On this page (4 sections)
What each terminal actually sells
The airport's own venue directory listed 138 shops on September 7, 2026, and the split by terminal is Terminal 4 with 38, Terminal 1 with 36, Terminal 8 with 33, Terminal 5 with 17 and Terminal 7 with 12. Terminal 6 has none, because no airline checks in there yet. Almost all of it is past security: 34 of Terminal 4's 38, 28 of Terminal 8's 33, 25 of Terminal 1's 36.
Terminal 1 is the luxury terminal. It is the terminal waiting to close, and its shop list reads like a department store floor: Chanel, Dior, Hermes, Bvlgari, Salvatore Ferragamo, Tory Burch, Coach, Longchamp, Bally, Tumi, Victoria's Secret and UNO de 50, alongside iS Duty Free and iS Beauty. The reason is the airline mix rather than the building: Terminal 1 checks in 26 carriers, nearly all of them long-haul international, and that is the traffic luxury concessions follow.
Terminal 4 has the most shops and almost none of that. Eleven of its 38 are Hudson units under one name or another, from plain Hudson to Hudson Nonstop and named market concepts like Queens Beat and Manhattan Mercantile, and six more trade as NYDF, five of them duty free and one a food and gifts store. The named brands are Hugo Boss, Michael Kors, Swarovski, Kiehl's, Lego and Johnny Walker. It is a terminal built for volume, which is what you would expect of the building Delta Air Lines anchors.
Terminal 8 sits between the two. Boss, Breitling, Lacoste, Longchamp, Marc Jacobs, Montblanc and Tag Heuer give it a real watch and accessories offer, and the local end is stronger than anywhere else: Dear NYC by Hudson, I Love NY, The Pavilion Gallery, W. 12th St. Market and Pre Loved Luxury, a resale counter that appears nowhere else in the directory.
Terminal 5 and Terminal 7 are small. Terminal 5's 17 lean toward the JetBlue house style, with Blue Sky Traders, New Stand, Bryant Park Market and a Where Traveler bookshop alongside Eataly Market and iS Duty Free. Terminal 7's 12 are mostly Hudson, Duty Free Americas and a World of Whiskey and Tequila counter, which is a thin offer in a terminal its developer says operates only until the second phase of Terminal 6 construction begins.
Duty free, and the catch in the small print
Duty free operates at every terminal: iS Duty Free at Terminals 1 and 5, NYDF across five counters at Terminal 4, Duty Free Americas at Terminal 7 including a whiskey and tequila store, and BKLYN Shopping Duty Free, Beauty on 5th and The Park Duty Free at Terminal 8.
Two rules decide whether any of it is useful to you, and the second one is the one that costs people money.
You have to be leaving the country. Duty free exists because the goods are leaving US tax jurisdiction, so the stores check your boarding pass for an international destination. A domestic ticket does not qualify, and JFK has no arrivals duty free, so there is nothing to buy on the way in either.
It is duty free for where you are going, not for where you live. US Customs and Border Protection puts it plainly: articles bought in an American duty-free shop "are also subject to U.S. Customs duty if you bring them into the United States." Its own worked example is buying alcohol in New York, flying to Canada, and bringing it back. So a bottle bought at Terminal 4 on the way out, carried through the trip and brought home, can be dutiable on arrival even though you bought it at a duty-free counter.
What you get on the way home is the returning resident's personal exemption, which CBP sets at $800 every 31 days if you have been out of the country at least 48 hours. That exemption covers not more than 200 cigarettes and 100 cigars, and one American liter of alcohol, with the tobacco allowance limited to adults 21 and over. Anything over the exemption is dutiable, whatever counter it came from.
What it costs, and the rule that caps it
Airport retail pricing at JFK is not a free-for-all. The Port Authority's Airport Rules and Regulations, Chapter XV.A.8, in force since January 1, 2025, says no concessionaire in its airport terminals "shall charge prices to its customers in excess of 115% of Street Price," and requires terminal operators to hold their concessionaires to it too.
Street price is defined in the same rule as what that business regularly charges at its own off-airport locations in the greater New York and northern New Jersey area, or the average that similar retailers charge there. Duty free is the deliberate exception: it is measured against the price for the same item at other major US airports serving large urban areas, and the rule specifically excludes the Port Authority's own airports from that comparison. So the duty-free benchmark is other airports, not a Manhattan store, which is worth knowing before you assume the counter is cheap.
The same regulation requires sellers of travel essentials to run a value program keeping lower-priced items available. Its reader-facing name is We Value You, and the airport's instruction is to "look for the 'We Value You' logo at participating shops and restaurants". The cap is enforced by the landlord rather than at the register, so treat it as a reason to question a price that looks like double the city one rather than as a discount to claim.
One thing the cap does not cover, and you will see it on a receipt rather than a price tag: the same regulation permits an Employee Wage and Benefit Fee of up to 3% of the pre-tax total, which the airport calls the 3% Employee Benefits and Retention Surcharge. The Port Authority board approved it for JFK, LaGuardia and Newark, and capped it at three percent. It applies to dining more than to retail, but the ceiling on what any concession can charge you is 115% of street price plus that.
Hours, SIM cards and the things people actually buy
Four shops never close, and all four are at Terminal 4: three Hudson units and Hudson Nonstop. Terminal 7's iStore and one of its SIM-card counters are the only other retail the airport marks as 24 hours. Everywhere else, shops keep terminal hours, which means a red-eye departure from Terminal 1 or Terminal 8 finds most of the retail shut.
SIM cards are the sleeper category. The directory carries 19 SIM-card kiosks across the airport, trading as SIM Cards, SIMs on the Go and SIMS to Go: seven at Terminal 4, six at Terminal 1, four at Terminal 8 and two at Terminal 7. That is more outlets than any brand at the airport except Hudson, and it tells you something true about JFK, which is that 41% of its departing passengers are foreign nationals. If you are arriving in the United States and want a local number before you leave the airport, the counters are there.
The rest of what the airport calls travel essentials sits in the Hudson units: chargers, adapters, headphones, medication, and the bottled water covered by the value program on the food guide. Terminal 4 also has Hudson Automated Retail and Pack N Go, and Terminal 1 has four FuelRod battery kiosks.
Two things the shops will not solve. If you need cash or a currency conversion, that is a different counter, and the honest advice is on the currency exchange guide. And if you are shopping to fill a long wait rather than to buy anything, the retail at your terminal may be thinner than you hope; the terminal overview says what each building actually is.