Shopify Editions is their showcase for announcing and launching new platform features. Shopify has been ranked by Gartner as the leader in its ability to execute, and with today’s Winter ‘26 Edition, they’ve come ready to show why.
2025 has been all about AI reshaping technology, from AI agents and search to workflow automation. Winter '26 focuses on helping merchants operate their storefronts more efficiently with AI
Sidekick, Shopify's AI assistant, has grown throughout 2025 to perform bulk product updates, generate reports, create discounts, and handle other time-consuming merchant tasks. Winter '26 makes it a true virtual assistant with these additions:
- Sidekick Pulse: Pulse helps identify areas of opportunity and provide personalized recommendations for improvements and growth. It can contextually understand the complexity of tasks, create to-do lists, and help track progress towards completion.
- Custom App Generation: Create custom apps that can be utilized within the Admin. Note: Limited to Admin API functionality with hourly/weekly generation limits.
- Flow Automation: Sidekick can now build workflows within Shopify Flow simply by describing it.
- Theme Updates: use Sidekick in the theme editor natively to make updates to content by describing your changes. Sidekick can also generate new custom blocks without requiring a developer to update your theme.
- Admin Native: while Sidekick previously was hidden as an icon at the top of the Admin, it’s now embedded directly in the Admin on the left.
- Recommend Apps: Sidekick can now search and install apps from within Sidekick
- App Extensions: extend your app functionality to work directly from within Sidekick!
Additional Notable Features:
- Agentic Storefronts: manage how your brand and products appear within AI like ChatGPT, Copilot, etc. (Feature not publicly available yet)
- Rollouts: natively perform A/B tests with themes to see which performs betterSimGym: use AI agents to simulate shopping on your storefront and receive insights into your storefront
- Admin Access in Theme Editor: Make changes to products, collections, markets, and metafields directly in the Theme Editor without switching tabs.
- Unlisted Product Status: keep a product hidden from search, collections and more but accessible via a direct link
- Checkout Customizations per Market: Apply market-specific customizations in the Checkout editor, similar to the Theme Editor
Shopify Editions Winter '26 delivers exciting new features available now or coming soon. Astound Digital will dive deeper into select features in future Insights. Let's discuss which Winter '26 features can drive the most impact for your storefront—connect with us today.