Shopify Summer Editions 2025: Everything you need to know

Shopify's Summer 2025 Editions is called Horizons and includes over 150+ updates from design flexibility to AI-powered workflows.

Whether you're a solo merchant or running a global operation, there’s something in here to streamline how you sell, scale, and support your customers.

In addition to these updates, Horizons includes a fun game called Horizon Drive, which is sure to be a viral hit like their creative, and not-so-boring "Boring" Editions last winter.

Here’s a full recap of what’s new in Editions Summer ’25:

What's new in Shopify's Summer 2025 Edition?

The key enhancements introduced in the Horizons Edition include:

• Horizon design system

• Redesigned POS app

• Smarter Sidekick

• AI Shopping agents

• Vibe-ready Dev platform

Here’s a breakdown of these exciting new features.

Top 10 Shopify Summer Editions 2025 Updates 

1. Horizon Themes & Visual editing: Total design freedom

Shopify introduced 3 key theme updates:

• Horizon themes, a new design system that includes 10 free themes built to convert and suit different verticals, with AI built-in for easier editing.

• AI-generated themes and blocks: Merchants can simply describe their brand (e.g., "athleisure for women"), and Shopify generates an entire theme. This is ideal for new stores or fast seasonal refreshes. (P.S. Instant will integrate with Shopify blocks!)

• The theme editor got a huge UX upgrade: hover-to-preview blocks, category filters, predictive search, conditional settings, and block copy/paste speed up the entire process.

Why it matters: Shopify is closing the gap between design flexibility and ease of use, giving merchants more control without the usual design/development bottlenecks.

2. Sidekick gets smarter (and speaks 20 languages)

Sidekick, Shopify’s AI-powered assistant, now does a whole lot more:

• Multi-step reasoning to help solve complex problems (like identifying sales dips).

• Visual generation inside the admin with simple prompts.

• Mobile support, voice chat, and screen share.

• Now available in 20 languages to support global teams.

Why it matters: As AI moves from novelty to necessity in ecommerce design, Sidekick is becoming a daily-use tool for busy merchants who need quick answers and faster execution.

3. Retail: Redesigned Shopify POS app

Shopify’s Point-of-Sale system got a serious overhaul:

• Redesigned POS interface for smoother navigation.

• Custom branding on screens, carts, and receipts.

• Ship and carry-out in one order, store credit, smarter search, and more granular payment settings.

• Now supports multi-entity retail setups for global brands (Shopify Plus only).

Why it matters: Whether you're pop-up driven or managing multiple locations, POS makes physical retail as efficient and personalized as online selling.

4. Checkout that converts

Checkout just got faster, more flexible, and more secure:

• Faster load times, up to 2 seconds faster.

• Flat rates for split shipping across multiple fulfillment locations.

• Shopify Checkout in Roblox: Customers can now buy physical products in virtual worlds.

• Apple Pay support for subscriptions and custom checkouts.

• Carbon-neutral shipping options and stronger fraud prevention with AI.

• Surprise update: Something is coming on June 12, watch this space!

Why it matters: Checkout is where conversion happens. These updates reduce drop-off, support global shipping needs, and make new channels (like Roblox) a viable sales avenue.

5. Go global with less overhead

Selling internationally is now easier than ever:

• Shopify Payments launched in 16 new countries.

• Payouts in multiple currencies to reduce FX fees.

• Duties included in product prices, DDP shipping, and Klarna expansion across more EU countries.

• Markets updates: Create sub-markets and tailor the experience by region.

Why it matters: Shopify is pushing to become the platform of choice for international DTC brands, and removing major blockers in duties, payments, and compliance.

6. Growth & marketing made easier

Marketers and retention teams got several quality-of-life updates.

• One discount code for everything (products, shipping, orders).

• Ready-to-use customer segments and smarter automation templates.

• Campaigns tool to track and optimize marketing across channels.

• Collabs mobile app for creators and smarter targeting in the app store.

Why it matters: Shopify is connecting data, discounts, and automation in a way that gives smaller teams the tools of an enterprise stack.

7. Shop App: More personal, more powerful

Shopify’s consumer-facing app continues to evolve as a discovery and loyalty channel.

• Smarter product recommendations in real time.

• Shoppable product detail pages that sync with your storefront.

• Customer-curated collections, store credit support, and enhanced tracking.

Why it matters: Shop is quietly becoming a key sales and retention channel for brands, especially as it improves discovery and mobile experience.

8. B2B tools: Bulk sales, upgraded

Shopify continues investing in B2B commerce, especially for wholesale operations.

• Create markets for B2B with custom catalogs and storefronts.

• VAT number validation and min/max order limits.

• Gift cards now work in B2B, and there’s tighter NetSuite integration.

• More B2B-compatible apps and no more sales minimum to join Shopify Collective.

Why it matters: Brands selling to both retail and wholesale buyers can now manage it all under one roof, no duplicate sites or clunky workarounds needed.

