Shopify Spring '26: What's New!

To mark its spring release, Shopify just dropped 150 new features in one go. We sifted through them all to pull out the upgrades that will boost your sales online and in-store.

Twice a year, Shopify drops an Edition, and twice a year, we indulge the same guilty pleasure: a dense technical release served like a geeky pop-culture event. The Spring 2026 release, out on June 18, is no exception: over 150 new features, packaged in an immersive landing page that would make even Apple’s product page web designers green with envy. Stunning design, stunning impact.

But let’s stay focused on the substance; what stands out from this massive changelog? The buzzword of the year in the SaaS world, which we mentioned a few weeks ago, is ‘agentic’, or the art of making every tool readable and manipulable by AI agents. Shopify has certainly made sure to tick that box with its app; AI and agents are present at every level, right down to the Apple Watch version of the shop management app.

But don’t stop there. The biggest wins sit at checkout, payments, and B2B.

Selling to agents

Soon, some customers won’t browse your site. They’ll send their AI assistant to shop instead. That’s the bet Shopify is making: ChatGPT and similar tools are becoming full-fledged sales channels, managed from the Shopify admin just like any other.

In practice, Shopify and Google built an open standard that makes every store readable by AI assistants, from discovery to checkout. No installs, no config: every store ships with it. Clean, structured data pays off: Shopify says AI searches on this data convert twice as well as the old scraping game. Behind the scenes, Sidekick, the assistant baked into the admin, handles tasks in the background, driven by your preferred agents.

And the numbers are already stacking up. Homeware brand Cozy Earth watched AI-driven revenue jump twentyfold in a year (editor’s note: we don’t have the baseline figure so it’s difficult to compare…but you get the idea 🤓).

The comeback of the high-street shop

AI will happily help us order washing powder in three seconds, but it’s not yet ready to replace the pleasure of walking into a shop, discovering, touching and trying out products.

Version 11 of Shopify’s POS (Point-of-Sale) solution follows this approach to a tee: speeding up the checkout process, then stepping out of the way. Shopify calls it the fastest release ever, and it shaves over a minute off complex transactions (Shopify, 2026) thanks to a always-visible cart and keyboard shortcuts. One minute per customer, times a Saturday afternoon line, adds up to fatter takings and a smoother in-store experience.

The rest tackles physical counters’ pain points one by one:

• Refunds, exchanges, and resales roll into one transaction.
• The till can process a sale even without a network connection.
• New compatible handheld terminals let staff scan barcodes and take payments anywhere on the floor, not just at the counter.
• …and the list of new features keeps going.

The takeaway is simple: for Shopify, the future of e-commerce is omnichannel, AND in-store sales still performs.

Shop Pay & Shopify Checkout

Quick clarification, as folks often mix them up. Shopify Checkout is the payment gateway that ships with every Shopify store, optimized for conversion with each new release. Shop Pay is the digital wallet inside: a buyer account, saved cards and addresses, one-click payment, and a mobile app to track purchases across every compatible store.

Until now, you needed a Shopify store to use it. Not anymore. Shop Pay is now open to every brand, whatever platform they run on. Install the “Shop Pay” plugin and 250 million buyer accounts with saved cards unlock at once. This move plants Shopify on PayPal’s turf, already crowded by Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Shopify Checkout has also been redesigned: a single, mobile-optimized column, with payment methods reordered according to each customer’s likelihood of conversion.
For us in Europe, the release packs several handy upgrades: VAT number validation at checkout (yes, Belgium included), fresh local payment methods, and multi-currency payments rolling out in France.

The update lands automatically in every compatible store, no dev work required. That’s the SaaS magic.

The more affordable B2B option

Until now, selling via B2B on Shopify (e.g., a dedicated portal for resellers) required a ‘Plus’ subscription costing over €2,000 a month. The Spring ’26 release flips that script. Business profiles, volume-based pricing, and dedicated catalogs are now live on the Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans… at no extra cost.

For manufacturers and wholesalers still juggling PDF POs and endless email threads, it’s easily the most cost-effective feature in the entire release.

Shopify extends its lead

Shopify ended 2025 with $378 billion in merchandise volume (+29.5%) and $11.6 billion in revenue (+30%), its first year over $10 billion. About one in seven online dollars in the US now flows through the platform. That number speaks volumes.

So when a well-established market leader like this drops 150 new features at once, the message to rivals is clear: Shopify won’t rest on its laurels.

We’re not sure we’d shop via Claude or ChatGPT, but an even smoother payment funnel, a redesigned checkout, and simpler integrations? Genius.

Ask USG: their fresh ‘made by EPIC’ store runs on headless Shopify.