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Walmart announced the refresh on 13 January 2025, its first since 2008, when the retailer dropped the hyphen from Wal-Mart and introduced the spark. The new look had already been trialled at Store 4108 in Springdale, Arkansas, from October 2024, and went live on Walmart.com, the app and the corporate site in January, with stores following over time.

The work came from Walmart Creative Studio, led by vice president of creative David Hartman, with Jones Knowles Ritchie developing the identity and Landor helping with store executions, according to Retail Dive. JKR describes the project as a partnership with Walmart and the studio. Chief marketing officer William White framed it as a way to show Walmart as an "inspirational, digital retailer".

The wordmark is the bigger change. Hartman's team went through the corporate archives and landed on the lettering of a trucker hat Sam Walton often wore, including on the cover of his book Made in America. It was redrawn as a custom typeface, Everyday Sans, based on Antique Olive. The spark keeps its six rays, but Walmart says they now have "organic curves that feel approachable and less rigid," and the yellow is brighter. The palette is now True Blue and Spark Yellow, and the spark is meant to work more on its own, set further from the name on storefronts.

Hartman was candid about the scale: "It's not a wholesale reinvention of the Walmart identity. It's very much an evolution versus a revolution." Online, the response was mostly a shrug with jokes. One developer asked how many millions the new logo cost, while others said they preferred it to the old one.

It is a sensible refresh of a logo that was never the problem. The spark gains a bit of warmth, and the new wordmark is the more interesting move, a bit of founder folklore that makes the name feel less like a corporate default. Most shoppers will not notice, which is probably the point.