The Renaissance of Commerce: Breaking Down Shopify Editions Winter ’26

1. The Rise of Agentic AI and Creative Control

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The headline act is the shift from passive AI to Agentic AI. These are tools that do not just chat, they act.

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• Agentic Storefronts: Your products are now discoverable and shoppable directly within AI interfaces like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
• Sidekick Evolved: Shopify’s AI assistant can now build custom apps, generate reports, and execute theme edits instantly.‍
• Native AI Image Editing: A massive win for creative teams. You can now use AI to change backgrounds, remove elements, or expand image canvas sizes directly in the media editor. No more bottlenecks for minor design tweaks.

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2. Native A/B Testing with Rollouts

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Shopify has announced native A/B testing integrated with Rollouts, allowing merchants to schedule, test, and validate theme changes directly in the admin. It is a welcome addition that removes technical barriers, but at B2, we know that the tool itself is only half the battle.

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• Beyond the Tool: Surface-level experiments without understanding the underlying customer problem create noise, not insight.‍
• The B2 Approach: Our optimisation cycle starts long before a test goes live. We use behavioural insights and real user feedback to uncover genuine barriers to conversion. Only then do we build hypotheses and design variations that solve real problems.

3. Operations and The 2,048 Limit

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Shopify is finally tackling some of the stickier parts of catalogue management.

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• 2,048 Variants Per Product: The limit has been lifted. If you have complex product lines involving size, colour, or material, you can now manage up to 2,048 variants per product.
• ‍Flexible Inventory: You can now receive items from unspecified locations and edit shipments while they are in transit, solving real-world logistics headaches.

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4. Major UK Payment and Marketing Updates

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For our UK clients, this is arguably the most practical update in the entire Edition.

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• Shop Pay Installments (UK): Finally, Buy Now, Pay Later is available natively for UK merchants with terms up to 24 months. This keeps the experience within the branded checkout rather than sending users off-site.‍
• Shop Campaigns Expanded: You can now run Shop Campaigns on external channels like X (Twitter), Snapchat, and Bing. The best part? It operates on a CPA model where you only pay when a customer converts.

5. Retail Power

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For our omnichannel clients, the in-store experience just got a hardware boost.

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• The New POS Hub: New hardware that combines wired reliability with significant processing power.‍
• Subscriptions on POS: You can now sign customers up for recurring subscriptions directly at the counter.

6. Pre-Launch Validation (SimGym)

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For brands that want to predict the future before they commit, Shopify has introduced fascinating simulation tools.

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• Shopify SimGym: You can now use AI agents trained on billions of shopper interactions to "simulate" traffic and predict how your store changes will perform before real customers ever see them.‍
• Analytics Heatmaps: Forget Hotjar, Shopify Analytics now supports native heatmaps. You can view data across two variables, such as sales by hour vs day of the week, to spot trends instantly.