9. Shipping, fulfillment & operations: Streamlined

Fulfillment improvements focus on speed, scale, and simplicity:

• Bulk print up to 250 labels at once.

• Barcode scanning for transfers and more robust tracking.

• Flat-rate shipping for multi-location orders.

• Expanded support for new carriers (Purolator, SEUR, BRT).

• Refund to store credit, editable subscription orders, and Tap to Pay on mobile.

Why it matters: Faster fulfillment = happier customers. These tools help stores scale without adding headcount.

10. Developer: Next-gen developer platform

Shopify’s dev experience is now cleaner, more flexible, and AI-supported:

• No-tunnel local dev, hot reload, and POS API access.

• Polaris UI components unified across surfaces.

• App-owned metafields, Flow improvements, and bulk data CLI management.

• A new AI-first Hydrogen Cookbook and Shopify Catalog API for building AI shopping agents.

Why it matters: Developers can now move faster and ship higher-quality apps, without needing to hack around platform limitations.

For more insights on the Developer updates, keep reading!

Recap of other notable Developer feature updates from Shopify Summer Editions ‘25

Now that we’ve explored the top 10 updates from Shopify Summer Editions 2025, we’ll recap a few of the other interesting additions to keep an eye on: 

A next-gen developer platform

Shopify is rolling out a completely re-engineered dev environment—now in early access—focused on speed, control, and simplicity.

• Local development without tunnels: Say goodbye to cumbersome setup. Developers can now build Shopify apps and extensions using localhost with instant hot reloading—no tunnel services or repeated deployments required.

• Developer stores for every Shopify plan: Test apps in real dev stores that mimic each Shopify plan (Basic, Grow, Advanced, Plus) so you can ensure compatibility at every level.

• Isolated app development environments: Build and test entire app configurations without deploying to live environments, reducing risk and increasing speed.

Vibe-ready inner loop

Shopify is introducing a “vibe-ready” inner loop that supports end-to-end extension development—write code, preview it locally, test it in realistic store contexts, and get AI-powered help from the Shopify.dev MCP Server along the way.

• Seamlessly pair with the MCP Server for inline assistance with GraphQL, Shopify Functions, Polaris components, and more—directly in your IDE.

• This tightly integrated workflow eliminates the traditional back-and-forth between dev tools and Shopify environments, keeping developers in flow.

App & extension APIs get a boost

• Direct POS API access now allows developers to build extensions that connect directly to Shopify data, without spinning up a backend.

• New support for app-owned metafields lets devs maintain strict data ownership and display custom info in checkout UI extensions.

• Metafield and metaobject access permissions are now easier to configure across Admin, Storefront, and Customer APIs.

• Polaris UI components have been unified across admin, checkout, and customer accounts, giving you a single design system to build with.

AI-first tools and docs

Shopify is weaving AI directly into the dev experience, not just through Sidekick, but inside the codebase too.

• AI-first Hydrogen Cookbook offers real-world code snippets and recipes (e.g. subscriptions, bundles, combined listings) to help you ship production-ready storefront features faster.

• Shopify Functions docs are now LLM-enabled—meaning you can interact with them, ask contextual questions, and get sample code instantly.

• Shopify Flow now supports sample data in variables, nested “for each” loops, and returning data via the HTTP request action—making automations far more powerful.

Storefronts and checkout:

• Storefront Web Components let you embed Shopify commerce into any site with just a few lines of HTML.

• With Storefront MCP, you can build AI-powered shopping agents that interact with customers, answer questions, and even initiate checkout flows.

• Shopify Catalog exposes millions of products to developers via API, with plans for a “Global Cart” to allow cross-store checkouts from one cart.

• Hydrogen now runs on React Router 7, unlocking typed routing, middleware, and faster navigation patterns.

• A skeleton theme and Liquid upgrades (supporting JS and stylesheet tags) make it easier to create and extend custom themes from scratch.

Developer tools & functions:

• Shopify Functions WebAssembly Query API lets devs build smaller, faster functions with just-in-time data handling.

• Batch execution has increased—up to 25 functions at once, up from 5.

• New POS-specific logic in Functions makes it easy to create in-store-only discounts and workflows.

• GraphQL API improvements include support for uncapped, filterable counts—critical for apps managing large datasets.

• Bulk data management with the Shopify CLI is coming soon in beta, using a single SQLite file to import/export data across environments.

Built for Shopify:

Shopify is also investing in making the Built for Shopify program easier to enter and more valuable:

• Simplified design requirements mean faster approvals and less back-and-forth during audits.

• Automated pre-submission checks flag issues early.

• Developers can now target merchants by plan type in the App Store and get priority reviews for apps that meet the new standards.

• Improvements to search in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai help global devs get discovered in more markets.

Conclusion

The Summer 2025 Edition, Horizons, isn't just a collection of updates; it’s a clear signal that Shopify is building the future of commerce with intention. Every enhancement, from AI-assisted design to expanded global payment capabilities, points to a platform that’s becoming more powerful, flexible, and merchant- and developer-friendly with each release.