Which coding bootcamps have gone out of business in 2026
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Turing School and the Lighthouse Labs/Uvaro group closed in 2025, 2U wound down its university bootcamps in December 2024, and Codeup, Kenzie Academy, and Launch Academy folded across 2023 and 2024. Nothing new collapsed in 2026 itself: this is a multi-year shakeout in the full-time, in-person immersive tier, not the model dying. If you are weeks from wiring five figures to a program, the closure count is not the real risk. The real risk is that you pay upfront, and a school that goes bankrupt owes you nothing back.
Which coding bootcamps have closed or downsized (tracker, last verified 2026-09-26)
Here is the sourced list. Every closure below verifies to a dated news report or to Course Report's year-in-review records, so you can check each one yourself rather than trusting a roundup.
| Program | What happened | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turing School | Denver nonprofit told its 37 students and staff it would wind down and stop new enrollments | Announced April 2025; closed by June 2025 | BusinessDen (Apr 17, 2025); Course Report 2025 Year in Review |
| Lighthouse Labs (Uvaro) | Filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations immediately, leaving students mid-program | Acquired by Uvaro Jan 2025; bankruptcy Aug 1, 2025 | Vancouver Tech Journal; BetaKit (Aug 2025) |
| 2U bootcamps | Wound down its university-partnered bootcamps to pivot to microcredentials | Announced December 2024 | Higher Ed Dive; Inside Higher Ed (Dec 2024) |
| Launch Academy | Paused its Boston immersive program, citing a saturated market | May 2024 | BestColleges; Course Report 2024 Year in Review |
| Codeup | Shut down, citing tech-sector hiring freezes | Late December 2023 | BestColleges; Course Report |
| Kenzie Academy | Closed by Southern New Hampshire University, which explicitly cited AI and competition | Announced August 2023 | Inside Higher Ed; Granite Geek (Aug 24, 2023) |
| Dev Bootcamp (historical anchor) | Kaplan-owned school closed all six US campuses; the early template for this pattern | Announced July 2017 | GeekWire (July 2017) |
A few of these deserve a sentence of their own. The 2U wind-down landed only five years after the company paid about $750 million for Trilogy Education Services in 2019 (Higher Ed Dive and Inside Higher Ed, December 2024), which tells you how fast the economics turned. Kenzie Academy's closure is the one to remember, because Southern New Hampshire University did not blame the usual hiring slump alone. It named the rise of AI and increased competition directly when it announced the shutdown of the roughly 1,090-student program in August 2023 (Inside Higher Ed and Granite Geek, August 24, 2023). And Dev Bootcamp belongs in a different column entirely: Kaplan closed all six of its US campuses back in 2017 (GeekWire, July 2017), which is the historical anchor for this whole pattern, not a 2026 headline.
Not every well-known name closed. App Academy, Hack Reactor (now under Galvanize), and Tech Elevator are downsized but still operating. Hack Reactor shut its part-time program and refunded those students before going full-time only, Tech Elevator merged into Galvanize after layoffs, and App Academy cut staff but still enrolls (Class Central; Course Report). Keep those three in your mind as "smaller, still running," not as casualties.
Why coding bootcamps are closing
A demand shock hit an oversupplied premium tier, and the timing matches what the schools themselves said on the way out. When the easy junior-developer job dried up, programs built entirely on a fast-outcome promise lost the thing they were selling.
The hiring numbers back that up directly. Software-development job postings on Indeed sat 27.5% below their pre-pandemic (February 2020) baseline as of June 2026, even after a partial recovery earlier in the year (Indeed Hiring Lab, July 8, 2026). A bootcamp that promised a developer job in six months had built its model on a market that never came back for entry-level roles. Codeup cited tech-sector hiring freezes on its way out in late 2023, and Launch Academy pointed to a saturated market and a weaker value proposition when it paused in May 2024.
Federal funding arrives too late to have saved any of them. Workforce Pell was signed into law on July 4, 2025, but the Department of Education did not publish the final rule until May 19, 2026, and eligible programs only take effect July 20, 2026 (institutions can opt in from July 1). The eligibility window is narrow on purpose: a program has to run 150 to 599 clock hours and 8 to 15 weeks at a Title IV-eligible (generally accredited) institution and clear new completion and earnings thresholds. That excludes most full-time immersive bootcamps and helps no one enrolling today.
