Why Doesn’t Iceland Have McDonald’s? (2026)

I started this entry because of the burger in the glass case. If you’ve spent any time on Iceland-related Reddit you’ve probably seen the photo: a 2009 McDonald’s hamburger and fries on a wooden tray, looking eerily fresh, livestreamed 24/7 from a hostel in southern Iceland. That burger turned 16 this past October. It is, I think, the most-watched piece of fast food in the world.

So: what actually happened in Iceland, why did the chain leave, and how does anyone do a Big Mac Index calculation in a country that doesn’t sell Big Macs?

The short answer

McDonald’s operated in Iceland from 1993 until October 31, 2009, with three restaurants — all in greater Reykjavík. The chain closed every Icelandic location on the same day after the 2008 banking crisis caused the króna to collapse, which roughly doubled the local-currency cost of imported beef, cheese, and packaging. Right before closure, a Big Mac meal in Reykjavík cost around 650 ISK, equivalent to about $7.30 USD at the time — one of the priciest in the world. The franchisee, Jón Garðar Ögmundsson, sold over 10,000 burgers on the final day. The three locations were rebranded as Metro, an Icelandic chain still operating in 2026.

What happened in 2008–2009

Three relevant facts compounded:

The 2008 banking collapse. Iceland’s three major banks (Glitnir, Landsbanki, Kaupthing) failed in October 2008, and the króna lost roughly half its value against the dollar over a few months (Full Fact: Iceland McDonald’s closure; Al Jazeera, Oct 27 2009).
McDonald’s required imported inputs. The Icelandic franchise was bound by McDonald’s global supply standards, which meant beef, cheese, vegetables, and packaging had to come from approved European suppliers. After the króna collapsed, the local-currency cost of these inputs roughly doubled (Iceland Review).
The franchise couldn’t pass costs through. To stay price-competitive, the Reykjavík stores would have needed to charge prices so high they’d lose customer base. Doing the math: a single Big Mac would have had to retail at something like 780 ISK to maintain margins, vs. ~430 ISK before the crisis. The franchisee chose to shut down rather than continue at a loss.

Worth noting: persistent online claims that Iceland “boycotted” McDonald’s or “banned” it are wrong. Full Fact published a fact-check on this in 2024 (Full Fact, Oct 2024). It was a commercial decision driven by FX and import costs, not a national rejection.

The last day: October 31, 2009

The three Reykjavík locations served their final burgers on Saturday, October 31, 2009. The franchisee personally worked the counter, and reportedly over 10,000 burgers were sold across the three stores that day (Iceland Review). One specific customer, Hjörtur Smárason, bought a hamburger and fries near the end of service and decided to keep them.

That meal is the famous “last Icelandic Big Mac.” It was first stored in Smárason’s garage, then loaned to the National Museum of Iceland for about a year. The museum returned it citing concerns that it might decompose. It then spent several years on display at the Bus Hostel in Reykjavík, and is now permanently exhibited at Snotra House in Þykkvabær, southern Iceland, where the hostel runs a 24/7 livestream of the burger and fries — reportedly racking up hundreds of thousands of monthly views (Atlas Obscura: Iceland McDonald’s; Snopes, Feb 2025).

The fact that the burger has not visibly decomposed has become its own meme, though food scientists generally attribute the apparent preservation to low ambient moisture rather than anything sinister in the recipe.

What replaced it: Metro

The three former McDonald’s locations were rebranded as Metro within weeks of closure. Crucially, Metro could use local Icelandic beef, dairy, and produce, which was not subject to McDonald’s global supply requirements and which Iceland’s tariff structure protected from import competition (Wikipedia: Metro (Iceland)).

Metro has continued operating through 2026. The chain occasionally fields questions from tourists comparing prices to the old McDonald’s menu, but it doesn’t sell a Big Mac — its menu uses local recipes.

What this means for PPP

Iceland is a useful case study because there’s a relatively clean “before and after” data point. From 1993 to 2009 you can pull a real Reykjavík Big Mac price out of historical Economist data. After 2009 you can’t. The country drops out of the index entirely.

For a PPP estimate in 2026, what I’d do is:

Take Metro’s current menu prices for a comparable burger combo.
Compare against neighboring Nordic countries already in the index — Norway, Sweden, Denmark.
Use the gap as a rough proxy.

[TODO: pull current 2026 Metro menu prices directly from metro.is or recent Reykjavík receipts.]

This pattern — local chain inheriting former McDonald’s real estate — also exists in Russia with Vkusno i tochka (Russia writeup →) and to a lesser extent in Bolivia (Bolivia writeup →). I cover how I think about these proxy-data cases in the methodology section.

Iceland’s case is the cleanest of the three because the underlying exit cause (currency collapse + import-heavy supply chain) is a textbook PPP signal in its own right.

Sources used in this article

Want to see where McDonald’s is? Big Mac Index data → · Methodology → · Spot a mistake? Email me at [email protected].