Shopify is celebrating the arrival of spring by dropping the Spring ‘26 Edition, which highlights and breaks down over 150 new updates for merchants. Many of these updates are focused on AI, automation, and simplifying operations for sellers, and highlight the major push that Shopify is making into the agentic commerce space.

It also focuses on the idea of helping merchants sell everything everywhere all at once, and getting their products in the places where people are buying. In general, the update is full of important features, product updates, and changes that all sellers should be aware of.

Shopify Reveals the Spring ‘26 Edition

Shopify has just published its latest major biannual update with the Spring ‘26 Edition. The theme of the update is “Selling everything, everywhere, all at once”, and it focuses on numerous topics including AI, automation, agentic commerce, discovery, omnichannel retail, marketing, and more.

This Spring ‘26 Edition highlights and features over 150 updates that put products where customers are buying, streamlines marketing, centralizes operations, and does so much more for Shopify sellers and stores.

The update comes only a few months after the Winter 2026 Edition, which was also heavily focused on AI and automation.

Improvements for Shopify Catalog and the Universal Commerce Protocol

One of the major highlights of the update is some major improvements for Shopify Catalog. For those unfamiliar, Shopify Catalog structures your product data and shares it across AI channels to make it easier for agents to discover, learn about, and recommend your items.

While the Catalog isn’t brand new and is enabled for all Shopify merchants by default, the Spring ‘26 Edition introduces some new capabilities. For example, the Catalog API now supports sign in with Shop, so people who are signed in see personalized results.

Finally, developers will be able to build using new Catalog API capabilities like image search and lookup, as well as rich product attributes like color and size. This helps offer up more ways for shoppers to find and search for your items.

It’s also easier than ever to build on the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and create new experiences, and the process is open to any developer.

Operate Everything AI From Your Admin

In the Admin, you’re now able to manage your AI channels by not just seeing which are active, but also control whether to enable things like product discovery and direct checkout.

Your Admin also lets you see your orders, sales, and conversions on various AI channels (such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and others) to see how each is performing. This data also helps you learn which channels are seeing success, and which ones you need to focus on more to achieve greater growth.

You can also see the top AI queries in your category, see where you rank, where you don’t show up, and learn what you can do to increase your AI conversions. For example, if your products are performing well in ChatGPT, but struggling in Copilot, you can get insights into why that may be, and get some tips on how to turn things around.

Sidekick Gets New Capabilities

Sidekick, which is an ecommerce assistant built into Shopify, also saw some updates and is more deeply integrated with your business than ever before. Specifically, it’s able to access more data than in the past, and also take more actions for you, deliver more insights, and is more capable across more devices.

You can connect Sidekick to many third-party apps and ask questions/gather insights, get proactive recommendations without any prompts, and you can access Sidekick across every screen in the Shopify app, whether through typing or your voice.

For example, if you’re running an ad campaign in your CRM and you’ve connected it to Shopify, you can ask questions about the campaign right in Shopify to gain deeper insights about it, without having to switch platforms.

This makes it easier than ever for merchants to get quick and insightful answers to their questions, no matter where they are in Shopify, without having to visit a new menu, open a window, or have their entire screen taken over.

Marketing Tools Powered by Shopify’s Commerce Intelligence

With marketing being a major issue and challenge for many shops, it’s nice to see Shopify prioritizing tools that help retailers market more effectively. First, there’s a new AI associate in Inbox, and it essentially stays in your storefront to answer questions, handle order issues, and suggest products, and can even personalize recommendations if a buyer signs in with Shop.

Shop Campaigns, which allows merchants to target customers at a set price in other merchants’ stores, across Shop, and even through external channels, now includes channels like Pinterest, ChatGPT, and advertising on the web through Microsoft Monetize.

Finally, Campaign Autopilot takes a ton of work off of your plate as it automatically runs AI-powered marketing campaigns across channels like Facebook, Instagram, email, and others, with more channels coming soon. It can even optimize these over time with commerce intelligence, but always lets you set the guardrails so you remain in control.

While it’s still a good idea to check the campaigns it comes up with to ensure they make sense, and always monitor any changes it makes, this saves you a ton of time and effort compared to manually creating and running campaigns.

Even Better Experiences For Your Customers

Finally, the Spring ‘26 Edition also prioritizes providing a better experience for your customers, whether they’re interacting with your brand online or in-store. First, thanks to Sign in with Shop, a buyer’s profile, history, saved data, and other details follow them across surfaces for better personalization.

AI-powered Shop Search also makes it easier for customers to search for products conversationally, and brands of all sizes, even if they’re on Shopify, can offer Shop Pay at checkout for one-click purchasing and better conversions.

Finally, your retail locations also surface in the Shop app, returns started online can be completed in-person with a QR code, and product pages show local inventory so you can offer in-store pickup.

This greater connection between online and in-store gives buyers more options and freedom for how they interact with your brand. Many customers will certainly appreciate the option of picking up items in person rather than waiting (and paying) for delivery, or being able to hand returns back to a human rather than packing them up and driving them to the post office to ship back.

Our Take

Giving More Freedom to Merchants, and a Fundamental Shift in the Space

With a focus on AI, automation, and agentic commerce, many of the features and updates covered in the Spring ‘26 Edition are aimed at giving merchants more freedom. Instead of being bogged down by mundane tasks, Shopify has introduced even more AI features to handle just about all of them.

This frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your business, whether this is coming up with new products, fostering better relationships with suppliers and customers, or finding ways to appreciate and reward your staff for the great work they do.

The Spring ‘26 Edition could also be seen as a fundamental shift in the ecommerce space. This is because Shopify and other platforms are evolving from helping you build and manage online stores to helping you manage your company across agentic channels and trying to get your products in front of as many people as possible, no matter where or how they’re shopping.