List of supermarket chains in the United Kingdom

As of November 2024, there are 17 supermarket chains currently operating in the United Kingdom. The food retail market has been dominated by the 'big four' supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrisons – who made up over three quarters of sector market share in 2010. Tesco is the largest retailer in Great Britain, with a market share of 28.5% at the start of 2025.
However, discounters Lidl and Aldi have grown rapidly. A number of sources reported that in September 2022, Aldi overtook Morrisons to become Great Britain's fourth largest grocery retailer. At the end of 2022, Morrisons and Aldi both remained at 9.1%. Collectively, the big four accounted for two thirds and the big four and discounters combined for five sixths of the grocery market share at the start of 2025.
Northern Ireland has similar major chains. In 2022, Tesco was the largest retailer in NI, followed by Sainsbury's, Asda and Lidl. However, the market is different because some chains are not shared between the different parts of the UK. For example, Aldi and Morrisons do not operate there.
Before 1932, British grocery stores operated as counter service, however that year David Greig opened the first self-service grocery store in the UK at Turnpike Lane, Hornsey, but the store although a success, was closed down after eight months of the experiment. The first permanent self-service grocery store in the United Kingdom was opened 12 January 1948 in Manor Park, London by the Co-op, with Tesco opening their first self-service grocery store and Marks & Spencer starting a trial of self-service in the same year. Sainsbury’s opened their first self-service branch in Croydon in 1950. By 1951, the Co-op had 604 self-service stores. In the same year, Express Dairies opened Britain's first supermarket under the Premier Supermarket brand in Streatham, South London, while the first Fine Fare was opened as a single supermarket later that year, as an offshoot of the Welwyn Department Store. Waitrose opened their first supermarket in Streatham during 1955, although their first self service store had opened at their subsidiary Schofield & Martin in 1951. Tesco though did not open their first supermarket until 1956 in Maldon, Essex, while Morrisons was not until 1961, and Asda was not until 1963. By 1959, multiple grocery retailers only accounted for 10% of grocery outlets and 25% of the British market, however by a decade later the expansion of supermarkets had seen them take 41% of all grocery turnover. The growth of the supermarket is also shown in store numbers, with Britain only having 175 supermarkets in 1958 but had expanded to 2,803 by 1967. Britain's first out of town supermarket was opened by American retailer GEM in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire by in November 1964.
These supermarkets are either no longer trading, have been renamed, or have been taken over and re-branded.
Proximity to a supermarket has been widely reported to be an amenity that can have a significant effect on residential property prices in Britain. Beginning under Andy Hulme and continuing under Mike Songer, the home mortgage unit of Lloyds Bank has published pricing research that examines the premiums commanded by homes in a given neighbourhood against comparables in the same post-code and correlates the difference in price with convenience of access to the various supermarkets. The following table averages information from neighbourhoods across England and Wales, compiled by Lloyds Bank for their 2016 report using supermarket location information from CACI Datalab and house price information from the UK Land Registry.