With the new year come new storylines to follow in the home furnishings retail business. We don’t know how the tales will play out, but we have a pretty good idea about the main characters. Here are the companies to keep track of over the next 12 months.

Wayfair
Since the online retailer turned profitable for portions of 2025, investors will be watching to see if it can keep up the good work. Critical to that report card is the opening of two new full-line stores, adding to its original Chicagoland location. First is Atlanta, sizing up at 150,000 square feet and expected to open in the spring, though the exact date hasn’t been announced. It will be followed in late 2026 by a third, similarly sized location in Denver. These physical stores, which join smaller ones for the company’s sub-brands, like Joss & Main and AllModern, are being touted as major revenue drivers—but at $11 billion and counting, it will take more than three stores (however big) to move Wayfair’s needle.

Bed Bath & Beyond
The once ubiquitous seller of all things home is back with physical stores, courtesy of a somewhat convoluted plan that promises to bring back as many as 300 locations by year’s end. But these largely retrofitted Kirkland’s stores will bear little resemblance to the large-format Bed Bath & Beyond behemoths of yore. At less than 10,000-square-feet, they will feature heavily redacted merchandise selections and will lean heavily on Kirkland’s home decor products. For a CEO who said the last thing he wanted was physical stores, this represents quite a reversal for Marcus Lemonis.

HomeGoods and Homesense
It was a fabulous year for the TJX brands, and all indications are that 2026 will be just as good. As is often the case with the off-price giant, it isn’t being specific about how many new HomeGoods stores it will open this year, but educated guesses put it at about 30, similar to what it did last year. That should push the division around the 1,000-store mark on its way to a now-increased goal of 1,300 locations in the next few years. And don’t forget sister brand Homesense, which is projected to open about 10 new stores this year, taking it to somewhere in the neighborhood of 77 locations overall. Don’t expect it to stay in that neighborhood very long, though, as TJX appears to have big plans for it.

Walmart and Target
As monster-size retailers who have spent much of the past two years as trains going in opposite directions, the new year promises to be a fascinating one for each. Both get new leadership in 2026: For Walmart, it means the continuation of a strategy that is working big-time; for Target, it may or may not be a clean break with its lackluster recent past. And while these are general merchandise giants who get the vast majority of their revenues from outside the furnishings business, they both sell a lot of home products. What they do influences every other retailer in the channel.

RH
What would a new year’s retail preview be without including this brand, which continues to move in so many different directions? There are at least two new European locations, in London and Milan, slated to open this year, joining the latest gallery in Paris and others in Germany and the U.K. There are also six to eight U.S. openings under way, from a full-size gallery in Palm Desert, California, to smaller-format Interior Design and Waterworks outposts around the country. And there’s a teased-but-still-murky design collection coming, which may or may not have its own retail stores in the future. One thing is certain with RH: There are always new developments on the horizon, and if they all don’t quite click, there’s usually plenty more in the works to offset them.

We didn’t mention retailers of home products like At Home, Big Lots and The Container Store, all of which had their struggles over the past year and are trying to fix what ails them. History would suggest they won’t all succeed. There are also brands like Arhaus, Ethan Allen and La-Z-Boy, which could be on the right side of the trends in 2026 if a few things break in their favor. Never a dull moment in the home business, right?

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Warren Shoulberg is the former editor in chief for several leading B2B publications. He has been a guest lecturer at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business; received honors from the International Furnishings and Design Association and the Fashion Institute of Technology; and been cited by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other media as a leading industry expert. His Retail Watch columns offer deep industry insights on major markets and product categories.