Are coding bootcamps dying, or just consolidating?
Consolidating. This is a shakeout, not a death spiral: the full-time, in-person immersive tier is shrinking while the broader category keeps growing, and those two facts only sound contradictory if you treat "bootcamp" as one thing.
Course Report's directory lists more than 600 bootcamp-style programs as of 2026, and that number is still growing. Only about 100 of those 600-plus are full-time, in-person immersive coding bootcamps in the US and Canada, which is exactly the segment where the closures concentrated (Course Report, 2026). Online, university-affiliated, and international bootcamp-style programs are the part proliferating while the expensive full-time immersive format thins out.
The schools that folded were mostly the weakest ones, selling a job guarantee they could not honor once the entry-level door narrowed. A shrinking premium tier inside a growing directory is what a correcting market looks like, not a collapsing one.
The risk nobody prices in: paying upfront for a program that might close mid-cohort
Here is the structural problem that no comparison chart of curricula will show you: with most bootcamps you pay a large sum upfront, or you sign an income-share agreement or loan, before the school has taught you anything. If that school becomes insolvent halfway through your cohort, you are an unsecured creditor of a failed business. You do not get to the front of the line, and you do not get your seat back.
Lighthouse Labs is the example that makes this concrete. Uvaro acquired Lighthouse Labs in January 2025, and on August 1, 2025 both companies filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations immediately, halting classes and mentoring and leaving students mid-program (Vancouver Tech Journal and BetaKit, August 2025). Students who had paid upfront lost access overnight, about seven months after the acquisition. There was no warning that let them finish, and a refund from a company in bankruptcy is a claim, not a check.
The guarantees that are supposed to protect you are weaker than they look even when the school is solvent. Springboard reports that of its Software Engineering Career Track students from 2020 to 2022, only about 1.2% received a job-guarantee tuition refund, which it attributes to roughly 95.8% reportedly finding work (Springboard outcomes, via Course Report). Those are Springboard's own self-reported figures, and the guarantee carries strict eligibility conditions, so read them as the company's account rather than an audited one. The point stands either way: a money-back guarantee rarely pays out when the school is healthy, and it pays out never when the school is gone.
The easy version of this argument is dishonest, so I will say it plainly: bootcamps are not a scam. Plenty of people changed careers through one and would do it again, and the strong programs delivered real outcomes for years. What went wrong was never fraud. The upfront-payment model loads solvency risk onto the learner at the worst possible moment, usually right after they have quit a job to commit to the change.
When a bootcamp still makes sense in 2026
A bootcamp can be the right call, and the destination job is still real. BLS projects employment of software developers, QA analysts, and testers to grow 10% from 2025 to 2035, much faster than average, with about 106,100 openings per year and a 2025 median wage of $135,980 for software developers specifically (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook). The separate computer-programmers line is projected to decline 7% over the same decade, as AI automates more of that narrower task, but the developer track bootcamps aim at is still growing. The question is never "is the job worth having," it is "is this route's risk priced fairly for you."
A bootcamp earns its premium when a few things are true at once. You need an external deadline and live cohort accountability to stay consistent, and you know that about yourself. The program defers payment until you are employed, or uses an income-based plan, so the solvency risk sits with the school instead of you. And the school is established, with a multi-year track record and outcomes you can actually verify rather than a freshly minted guarantee. When those line up, paying for structure is reasonable. When they do not, you are buying risk you could have avoided.
The lower-risk way to learn the same skills
The lower-risk route is simple: pay as you go for the same curriculum instead of committing five figures before your first lesson. The skills a frontend or full-stack bootcamp teaches, HTML and CSS, JavaScript, React, a backend, and a portfolio of shipped projects, are the same skills you can learn month to month, and the month-to-month structure is what removes the risk that sank the students at Lighthouse Labs.
Start free, on purpose. Confirm the format works for you before money changes hands, and interactive courses you can begin today let you do that. From there, a low monthly subscription means the worst case is that you pause or change direction and stop paying. There is no lump sum to lose and no cohort to be stranded in if a school files for bankruptcy. That is the whole argument: the upfront commitment is what made bootcamps dangerous in 2025, and a subscription does not have one.
