What’s happening: Shopify has released its Winter ’26 edition, with more than 150 product updates focused on practical AI applications for merchants, developers, and partners.
Why this matters: These updates aim to streamline backend operations, from merchandising to daily workflows, allowing companies to focus resources on creativity and customer service rather than administrative tasks.
Australian retailers coping with rising costs and changing consumer behavior have new tools to help level operational demands. Shopify has unveiled its Winter ’26 edition, titled RenAIssance, with more than 150 product updates designed to remove friction from commerce operations.
The release focuses on practical AI applications that work behind the scenes rather than flashy automation. From generating custom admin apps through simple prompts to editing product photos directly in the file editor, the updates target specific pain points that sellers face every day.
“Australian retailers operate in one of the most competitive and dynamic markets in the world,” said Shaun Broughton, Managing Director APAC and Japan at Shopify. “Consumer expectations are rising rapidly and merchants need tools that allow them to respond to signals in real time while removing as much operational friction as possible.”
The update positions Sidekick, Shopify’s AI assistant, as a proactive rather than reactive tool. Instead of waiting for sellers to ask questions, Sidekick now shows personalized, high-impact tasks on the home dashboard so sellers can focus on what matters most.
Dan Small, Chief Customer Officer at Boody, says the tool has changed the way the company works.
“We use Sidekick to quickly discover actionable insights about shopping behavior,” says Small. “With a number of proven hero products that are bestsellers day in and day out, we can sometimes miss small changes in consumer behavior. Sidekick helps us identify these subtle shifts by showing how different customer segments interact with bundles and promotions in real time.”
This allows Boody to optimize offers and marketing strategies responsively, sharpening decision-making without extensive manual data analysis.
Sidekick works proactively
Sidekick now performs tasks that previously required technical knowledge or a significant time investment. Salespeople can generate working Flow automations from natural language descriptions, eliminating the need for programming skills to set up basic workflows. Theme settings can be adjusted via conversational commands instead of navigating complex menus.
The Assistant can also build custom admin apps from a prompt, with no coding required. Salespeople can save and reuse their most effective Sidekick prompts as skills, creating shortcuts for repetitive tasks that can be initiated from a skills box or a slash command.
For product images, Sidekick brings image editing capabilities directly into the file editor, helping sellers produce better product photos faster without having to switch between multiple tools.
“This edition, we’re giving Australian businesses AI capabilities that streamline behind-the-scenes work, refine storefronts, simplify merchandising and make day-to-day operations more efficient,” says Broughton. “This allows retailers to focus on creativity, innovation and serving customers, whether they are just starting out or scaling into other markets.”
Trade meets conversation
One of the key additions is Shopify Agentic Storefronts, which focuses on where commerce increasingly happens: within AI conversations.
The feature places seller products directly into conversations on platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. One configuration in the admin ensures products are instantly discoverable across multiple AI agents, without the need for complex integrations or separate apps for each platform.
Customers can complete purchases without leaving their conversations, while merchants maintain control over where and how their brand appears. Attribution data flows directly to the merchant’s administrator, and companies can switch which platforms their products are displayed on.
“Commerce happens in conversations, Shopify Agentic Storefronts makes you a part of it,” said Vanessa Lee, VP Leading Product at Shopify.
For brick-and-mortar retail, Shopify introduced POS Hub, which amplifies in-person selling by connecting point-of-sale hardware, including card readers, printers, keyboards, and scanners, to POS tablets over fast, reliable wired connections. The device runs on both iOS and Android and can be mounted under counters or displayed on countertops.
The hardware is Apple MFi certified for wired connections to multiple devices and includes built-in monitoring with automatic updates for POS hardware. It is designed to allow data to flow between merchant hardware and the Shopify Point of Sale during trading hours.
Testing without traffic
SimGym represents a different approach to optimization. The app, released as a research sample, uses AI shopper agents with human-like profiles to model how different customers might experience a storefront.
Based on insights from billions of purchases per year, SimGym can model shopping behavior at both broad and store-specific levels, from casual browsers to high-intent shoppers. This allows merchants to make store changes through simulated evaluations without the need for high traffic volumes.
Larger brands can gather early signals before testing with real customers, while smaller companies gain access to the kind of testing capabilities typically only available to larger companies.
“We chose the Renaissance theme for this edition because it symbolizes progress, momentum, courage, new beginnings and redefining what is possible,” says Lee. “Many of these features were not possible a year ago and they redefine how we achieve our mission: making commerce better for everyone.”
The update also introduces native experimentation capabilities through Rollouts, allowing sellers to plan changes, run experiments, and make data-driven decisions within their core workflow. A new Cross Border Profitability Insights Report helps sellers understand where duties, taxes and shipping adjustments impact margins, supporting more informed international pricing decisions.
For developers, the platform now offers end-to-end AI support for development workflows. AI agents can create developer stores, support apps, perform GraphQL operations, and generate validated code, allowing developers to focus on the architecture while AI handles installation and repetitive tasks.
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