Shopify Winter ’26 Editions: First-look review of the new features

Shopify’s Winter ’26 edition: What you need to know

Shopify’s Winter ’26 Edition has landed, and it's a huge one! With 150+ updates across AI, retail, checkout, B2B, marketing, operations and developer tools, this release feels less like a seasonal update and more like Shopify laying out its vision for the next year of commerce in 2026.

This edition revolves around the commerce renaissance. AI, automation and Shopify’s massive ecosystem are featured in this edition, and Shopify says it removes frictions at every stage of buying and selling.

We spent time working through the full release (so you don’t have to), and here’s our curated roundup of what genuinely matters, where the real value is, and our honest thoughts on what’s hype vs game-changing.

Highlights from the Shopify Winter ‘26 editions release

Sidekick is evolving for time-limited merchants

Sidekick has been slowly moving from something fun to experiment with, to a useful utility. Winter ’26 makes that shift very real. What once felt like an interesting experiment, is now evolving into a practical everyday tool that has the potential to reduce your workload and speed up everyday eCommerce tasks.

If this edition is anything to go by, the updates aren’t fluffy. They target the areas that drain time, like repetitive theme edits, content adjustments and app discovery. Winter ’26 is Sidekick stepping firmly into the “commerce assistant” role Shopify always promised, but was slowly getting there.

Notable updates:

• Sidekick can now generate custom theme blocks for any Shopify theme
• It recommends relevant apps directly inside Sidekick
• It works more contextually with your store’s setup, pain points and activity
• Makes app discovery more relevant and less overwhelming

Agentic commerce sells inside AI chats

As Shopify defines it, agentic commerce is about bringing native shopping experiences directly into AI chat environments. Not just ChatGPT and Perplexity, but any emerging conversational interface where customers ask questions, compare products, or make purchase decisions.

Rather than treating AI as an external discovery layer, Shopify is building the infrastructure that allows stores to sell naturally within those conversations. Product data is syndicated automatically into AI platforms, customers can browse and add to cart without leaving the chat, and Shopify’s new tools ensure the entire buying journey.

Notable updates:

• Built-in tools to syndicate products to AI platforms
• APIs that allow headless stores to become discoverable and shoppable inside AI interfaces
• The ability for customers to browse, add to cart and checkout directly from chat
• Sell directly inside AI chats with built-in tools that syndicate your products to every major AI platform 
• Products from your store automatically become discoverable in AI conversations
• Shopping is enabled inside AI chats, and customers can browse products without leaving the conversation 

Big enhancements to the Online Store experience

Winter ’26 includes multiple improvements for online selling, and while they may not be as headline-grabbing as AI or agentic commerce, they’re some of the most practical updates merchants will benefit from day-to-day.

These enhancements focus heavily on how products are presented, how carts behave, and how checkout logic is structured. Everything that shapes how customers interact with a store long before they complete a purchase. 

Notable updates:

• Native wallet buttons (Shop Pay, Apple Pay) before checkout in mobile apps
• Better discount context fields for more flexible, rule-driven promotions
• Shopify has introduced support for nested cart lines, which lets things like warranties, add-ons or bundled items stay neatly grouped together rather than scattered around the cart
• Mobile apps can now show Shop Pay and Apple Pay buttons earlier (inside product pages and the cart)
• There’s now a discount eligibility context field, which gives merchants more flexibility when deciding which customers qualify for a promotion and when

Shopify POS becomes even more seamless

POS didn’t get as many headline features this edition, but the refinements absolutely matter. Shopify has taken a quieter, more practical approach here, focusing on smoothing out the day-to-day experience for retail rather than dropping big new features. These updates are the kind that don’t make the announcement videos, but do make life noticeably easier for staff on the shop floor. 

Notable updates:

• Tighter integration between online and in-store operations.
• Better staff workflows and fulfilment visibility.
• More robust inventory tools.

AI-powered marketing personalisation

Shopify has also put serious effort into levelling up its native marketing tools in Winter ’26, and this feels like a continuation of their long-term plan to make on-platform marketing far more powerful, automated and accessible for merchants who don’t want to juggle multiple third-party systems.

