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Saturn under pressure: The gradual farewell to tried and tested branches
Find out everything about the current situation of Saturn and MediaMarkt, including branch closures and restructuring until 2025.
Saturn under pressure: The gradual farewell to tried and tested branches
The savings banks in Germany have had to accept an unfortunate fate in recent years: around 70 locations of the traditional Saturn brand were still left in July 2025 - a huge decline compared to the more than twice as many branches a few years ago. The closure of the Saturn location in Fürth in spring 2023 is just one example of the entire development. So reported GamesEconomy that Saturn branches are increasingly being converted into MediaMarkt branches. On July 3, 2025, the most recent transformation took place in the Limbecker Platz shopping center in Essen.
This turnaround is not only due to the closures in Fürth and other cities such as Cologne-Weiden, Karlsruhe-Durlach or Erfurt. The parent company Ceconomy has also adjusted its strategy in the last two years and is opening more and more branches in the MediaMarkt design. The list of affected locations is long and includes cities across Germany, including Stuttgart, Nuremberg, and Wuppertal. Numerous branches were closed, particularly in North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria.
The change of the brand
A look into the future shows that Ceconomy is faced with enormous challenges. The Saturn brand is suffering a loss of importance, and new openings are now increasingly relying on the MediaMarkt name. Loud Mercury, the economist Gerrit Heinemann even suggested that Ceconomy is “fighting nakedly for survival”. The company is planning a comprehensive restructuring that includes branch closures and savings in marketing and logistics.
The first positive effects from this restructuring became visible as early as the first quarter of 2023, and four Saturn stores were reopened under the MediaMarkt label. The figures from market analyzes clearly show that the market opportunities are clearly in MediaMarkt's favor. Ceconomy wants to redesign over 90 percent of all markets by 2025/26, primarily under the well-known brand.
Strategic realignment
However, Ceconomy's vision goes beyond pure branch business. As announced at the Capital Markets Day in Cologne, we are working on a customer-centric service platform that includes five central components. These range from omnichannel excellence to services and expansion of the retail media business. The online share of total sales is also expected to increase to 30 percent by 2025/26. The article provides further details on this MediaMarktSaturn.
More than 30 percent of stationary stores have already been modernized, and sustainability also plays a central role in the company's strategy. The goal of achieving “net zero” for Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2024 makes it clear that Ceconomy not only values economic sustainability, but also ecological sustainability.
This makes it clear that the developments surrounding Saturn and MediaMarkt not only have an impact on the branches, but also on the entire industry. The questions are big: Will the change to MediaMarkt bring sufficient stability, or will we see further closures and conversions in the coming years? The answers to this remain to be seen, but one thing is clear: there is still something possible!