Shopify, a leading commerce technology company, has unveiled its Summer ‘25 Edition, Horizons, the seventh showcase of its latest products and innovations that redefine how merchants build high-converting storefronts and how shoppers discover products.
Shopify’s Summer Edition encompasses more than 150 product highlights across UX, Point of Sale (POS), Payments and AI, along with its centrepiece: the introduction of Shopify’s new store design foundation, Horizon. Setting a new standard for Shopify Themes and consisting of 10 beautiful and customisable presets, the Horizon collection is among the first in the Theme Store to incorporate Theme Blocks, empowering merchants to build stunning, high-converting storefronts with this beautiful new aesthetic—all without needing to write a single line of code.
“In today’s climate where markets are becoming even more dynamic as a result of consumers’ preferences, technologies and regulations constantly shifting, innovation in commerce is vital,” says Deann Evans, managing director, EMEA, at Shopify. “To stay ahead and drive loyalty and sales, merchants need the right tools to be able to respond quickly and pivot if needed. Every Edition lays the foundations to make Shopify even better for merchants and developers. This time, our brand new Horizons theme, built with and on AI, is just part of the over 150 product highlights we’re showcasing this time so merchants big or small who rely on us can work smarter, not harder.”
Unlock design freedom with Shopify’s new theme
This Edition, Shopify is setting a new standard for online store design with Horizon. With built-in AI, best-in-class UX and a fully customisable layout system, Horizon helps merchants offer premium browsing and a buying experience that converts with no coding required:
- AI block generation in themes: AI block generation in themes transforms what’s possible on merchant storefronts, meaning they can now create entirely new blocks by describing what they need, without coding knowledge.
- Theme Editor:
- Copy Paste blocks: The copy and paste functionality gives merchants the ability to easily copy and paste blocks to different parent elements or sections, providing greater flexibility and control over their content layout.
- Drag and Drop theme blocks: Merchants and developers can easily move theme blocks – including any nested components – within the editor sidebar, streamlining the layout customisation process. The new feature ensures that all contextual information and settings remain intact during the drag-and-drop action, so merchant’s design choices remain intact.
- Block previews in the Block Picker: By introducing preset categories, merchants can navigate through more than 30 block presets in the new Horizon theme, so they find the right blocks and sections faster. It’s now possible to see how a block will appear before adding it to the layout, reducing trial and error and significantly improving the user experience in the block picker.
- AI Store Builder: By inputting just a few descriptive words, merchants get three different suggested store layouts, complete with images and text, reducing the time and effort required to design a store from the ground up, so merchants can focus on customisation and personalisation. AI Store Builder is currently available in English
Ben Attwood, founder of Clubhouse Skin, said: “One of the key steps to starting a business is testing the market by launching a minimum viable product. Because my product was so brand-led, I felt the need to invest in a web designer early, which is a significant cost. If I had Horizon available at the time, I believe I could have launched my MVP without the need for external support. Saving me £5000-7000 which could’ve been invested into the business elsewhere.”
Sell smarter with a redesigned Shopify POS app
Shopify POS v10 has a refreshed look and feel, intuitive navigation, and smarter search and cart functionality, built to make day-to-day selling faster, simpler, and more efficient. Key features:
- Ship and Carry Out: This enables split delivery methods, so customers can purchase multiple items within one order, choosing in-store pickup or home delivery for each individual item. Merchants can also split line items based on fulfillment needs, location or delivery expectations, streamlining logistics.
- Logo & background media on customer display: Merchants can now upload a custom logo and background image to the Idle Screen using the Display Editor, reinforcing brand presence and making the customer-facing experience uniquely theirs.
- Branded customer view: POS v10 introduces brand theming across customer-facing displays. Merchants can now apply their brand colours to the in-store checkout screen, helping the POS environment feel like a natural extension of the broader in-store experience.
Power global growth with multi-entity and Multi-Currency Payouts
Shopify Payments has always been the simplest way for merchants to accept payments both online and in-store, and has recently expanded into 15 new European countries. Now, with powerful new capabilities, merchants can scale globally with greater efficiency, supporting merchants to sell from multiple entities globally and settling in multiple currencies, all from a single store.
- Sell from multiple entities: Shopify merchants can now unify their backend operations across global online and offline entities through a single admin with Shopify Payments’, reducing operational complexity and costs to support scalable growth. Key benefits include:
- Simplified operations: Operate online and offline entities around the world from a single store.
- Cost optimisation: Transact domestically around the world from a single store, avoiding international and foreign exchange fees, duplicate apps and multiple integrations associated with additional stores.
- Unified reporting: Easily attribute orders to entities and generate streamlined reports that reduce admin overhead for finance teams.
- Multi-Currency Payouts: Shopify Payments now supports payments in 130+ currencies, and settlement in eight, minimising exchange fees and streamlining cross-border transactions from a single store.
Turn data into decisions with the new Sidekick
Sidekick, already a powerful AI tool built for commerce, will now go beyond answering questions by using multiple different tools or data sources to identify root causes of the challenges each business faces, suggest preventive measures, and provide executable multi-step solutions.
Through these enhancements, Shopify is reimagining its entire platform around declarative commerce, where merchants simply express what they want to achieve, and Sidekick recommends the best path forward, fundamentally changing how businesses operate. This lets merchants’ expertise, brand, and products shine, shifting their focus from time-consuming tasks to strategic growth opportunities.
The latest updates to Sidekick include:
- Sidekick Voice Chat & Screen Share: This provides instant support for any business management challenges. Users can now interact with Sidekick with voice commands, and get audible responses too, guiding them through the admin interface to help them find settings and make changes—for example, directing them through the process of setting up a domain.
- Sidekick Image Generation: Previously, Sidekick could edit the background of an existing image. Now it can create entirely new images, from marketing material to enhance product photography.
Commenting on Sidekick, Klavs Steenhof, Head of Digital at INTERSPORT Group, said: “We’re just beginning to scratch the surface with Sidekick. In our initial trial, it proved remarkably effective at inventory management—identifying the exact restocking priorities our purchasing team would have chosen. I’m excited to discover what else this tool can do for us. The businesses that will thrive are those embracing AI across their operations, and Shopify enabling this so seamlessly means we can focus on what matters most: growing our business.”
Create AI agents built for commerce with Storefront MCP
A personalised shopping experience is now just as important as the product for consumers. Shopify’s Storefront MCP is a comprehensive ecosystem that enables developers to build AI shopping agents to act as trusted shopping assistants by providing real-time access to Shopify’s commerce ecosystem. Based on Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), developers building AI shopping agents can access Shopify’s product catalog and shop level information to facilitate AI shopping searches and purchases. It means that consumers get a seamless shopping experience without leaving their AI conversation, while merchants can tap into a new sales channel.
Key features include:
- Product catalog search and cart management
- Customer account integration for order lookup and management
- Real-time access to accurate store information and policies
Evans concludes: “Businesses don’t necessarily have the time or resources to iterate and innovate, so they depend on Shopify to not only help them run the day-to-day, but to be the partner that removes the barriers and opens up opportunities to grow. This Horizon Edition spans every facet of the online and in-store retail experience, so these leaders of commerce can focus on expansion rather than admin. We’re literally helping them set new horizons for their business.”
