Each six months, Shopify releases a brand new Version: a broad showcase of instruments, updates, and concepts that replicate each the present state of ecommerce and the place the platform is headed. However these Editions aren’t simply product bulletins. They function each roadmap and inventive assertion.
Again in December, we explored the Winter ’25 Version, which targeted on refining the core. With over 150+ updates and a playfully minimalist interface, it was a celebration of the work that usually goes unnoticed—efficiency, reliability, and seamless workflows. “Boring,” however deliberately so, and surprisingly pleasant.
The brand new Summer season ’25 Version takes a special method. This time, the highlight is on design: expressive, visible, and accessible to everybody. On the heart of it’s Horizon, a brand-new first-party theme that reimagines what it means to construct a storefront on Shopify.
Horizon provides retailers whole artistic management with out technical boundaries. It combines a modular design system with AI-assisted customization, giving anybody the facility to create a cultured, high-performing retailer in just some clicks.
To know how this theme got here to life—and why Shopify sees it as such a turning level—we had the prospect to talk with Vanessa Lee, Shopify’s Vice President of Product. What emerged was a transparent image of the place retailer design is heading: extra versatile, extra intuitive, and extra creatively empowering than ever earlier than.
“Design has by no means mattered extra,” Lee advised us. “Nice design isn’t nearly how issues look—it’s the way you inform your story and construct lasting model loyalty. Horizon democratizes superior design capabilities so anybody can construct a retailer.”
A Theme That Feels Like a Design System
Horizon isn’t a single template. It’s a basis for a household of 10 thoughtfully designed presets, every able to be tailor-made to a model’s distinctive persona. What makes Horizon stand out isn’t just the aesthetics however the construction that powers it.
Constructed on Shopify’s new Theme Blocks, Horizon is the primary public theme to completely embrace this modular method. Blocks could be grouped, repositioned, and organized freely alongside each vertical and horizontal axes. All of this occurs inside a visible editor, no code required.
“The largest frustration was the hole between intention and implementation,” Lee explains. “Retailers had clear visions however typically needed to compromise attributable to technical complexity. Horizon adjustments that by providing true design freedom—no code required.”
AI as a Artistic Associate
AI has change into a daily presence in artistic instruments, however Shopify has taken a extra collaborative method. Horizon’s AI options are designed to help creativity, not take it over. They assist with format ideas, content material era, and even the creation of customized theme blocks based mostly on pure language prompts.
Describe one thing so simple as “a banner with textual content and typing animation,” and Horizon can generate a practical block to match your imaginative and prescient. You can even share an inspirational picture, and the system will create matching format components or content material.
What’s necessary is that retailers retain full editorial management.
“AI ought to improve human creativity,” Lee says. “Our instruments are collaborative—you keep in management. Whether or not you’re enhancing a product description or producing a format, it’s at all times your voice guiding the end result.”
This mindset is mirrored in instruments like AI Block Era and Sidekick, Shopify’s AI assistant that helps retailers form messaging, refine format, and convey content material concepts to life with out friction.
UX Shifts That Change the Sport
Alongside its bigger improvements, Horizon additionally delivers a collection of small however extremely impactful enhancements to the shop enhancing expertise:
- Copy and Paste for Theme Blocks permits retailers to reuse blocks throughout totally different sections, saving effort and time.
- Block Previews within the Picker let customers see what a block will appear like earlier than including it, decreasing trial and error.
- Drag and Drop Performance now contains full block teams, nested elements, and intuitive repositioning, with settings preserved robotically.
These updates could seem modest, however they aim the precise sorts of ache factors that decelerate design workflows.
“We pay shut consideration to small moments that add as much as huge frustrations,” Lee says. “Options like copy/paste or previews appear small—however they remodel how retailers work.”
Constructed with the Neighborhood
Horizon is just not a top-down product. It was formed by means of collaboration with each retailers and builders over the previous yr. Based on Lee, the suggestions was clear and constant. Everybody needed extra flexibility, however not at the price of simplicity.
“Each retailers and builders need flexibility with out complexity,” Lee recollects. “That formed Theme Blocks—and Horizon wouldn’t exist with out that ongoing dialogue.”
The result’s a system that feels each refined and intuitive. Builders can work with construction and management, whereas retailers can categorical their model with readability and ease.
Extra Than a Theme, a Sign
Every Shopify Version carries a message. The Winter launch was about stability, efficiency, and quiet confidence. This Summer season’s Version speaks to one thing extra expressive. It’s about unlocking design as a type of commerce technique.
Horizon sits on the coronary heart of that shift. But it surely’s only one a part of a broader push throughout Shopify. The Version additionally contains updates to Sidekick, the Store app, POS, funds, and extra—every designed to take away boundaries and help higher brand-building.
“We’re evolving from being a commerce platform to being a artistic accomplice,” Lee says. “With Horizon, we’re serving to retailers flip their concepts into actuality—with out the tech getting in the best way.”
Wanting forward, Shopify sees huge alternative in utilizing AI not only for retailer creation, however for proactive optimization, personalization, and steerage that adapts to every service provider’s wants.
“Probably the most thrilling breakthroughs occur the place AI and human creativity meet,” Lee says. “We’ve solely scratched the floor—and that’s extremely motivating.”
Closing Ideas
Horizon isn’t only a new Shopify theme. It’s a brand new baseline for what artistic freedom ought to really feel like in commerce. It invitations anybody—no matter technical talent—to construct a retailer that feels uniquely theirs.
For individuals who’ve felt boxed in by inflexible templates, or overwhelmed by the necessity to code, Horizon provides one thing totally different. It removes the friction, retains the facility, and brings the enjoyment again into constructing for the net.
Discover the whole lot new within the Shopify Summer season ’25 Version.