I reviewed Scrimba's courses with a Pro account, and the free-to-Pro path maps onto the same skills a bootcamp sells. Learn JavaScript is free and runs about 9.4 hours across eight modules, building a passenger counter, a blackjack game, a Chrome extension, and a mobile app, before you ever pay anything. If the format clicks, the Frontend Developer Path is Pro-only, MDN-endorsed, and runs 81.6 hours across 13 modules and 1,493 scrims, ending in a portfolio and a 73-scrim job-search module, at a fraction of a bootcamp's tuition (see current Scrimba pricing). For a side-by-side of that subscription against bootcamp tuition and income-share agreements, our Scrimba vs bootcamps breakdown runs the comparison in detail.
How to decide in 5 minutes
Run one test before you sign anything: would you be paying upfront, and can you independently verify the outcomes? If a bootcamp defers payment until you are employed, has audited outcomes spanning several years, and you genuinely need the deadline to stay on track, the premium can be worth it. If you would be handing five figures to a school whose results you cannot check, and the only safety net is a guarantee from a company that could fold, start with a low-cost subscription and a portfolio instead.
Do the arithmetic rather than guessing at it. Our Scrimba vs bootcamps cost write-up and the bootcamp cost calculator let you plug in a real tuition figure and compare it against a year of a subscription plus the projects you would build anyway. If you want the wider set of options, I keep a list of coding bootcamp alternatives, and the junior developer job market in 2026 covers whether the entry door is even open. For the human side of the decision, best Scrimba courses for career changers and how to get your first developer job cover what actually moves a hire, and Scrimba Review 2026 is my answer on the tool I recommend here.
So here is the concrete next step. Before you put down a deposit this week, open the cost calculator, enter the bootcamp's tuition, and compare it against twelve months of a low monthly subscription and a portfolio. If the bootcamp wins on structure and shifts the risk off you, pay for it with clear eyes. If it does not, you just saved yourself from being an unsecured creditor.
Frequently asked questions
Which coding bootcamps closed in 2025? Two notable closures happened in 2025. Turing School, the Denver nonprofit, told its 37 students and staff in April 2025 that it would wind down by June and stop new enrollments. Lighthouse Labs and its parent company Uvaro both filed for bankruptcy on August 1, 2025 and ceased operations immediately, leaving students mid-program.
What happened to Turing School? Turing School, a Denver nonprofit bootcamp, announced in April 2025 that it would wind down between April and June 2025 and stop accepting new students, after a long period of financial struggle. This was reported by BusinessDen on April 17, 2025 and recorded in Course Report's 2025 Year in Review.
Are coding bootcamps dying in 2026? No, they are consolidating rather than dying. The closures cluster in 2023 to 2025 and concentrate in the full-time, in-person immersive tier, where Course Report counts only about 100 programs in the US and Canada. Its wider directory of more than 600 bootcamp-style programs, including online and university-affiliated formats, is still growing.
Is it safe to pay a coding bootcamp upfront? Paying a large sum upfront concentrates the risk on you. If the school becomes insolvent mid-cohort, as Lighthouse Labs did in August 2025, you are an unsecured creditor and a job guarantee from a bankrupt company is worth nothing. Prefer deferred payment, income-based plans, or low monthly options you can stop if the program stalls.
Does Workforce Pell make bootcamps affordable in 2026? Not for current learners. Workforce Pell was signed on July 4, 2025, the final rule was published on May 19, 2026, and eligible programs take effect July 20, 2026 (some institutions opt in from July 1). Eligibility is narrow (150 to 599 clock hours and 8 to 15 weeks at a Title IV-eligible institution), which excludes most full-time immersive bootcamps.
What is a lower-risk way to learn to code than a bootcamp? Pay as you go for the same curriculum instead of committing five figures before the first lesson. Free courses let you confirm the format works for you, and a low monthly subscription means you stop paying if you pause or change direction, so no school can strand you mid-cohort.
A lower-risk way to learn
No five-figure upfront tuition. Try Scrimba's free courses before you commit to anything.