McDonald’s did not close in Iceland because of a boycott

Posts on Facebook suggest the fast food chain McDonald’s closed its branches in Iceland due to a public boycott. But this is not true—the restaurants closed because of the country’s financial crisis in 2009. 

Multiple posts share an almost certainly AI-generated image depicting a dilapidated McDonald’s restaurant. It has overlaid text saying: “Does boycott really work? Iceland’s last McDonald’s closed no other McDonald’s restaurant exist in the country [sic].” The picture is blurry and cartoonish, and McDonald’s is spelt incorrectly, which are all telltale signs of AI, as we’ve written about before. 

Some posts share a screenshot of a Facebook page called Stand with Palestine sharing the image with the caption “Keep boycott [sic]”, although Full Fact could not see the image shared directly on this page in recent months. 

There have been some calls to boycott McDonald’s after some branches in Israel offered free meals to Israeli forces in 2023 at the start of the Israel-Gaza war. 

However, the closure of McDonald’s restaurants in Iceland is not related to a boycott. 

The three McDonald’s outlets operating in Iceland closed in 2009 because the country’s financial crisis made it too expensive to operate. McDonald’s reportedly said Iceland’s small population and isolated nature added “unique operational complexity”.  There are no McDonald’s restaurants in Iceland at the time of writing.

McDonald’s is a franchise and around 93% of its restaurants are owned and operated by independent local business owners. The owner of the company that operated the McDonald’s outlets in Iceland told the BBC at the time that the cost of importing supplies from Germany had almost doubled due to the Icelandic krona decreasing in value.

Iceland’s three largest banks collapsed during the 2008 global financial crisis and the value of its currency fell by 80%. 

Sales growth for McDonald’s restaurants in the unit that includes the Middle East, China and India was reportedly far below market expectations at 0.7% for the fourth quarter of 2023. Earlier this year McDonald’s announced its plans to buy back its Israeli restaurants from the company operating them. 

We’ve contacted McDonald’s for comment and will update this article if we receive a response. 

This is not the first time we’ve seen false claims concerning McDonald’s and the Israel-Gaza war. Last year we fact checked claims that the chain had introduced blue and white wrappers in support of Israel during the conflict, but in reality the packaging had been used for multiple years. Other claims were made that a video showed manure dumped at a French McDonald’s outlet to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza when it was actually farmers protesting about imported meat. 

You can find more of our work relating to the conflict in the Middle East on our website.