Can bank competition help attenuate the prevalence of zombie firms? Motivated by a stylized model, this paper studies the effect of bank competition on the formation of zombie firms in two stages: the formation of distressed firms and distressed firms obtaining zombie lending. Using China’s 2009 bank entry deregulation as a quasi-natural experiment, the paper finds that bank competition lowers the probability of the formation of distressed firms, while it increases the probability of distressed firms obtaining zombie lending. Overall, bank competition decreases the formation of zombie firms. In addition, the findings show that a higher ex ante proportion of bad loans and higher probability of bad loan recovery will lead to a higher probability of distressed firms receiving zombie lending. Both factors encourage banks to sustain lending to distressed firms to keep them alive and to gamble that those firms may recover in the future.