Shopify has introduced its Winter ’26 Edition, RenAIssance this month, marking the next phase of the company’s focus on AI-supported commerce and workflow simplification for retailers. 

The release continues Shopify’s twice-yearly cadence of its latest products and innovations, with this Edition introducing several new AI-powered capabilities that aim to help teams work smarter, adapt faster, and meet rising consumer expectations with greater ease. The standout releases include improvements to Sidekick, the introduction of Agentic Storefronts and a new tool called SimGym.

Shaun Broughton, Shopify’s MD for Apac and Japan, says the most significant shift in this release is the move from reactive to proactive AI. “What’s most transformative in this release is that AI on Shopify is shifting from being reactive to truly proactive,” he says.

“We’ve made major updates to Sidekick so it now surfaces personalised, high-impact suggestions the moment a merchant opens their admin. Essentially, this means retailers no longer need to hunt for insights or navigate complex workflows to find out what matters next. Sidekick does this hard work for them.”

The Edition reflects Shopify’s broader strategy to embed AI across the commerce stack. The company positions AI as a way to supercharge human creativity and act as a true force multiplier for merchants, developers, and partners. Built on systems that understand commerce tasks and can support merchants in daily operations, Shopify also emphasises AI’s role as a decision-making partner rather than a simple automation engine, with the intent of linking core functions and third-party apps within unified workflows.

Broughton says the value for retailers comes from the way the intelligence is distributed across the system. “Because this intelligence is woven across the platform, from theme editing to Flow automations and app generation, tools like Sidekick understand their business, their data and their goals. All these upgrades free up teams from repetitive work, giving retailers a clearer, faster path to improving their store and overall commerce experience.

“Ultimately, our goal is to help retailers focus less on operational overhead and more on building great products, serving their customers and growing their businesses. This Edition takes a major step in enabling this future,” he explains

Proactive recommendations and natural-language control

The expansion of Sidekick, Shopify’s AI commerce assistant, introduces proactive recommendations: Three personalised actions surface as soon as a merchant logs in, based on current store performance and activity. Instead of waiting for prompts, the system now identifies tasks likely to benefit the retailer, from merchandising adjustments to operational clean-ups.

Sidekick now also supports generating custom admin applications from a single prompt. Retailers can request an app, describe its purpose and receive a generated tool without writing code. Examples include apps that consolidate setup tasks for a new product line or tools that surface low-inventory products by supplier. The generated apps can be further refined through natural-language adjustments, with automatic redeployment.

Sidekick now also translates written instructions into Shopify Flow automations. Retailers can describe a process, such as “Help me automatically tag customers if they place an order over $200”, and Sidekick builds the automation with a visual preview before activation.

Broughton says the entire upgrade is designed to remove friction from adoption. “All our AI features run natively on Shopify’s global platform, so retailers don’t need to worry about upgrading servers or investing in additional computing power,” he says. “Shopify Sidekick is also available free of charge to all Shopify merchants, regardless of their subscription plan. For us, removing complexity and barriers is the point, so this incredibly powerful ‘AI co-founder’, as we call it, is available from Entrepreneur up to Enterprise.”

Enhancing discoverability in AI conversations

While Sidekick takes centre stage, Shopify also introduced Agentic Storefronts this Edition, which places merchants’ products directly into AI conversations on platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. “One setup in your admin, and your products are immediately discoverable by many agents. No complex integrations, no separate apps for each platform – just your products showing up exactly when and where customers need them,” said Broughton.

“Customers buy without leaving their conversations, and you decide where and how your brand shows up. Your checkout experience, your customer relationships.” With Agentic Storefronts, merchants can toggle which platforms display their products and watch attribution data flow directly into their admin. 

New tools for testing and early-stage development

Alongside the Sidekick expansion, Shopify is introducing an AI-driven tool to support pre-deployment testing and early-stage concept development.

Shopify describes SimGym as a flight simulator for online stores. Retailers can test storefront changes using human-like AI shoppers that perform set tasks and provide recommendations based on the observed behaviour. This allows merchants to run experiments without depending on live site traffic or risking customer disruption. Smaller merchants can test at a scale that would otherwise be unavailable, while larger retailers can trial changes without compromising checkout or browsing.

These updates reflect Shopify’s wider intention to position AI as an integrated layer across the commerce lifecycle rather than a surface-level add-on. The company states that AI should be embedded in workflows to reduce manual input and enable faster iteration.

Consumer-facing outcomes

While the latest Edition focuses on merchant-side workflows, Broughton says consumers see the downstream effect in the form of clearer navigation, more stable journeys and improved load performance.

He points to the most recent Black Friday Cyber Monday results, in which Australian merchants using Shopify contributed $21.97 billion in global sales and recorded 15 per cent year-on-year growth in local purchasing. 

“What stood out across the weekend was how effectively retailers converted demand at a time when shoppers were far more deliberate, value-driven and AI-enabled in their behaviour,” he says. “The brands that simplified buying journeys and responded quickly to customer signals saw particularly strong results.”

Broughton says the new AI capabilities directly support this trend. “By allowing merchants to refine storefronts, update layouts, optimise navigation, and streamline merchandising simply using natural language, consumers can now benefit from cleaner, faster and more intuitive shopping experiences that meet their expectations for clarity and speed.”

How retailers are applying AI in practice

Shopify notes that merchants have already been using AI to streamline decision-making, including during high-demand periods. Clothing brand Boody is one example where the company claims AI has shifted the balance of time from data extraction to action.

Boody uses Sidekick to identify behavioural patterns such as variations in engagement between new and returning customers. During peak periods such as Black Friday Cyber Monday, AI supported the identification of high-performing product combinations, helping the team adjust campaigns and merchandising in response.

“We use Sidekick to uncover actionable insights about shopper behaviour quickly,” said Dan Small, chief customer officer at Boody. “With proven hero products that are day-in and day-out best sellers, sometimes we can overlook small changes in consumer behaviour. Sidekick helps us identify these subtle shifts by showing how different customer segments engage with bundles and promotions in real time. This enables us to optimise offers and marketing strategies responsively, sharpening human decision-making and allowing us to spend less time analysing data and more time acting on what truly matters to our customers – which is what modern retail is really about.”

Shopify positions Boody as one example of how retailers can adapt workflows without requiring technical capabilities.

Continuing investment

Broughton says this eighth Edition release reflects Shopify’s ongoing commitment to developing the platform. “In 2024, Shopify invested $2 billion into research and development. With our bi-annual Edition of updates and launches, our merchants can always be confident that their store and operations are at the cutting edge of commerce innovation.”

The Winter ’26 Edition places AI at the centre of Shopify’s roadmap. For retailers, the key theme is the shift from manual control to intelligent, outcome-driven workflows supported by systems that understand context, goals and performance signals. As Shopify continues to consolidate AI across its platform, the company maintains that its focus is on practical use rather than experimentation, with the aim of maintaining low barriers to infrastructure and adoption.

• Further information about Shopify’s RenAIssance Edition is available here.