Shopify has just revealed its Summer ‘25 Edition update, dubbed “Horizons,” and it’s a massive release. Packed with over 150 product updates, this edition is set to significantly change how online merchants create their stores and how customers find what they’re looking for.
The focus is clearly on smarter, AI-driven tools and a brand-new design foundation to make beautiful, high-converting storefronts accessible to everyone.
The centrepiece of this avalanche of updates is Horizon, Shopify’s new store design foundation. This isn’t just a new theme; it’s a fundamental shift, blending sleek aesthetics with powerful AI capabilities, allowing merchants to craft impressive online stores without touching a line of code. It’s all about giving merchants more power with less complexity.
“Merchants today need flexible, intuitive tools that work as hard as they do.
Our latest Edition, Horizons, represents a step change in how our merchants can spend less time on tech and more time building their brands. These updates enhance their efficiency and customer engagement, while progressing toward our vision of ’declarative commerce’, where merchants can simply express their goals, and our system charts the optimal path forward.
Through this shift, merchants can focus on innovation and strategic growth rather than time-consuming tasks.”
Shaun Broughton, Managing Director, APAC at Shopify.
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Unlock design freedom with Shopify’s new theme foundation
At the heart of the Summer ’25 Edition is Horizon, a new flexible theme foundation designed to set a new benchmark for online store design. It integrates AI, best-practice UX, and a fully customisable layout system.
10 high-converting presets
The Horizon collection kicks off with 10 beautifully designed presets, offering a fantastic starting point for any brand’s online presence. Each preset is built with sections focused on clarity, engagement, and ultimately, conversion, featuring intuitive product discovery, rich full-screen hero banners, and optimised cart experiences.
Theme Blocks, redefined
This is a powerful new method for customising storefronts. Merchants can freely move elements across the page, copy and paste blocks to different sections, and choose from over 30 block presets with live previews, streamlining the design process.
AI-Block Generation
Horizon comes with built-in AI Block Generation. This allows merchants to generate fresh content blocks and layouts using AI directly within the theme, providing smart, instant layout suggestions tailored to their design goals.
Get started even quicker with AI Store Builder
For those starting from scratch or looking for a rapid redesign, the AI Store Builder can transform a few keywords into three unique, ready-to-customise store designs.
Store in seconds
By simply inputting a few descriptive keywords, the AI Store Builder generates three distinct store layouts, complete with images and text. This dramatically cuts down the initial design time, letting merchants jump straight into customisation.
Sell smarter with a redesigned Shopify POS app
Shopify POS v10 has launched, featuring a completely redesigned interface aimed at making daily retail operations faster and more efficient. Expect a refreshed look, intuitive navigation, and smarter search and cart functionality.
Ship and carry out
This new feature enables split delivery methods. Customers can purchase multiple items in one order, choosing in-store pickup for some and home delivery for others, with merchants able to split line items based on fulfillment needs.
Logo & background media on customer display
Merchants can now upload a custom logo and background image to the idle screen of customer-facing displays using the Display Editor. This helps reinforce brand presence in a physical retail setting.
Branded customer view
POS v10 introduces brand theming across customer-facing displays. Merchants can apply their brand colours to the in-store checkout screen, making the POS feel like a natural extension of their brand.
A more dynamic Shop app feed, tailored to every tap and scroll
The Shop app’s home feed is evolving to better connect merchants with high-intent buyers. Content will now dynamically update based on user interactions, creating a more personalised shopping journey.
Improved home feed recommendations
The updated home feed will intelligently surface merchants’ products in more relevant ways. Real-time content updates based on shopper behaviour aim to increase engagement and customer retention.
Create and share collections
Shoppers can now organise their saved items into themed or intent-based collections and share them. This replaces the old single “Favourites” list and introduces collaborative shopping features.
Native and custom product swatches
Shop now supports native and custom swatches, mirroring how colour and variant selections appear in merchants’ online stores. This offers a more visual way to browse options, removing the need for dropdowns.
Power global growth with entity and currency support
Shopify Payments is also getting a boost, with new capabilities designed to help merchants scale globally more efficiently. This includes managing multiple entities and settling in multiple currencies from a single store.
Sell from multiple entities with Shopify Payments
Merchants can manage their online and offline entities worldwide from a single admin. This simplifies operations and reporting, helping to avoid international and foreign exchange fees associated with multiple stores.
Multi-currency payouts
Shopify Payments now supports payouts in up to eight currencies. Merchants can accept payments in over 130 currencies and settle in those that best suit their business needs.
Shape your brand’s AI presence with Shopify’s new Knowledge Base app
A new AI-powered Knowledge Base app acts like “SEO for AI conversations.” It enables merchants to optimise their presence for generative AI platforms and shopping assistants.
Shopify Knowledge Base
Merchants can automatically generate store facts and FAQs tailored for AI shopping agents like ChatGPT and Claude. They can then customise these to reflect their brand voice, giving them control over how their business appears in AI-driven queries.
Turn data into decisions with the new Sidekick
Shopify’s AI assistant, Sidekick, is getting smarter. It now goes beyond just answering questions to proactively spot issues, recommend solutions, and help merchants take action.
Smarter, faster Sidekick
Sidekick now connects to multiple data sources and performs multi-step reasoning. This allows it to deliver deep, actionable insights in a single interaction, reducing the need to toggle between dashboards.
Get in front of a wider audience with Shopify Catalog
Developers can now leverage Shopify Catalog to build applications and AI agents that connect merchants with customers on any surface.
Real-time, clear, accurate and structured data
This allows apps and AI agents to search and pull real-time product data from millions of Shopify businesses. The aim is to display the most relevant products to shoppers, helping merchants reach a wider audience.
“Shopify Catalog gives users seamless access to products from millions of Shopify merchants, providing accurate, real-time information throughout their shopping journey.”
Taz Patel, head of advertising and shopping at Perplexity
Power smarter shopping assistants with Shopify’s Storefront MCP
Developers gain the ability to build specialised AI shopping agents for individual brands with Storefront MCP (Model Context Protocol).
Adopting Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP)
By adopting Anthropic’s MCP, this platform will allow third parties building AI shopping agents to access Shopify Catalog and shop-level information. This aims to facilitate AI shopping searches and purchases, simplifying the customer experience and giving merchants access to new sales channels.
These updates represent a significant step forward for the Shopify platform, with a clear emphasis on AI to simplify complex tasks and empower merchants of all sizes. While specific pricing for utilising all new features will depend on individual Shopify plans and usage, these enhancements are part of the Summer ’25 Edition rollout.
For more information, head to Shopify’s Summer ’25 Edition Blog Post