Uniqlo Opens Its Market Street Flagship October 9 With a Free Ellis Street Festival

Uniqlo opens its flagship store at 801 Market Street on Friday, October 9, 2026, with a free street festival on Ellis Street from 11am to 6pm. The opening puts the Japanese retailer back in downtown San Francisco for the first time since it left Powell Street. Hoodline reported the date on September 14, and the San Francisco Chronicle also reported the opening.

Where It Is

801 Market Street sits on the corner of Market and Fourth, directly above the Powell Street BART and Muni Metro station and two blocks from the Powell Street cable car turnaround.

The ground-floor space was an Old Navy flagship until 2023. Old Navy had run it as its largest single store, according to SFGATE, and it has been dark since.

What Is Different About This Store

The Market Street store carries LifeWear for women, men, children and babies, and adds services the chain has been putting into selected locations: a repair studio, embroidery, hemming on selected pants, and UTme!, the counter where you print your own design onto a t-shirt or tote bag. Ship-to-store is also available. The repair and embroidery work falls under what Uniqlo calls RE.UNIQLO, per reporting by WhatNow.

That matters for a visitor for a practical reason. A downtown store where you can get a garment mended or a name stitched on is a different errand from a downtown store where you can only buy things, and it is the kind of service that usually lives in suburbs rather than on Market Street.

Opening Day Street Festival

Uniqlo is marking the opening with a free, family-friendly festival on Friday, October 9, from 11am to 6pm, according to the festival site. Ellis Street is closed to traffic between Powell and Stockton, and you enter from either end. An Eventbrite RSVP is optional. It runs rain or shine, and a weather cancellation would be posted on the site by 7am. No alcohol is served.

Music runs on an Ellis Stage and a Powell Stage. SFist reported the lineup: DJ Umami, Profesito, Lady Ryan, Wonway Posibul and the Blue Bear School of Music’s Blue Beat Teen DJ Collective on Ellis, and sea2sea, Cheflee, Tomu DJ and Mejiwahn on Powell, presented with the Union Square Alliance. Street Soccer USA runs two pop-up pitches on Ellis. Free drop-in activities include Exploratorium art and science demos, the SF Public Library Bookmobile, block printing with Root Division, collage with SOMArts, custom buttons with ArtSpan, origami, Japanese brush calligraphy and upcycled bag charms with SCRAP.

Six art cubes shaped like Uniqlo’s logo block line Market Street between Powell and Stockton: “Zen Treehouse” by Serge Gay Jr., “Water Torus” by CreatingAs1, “Silver Lining” by Nico Corona and Rewina Beshue, “Ray of Light” by Raylene Gorum, “Rorschach Butterflies” by Robert Malmberg and “Community Tree” by Musepop. They stay up through Sunday, 10am to 8pm on October 9 and 10 and 10am to 7pm on October 11, and the artists are at the cubes on Friday from 11am to 6pm.

A festival passport, picked up at the Ellis Street Activity Station, collects stamps at the festival and at nearby restaurants including John’s Grill, Tad’s Steakhouse, Ippudo and Delarosa. A completed passport gets an 11×14 print by Rewina Beshue or Robert Malmberg while supplies last; the last redemption is at 5:30pm. Parachute Bakery has a pop-up on Ellis.

The Powell Street Store It Replaces

Uniqlo’s previous San Francisco flagship was a 29,000-square-foot store at 111 Powell Street near Union Square. It shut permanently in March 2021 with 69 jobs lost, SFGATE reported at the time. The chain kept a Bay Area presence at Stonestown Galleria and in Emeryville, Daly City, Hillsdale, Concord, Milpitas and Santa Clara. Los Angeles Apparel is taking over the 111 Powell space, the San Francisco Standard reported.

What It Says About Downtown Retail

Union Square retail vacancy is running at about 15 percent, down from a peak of roughly 22 percent in 2025, per figures cited in Hoodline’s report. Mayor Daniel Lurie met Uniqlo leadership in July 2025 about downtown and permitting, and his office has pointed to the return as evidence the commercial core is filling back in.

There is a second name attached to the building worth noting. 801 Market Street is owned by Ponte Gadea California LLC, the property arm of Amancio Ortega, who founded Zara, according to The Real Deal. The same owner holds 400 Post Street, where Zara has announced a four-story flagship, moving from 250 Post Street; the Standard reported that Zara is now targeting early 2027 for that opening. One landlord is therefore behind two of the larger downtown retail moves of the year.

The other large downtown retail question is still open two blocks away. The San Francisco Centre remains empty and in the hands of its bondholders, who took a second round of bids in September; we covered the sports-complex proposal and, before that, the collapse of the earlier sale.

Practical Info

Opens: Friday October 9, 2026. Opening weekend hours: 10am to 8pm October 9 and 10, 10am to 7pm October 11, per the festival site. Where: 801 Market Street at Fourth Street. Getting there: Powell Street station on BART and on the Muni Metro lines that run under Market; the F Market historic streetcar and most Market Street bus routes stop within a block.

The festival site lists hours only for opening weekend, so check uniqlo.com before a trip after October 11.

Photo: Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.