Shopify released its Winter '26 Edition, dubbed The RenAIssance Edition, featuring 150+ new features designed to “transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.”
If you're unfamiliar with Editions, twice a year, Shopify releases a mega showcase of its latest features called Shopify Editions. I've covered all of their Editions including Summer '25, Winter '25, Summer '24, Winter '24, Summer '23, Winter '23, and Summer '22 (the first one).
Here's what's new in Winter '26 Edition. Some of these updates you've seen me talk about in recent editions and others were announced for the first time:
- Proactive Sidekick – Shopify says its AI assistant is moving from reactive to proactive, now surfacing personalized, high-impact tasks directly on the Home screen instead of requiring merchants to engage with it first.
- App Creation & Theme Editing – Sidekick can now generate full admin apps from a prompt, letting merchants build custom internal tools without writing code. For example, a merchant could ask Sidekick to create an app that flags low-inventory products with high conversion rates, pulls in recent sales data, and alerts staff inside the Shopify admin so they can reorder or adjust pricing in real time. Sidekick can now also edit theme designs and settings using natural language commands, which merchants can save and share with other merchants as “Sidekick Skills.”
- Product Network – A new app that lets merchants monetize their stores through collaborative advertising with other stores. Merchants can choose to display ads and external product recommendations on Search, Collections, thank you pages, and order status pages, and earn cash or Shop Campaigns credits on a CPM basis. Read more about Product Network in story #2.
- Shopify Agentic Storefronts – Agentic Storefronts make Shopify stores discoverable and shoppable across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot through a single setup in the Shopify admin. This was announced several months ago with ChatGPT, but is soon going live for all stores with additional partners. Read more about Agentic Storefronts in story #3.
- Rollouts – This new feature brings native experimentation to Shopify, allowing merchants to schedule changes, run A/B tests, and measure buyer behavior without third-party tools. Merchants can test and ship storefront updates directly from the admin instead of exclusively relying on 3rd party apps.
- SimGym – A new tool that enables merchants to test website changes with AI shoppers in a simulated environment before showing them to real buyers. The tool then offers recommended site improvements based on the results of the AI shopping simulation.
- Shopify POS Hub – Shopify released a new retail hardware hub that functions like a computer with built-in software to manage data flow between devices and Shopify POS. The hub is Apple MFi-certified, allowing multiple devices to connect to an iPad simultaneously, which is something not supported by standard hubs.
- Tinker App (coming soon) – Shopify says it's “consolidating premium AI tools into one affordable mobile platform,” which I guess means expect to pay for it. A screenshot of the app shows an animated icon creator, image editor, and 3D figurine creator.
- Increased Product Variant Limits – Shopify increased the product variant limit to 2,048 variants per product for all stores, enabling merchants to create more complex product offerings with additional options.
- Unlisted Products – A new product status that allows items to be hidden from search, but still accessible via direct link.
You can check out the rest of the updates in the full Winter '26 Edition.