These updates aren’t just about adding new features; they’re about helping brands understand their customers better, personalise messaging at scale, and run campaigns with far less manual effort.

The big theme here is relevance, using AI and smarter data signals to deliver the right marketing message to the right customer at the right time, without merchants needing a full marketing operations team to make it happen. 

Notable updates:

• Smarter audience building, with better segmentation tools to help brands target customers more accurately
• Streamlined marketing execution, reducing the manual steps required to launch and optimise campaigns
• AI-assisted content and segmentation, making it far more easier for merchants to generate relevant messaging to their audience and tailor it to different customer groups
• For merchants not yet ready for Klaviyo, HubSpot and DotDigital scale, Shopify’s evolving marketing suite is getting more competitive every edition. And it's easy to transition to those platforms when you're ready.

Efficient checkout and operations

Although AI stole the spotlight, Shopify has also invested heavily in tightening up the core mechanics that keep a store running smoothly behind the scenes. Winter ’26 brings a series of checkout and operations improvements, the kind of enhancements that aren’t flashy but have a real impact on reliability, speed and team efficiency.

These updates focus on making the purchase experience feel smoother for customers, giving merchants better tools to manage fulfilment, orders and internal communication.

Notable updates:

• Faster rendering in checkout, better extensibility and more stable backend performance
• More flexibility for custom checkout features for Shopify Plus merchants
• In-progress fulfilment status helps to improve operational communication
• Smoother workflows for order management and bulk actions

Shopify now allows merchants to create up to 2048 variants per product

Our verdict: Is Shopify Winter '26 a big deal?

Absolutely, but not for the reasons a typical Edition might be. Shopify is making it clear that it wants to become the operating system for commerce, regardless of where that commerce takes place: on a website, inside a mobile app, in a retail store, through creator-led channels, or even within AI conversations waiting to happen.

The updates Shopify introduced this season set the stage where chat-based buying, AI-driven product discovery and automated store management become normal behaviours, not edge cases. Instead of forcing merchants to choose between channels, Shopify is proactively building the infrastructure to power them all.

We've covered the highlights, but what about the smaller, quieter updates? We were really interested in seeing what's here and what's coming that will really bring the best benefits for our clients, and the way Storefront, Themes & Merchandising

Storefront, themes and merchandising

• Over 250 theme improvements

• 2048 variants per product

• Duplicate & exclude products from collections

• Compare-at prices in catalogues 

• New code editor for themes 

• Unlisted product status

• Cart, checkout and discounts

• Discounts on fulfilled items 

• Payment terms and deposit configurations

• Order review operation in Shopify Functions

Product and collections

• Combine bundle options

• Due-on-fulfilment terms for pre-orders

• Inventory and order management

• Smarter safeguards for inventory updates

• Colour-coded changes, warnings and confirmations when bulk editing 

• Filter by custom metafields, total value, weight, etc. for better workflow. 

• Edit unfulfilled orders with duties — recalculate duties, taxes and totals automatically. 

Automation and workflows

• Preview workflow results in Shopify Flow

• Redesigned Shopify Flow editor

B2B enhancements

• New B2B-compatible apps for quote reports, shopping lists, and more.

• ERP systems integration — sync with NetSuite, BrightPearl, Fulfil, Sage, etc.

• Payment terms and deposit configurations

Start your store’s improvement plan for 2026

If you’re looking at these Winter ’26 updates and wondering how to make the most of them, or simply want someone in your corner to keep your store running smoothly, our Shopify support plans are built exactly for that. 

We take the ongoing improvements, behind-the-scenes tweaks and big strategic shifts, and turn them into practical wins for your store. If you're exploring Shopify as a potential new platform to migrate to, our migration experts love taking on new challenges and building on an already powerful platform.

If you're looking for strategic and proactive support that doesn’t just react but actively looks for opportunities, we’d love to work with you. Book a free Shopify consultation with our experienced Shopify experts.