle to match.
The pace of the plan suggests Aldi believes the opportunity is far from exhausted. If the 1,500-store target is reached, the discounter will sit comfortably among the biggest retail estates in the country, and a good deal of the British high street will have an Aldi within reach.