Shopify Overhauls Collections for Advanced Merchandising

Shopify announced a major overhaul of its 'Collections' feature, designed to give merchants greater flexibility, control, and automation in how they manage and display product assortments. The update addresses previous limitations where merchants had to choose between fully automated or entirely manual collection management. Source

Enhanced Collection Building with Multiple Sources

The new Collections experience allows merchants to build a single collection from various sources. This includes combining automatic conditions, hand-picked products, and even other existing collections. For example, a 'New Arrivals' collection can automatically include products added within the last 30 days while simultaneously featuring manually selected bestsellers at the top. This hybrid approach ensures collections stay fresh without constant manual updates.

Combining Automatic and Manual Picks

Users can now mix automatic conditions with hand-picked products and exclusions. This means a 'June Sale' collection could automatically pull all discounted items, exclude certain bestsellers from the promotion, and manually remove low-stock products. Merchants can also set the display order for buyers, blending automation with curated placement.

Integrate with Third-Party Apps

Collections can now incorporate sources directly from third-party apps. This enables merchants to leverage external data, such as bestseller lists based on social data or industry analytics, directly within their collections. This integration means merchandising insights can be surface in real-time. Source

App sources can be reused across workflows, ensuring consistency. An app maintaining a list of trending products could publish these to both a homepage collection and promotional emails, all from a single source. If an app curates products to exclude from promotions, that list can be applied to multiple collections, with updates automatically reflected across all of them.

Variant-Level Targeting

A significant new capability is the ability to target individual product variants, not just whole products. Merchants can create collections like a 'Valentine's Red Edit' that only includes red and pink color variants of various products. This granular control extends to the online store, Point of Sale (POS), and the Shop app, enabling highly specific merchandising and promotions.

Reusing Collections as Building Blocks

Collections can now be nested, meaning one collection can be built from other collections. For instance, an 'Activewear' collection can be composed of existing 'Leggings,' 'Tops,' and 'Shorts' collections. Any updates or additions to the source collections will automatically propagate to the larger 'Activewear' collection, reducing redundant list management and keeping navigation fresh.

Sidekick Assistance for Setup

Shopify's AI assistant, Sidekick, can now help build and edit collections. Merchants can prompt Sidekick with requests like "create a New Arrivals collection that removes items after two weeks," and Sidekick will handle the underlying setup, including tagging, automation, and conditions. This streamlines complex collection creation, which can then be reviewed and published.

Broader Business Applications

The enhanced collections can power various business workflows beyond simple product display. This includes applying automatic discounts to specific variant groups, like an 'Extended Sizes' promotion for XS and XXL variants. Tax overrides can be applied to product groups using collections, and collections can even be used for internal tracking, such as identifying products slated for discontinuation.

Redesigned Admin for Display Control

The Shopify admin has been updated to provide more visual control over how products are displayed within collections. Merchants can use a visual grid to drag and reorder products, switch between grid and list views, and sort products by price, alphabetically, or manually. Source

Existing collections will automatically transition to the new admin experience without needing to be recreated. Developers whose apps interact with collections are advised to update to API version 2026-07 to support these new capabilities.

This update is the first in a series of improvements planned for Shopify's collections feature.