# 2026 Shopify Fall Release > A merchant-focused summary of the Shopify 2026 Fall Release: agentic shopping, Sidekick, Canvas, Rollouts, Shopify Protect, Shopify Tax, checkout custom fields and more, with the action to take for each. - Author: Ismail Namdar, Founder at Palmiyes - Published: Nov 12, 2026 - Reading time: 10 min - URL: https://palmiyes.com/blogs/shopify-2026-fall-release - Tags: Shopify Fall Release 2026, Agentic commerce, Shop Pay, Shopify Inbox, Sidekick, Shopify Canvas, Rollouts, A/B testing, Product data mapping, Shopify Protect, Shopify Tax, Checkout custom fields, Shopify Admin, Shop.com, Shop Promise ## [Shop.md](https://shop.md) Shopify now allows customers to discover products, approve purchases, and check out with “Shop Pay” in Muse, Claude Duet, Grok Bot, and Instinct. ### What you need to do? Make sure your store is agent friendly. Shipping policy and refund policy pages should reflect the correct information. Information about the product should be added to the product description field in Shopify Admin for a better experience. Shopping agents are still not very good at parsing information directly from the PDP. So, you need to improve the structured data in your website and in Shopify admin. First useful thing you can do is to visit [Knowledge Base](https://admin.shopify.com/apps/agentic/knowledge-base) and publish the recommended changes by Shopify. ## AI shopper agent assistant for your customers Now with the help of Shopify Inbox, AI agents can help your customers with their purchase, accounts, order history and many more! ### What you need to do? If you would like to enable/test this feature, go to [this Shopify article](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/inbox/chat-settings-and-appearance/settings) and follow the instructions. ## Better, more powerful Sidekick inside Shopify Admin You can ask Sidekick to do more things as well as more complex tasks. It is context aware and doing a pretty good job in our case. We believe we will see more and more things done by Sidekick because Shopify is investing in its future. ### What you need to do? Just ask Sidekick whenever you have a question or a task in mind! ## Shopify Canvas Shopify Canvas is a more visual way to edit all your web pages in one view called Canvas. Use Sidekick inside of it to make changes. We still believe it is early to use this feature, but it looks like Shopify is exploring and investing in better ways to leverage AI for page customization, since Sidekick inside of the customizer was not super useful in our experience. ### What you need to do? Give it a shot! Use Shopify Canvas by simply going to Shopify Admin -> Online Store -> Click the 3 dots next to your theme -> Select Duplicate in Canvas ## Rollouts Improved rollouts for more complex, involved A/B testing. Rollouts were launched in the 2025 Winter Release with early access, but they have improved a lot in this release. Now you can combine theme updates, Checkout updates, discounts and much more in a single A/B test. This allows stores to test more complex user journeys. We believe Shopify will keep improving this service to be the main tool for A/B testing for merchants for free. ### What you need to do? If you want to test which version of your user journey, user interface, web page works better, go to Shopify Admin -> Markets -> Rollouts and create your first rollout! Scheduling launches is also supported. So, if you have a specific date and time that you want to launch your promotion for example, you can schedule the new theme with Rollouts to be launched at that exact time. ## Product data mapping by channel What this means is that we now have more control over how we want to present the products in different channels like Google products. Stores now have the ability to choose to include or exclude variant names and change images etc. [See more on what is possible using this link](https://admin.shopify.com/listings). ## Stopping fraud across stores with Shopify Protect You can set up rules against fraudulent purchases so that you are not hit with chargebacks as often. We have seen these kinds of apps being used in different software products, and now Shopify is bringing this functionality to their platform for free. ### What you need to do? It is still in early access and not available. You can join the waitlist by installing their official Shopify Protect app by clicking this [Shopify Protect app link](https://apps.shopify.com/shopify-protect). ## Shopify Tax We are seeing more and more improvements on Shopify Tax including US sales tax calculation. Now taxes on US orders are calculated based on the location each order ships from in Shopify Tax. This ensures rates are correct even if fulfillment is from different locations. Read more on the [Shopify Tax page](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/taxes/us/managed-sales-tax). ### What you need to do? We already started to see our clients planning to move off of AvalaraTax to Shopify Tax. This entirely depends on each store and what benefits them but we recommend checking out the details and choosing what is beneficial and cost-effective for your store. We always bet on Shopify and we think that they will make Shopify Tax mainstream. ## Custom fields in the checkout and accounts editor Now stores can add text inputs, date pickers, checkboxes, and choice lists to checkout and account pages easily in the editor. On checkout it will be able to connect the entered data to an order metafield. ### What you need to do? It is not launched yet but once it is available, use it by just going to Checkout editor and adding the block if you need to collect extra information on checkout like gift instructions or a delivery date. ## Shopify admin dashboard redesign A completely different redesign of the admin portal, although it is somewhat similar. ### What you need to do? Pages are being rolled out part by part, and maybe by the time you are reading this it is already rolled out for your store. So, enjoy the new design although it might feel uncomfortable at first because it is new. ## Shop.app -> [Shop.com](https://shop.com) Recently, Shopify bought the [shop.com](https://shop.com) domain allegedly for ~$100M. Although it looks like a lot we believe this is a good investment that could benefit all Shopify stores since [shop.com](https://shop.com) gives more confidence to customers. ### What you need to do? No action needed on your end. Your products are available on [shop.com](https://shop.com) automatically. ## Shop Promise badge for products If stores are meeting certain requirements, they can enable the Shop Promise badge, which Shopify says boosts conversion. We haven’t tested it enough yet but this might be a good way to be different from other stores. ### What you need to do? Go to the [Shop Promise link](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/fulfillment/setup/shop-promise) and check if you are eligible. [Go to this link to enable Shop Promise](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/fulfillment/setup/shop-promise/activate).