+ PLAY Day 1 / Main stage / 09:00
Toronto / July 21–22, 2026
The official unofficial post-event report
DotDev
2026: The diff.
Two days, in order
The commit
history.
Tuesday · July 21
Day one: ship the context.
Main stage
Welcome and keynote
Shopify leadership opened the event with the platform context for the work that followed. Atlee Clark, Mani Fazeli, and Ilya Grigorik were listed for the opening main-stage session.
Official lineup ↗
Product floor
Nine ways into the platform
The booths made the scope tangible: Agentic Commerce, Marketing & Analytics, Online Selling, Retail, Apps, Shop, Sidekick & Friends, B2B, and Back Office.
AgentsAnalyticsStorefrontsRetailAppsShopSidekickB2BOperations
Event tooling
DotDev shipped its own MCP server
Attendees could connect MCP-compatible clients to discover sessions, venue information, and event details without authentication.
Open the DotDev MCP endpoint ↗
+ Added
Liquid went back to the future
Shopify put readable Liquid templates back at the center of theme architecture, adding composable blocks and fine-grained partial updates in developer preview.
Inspect the theme architecture diff ↓
+ Added
Analytics became an app platform
Shopify announced a full stack for apps to model, query, embed, and enrich analytics inside Shopify. The infrastructure story changed in one release.
Inspect the analytics diff ↓Community broadcast / 07.21.26
Ecomm Cowboy.
Live from DotDev.
A long-form view from the event floor, with Shopify President Harley Finkelstein and builders working across agencies, storefronts, and apps.
- 01Harley Finkelstein President, Shopify
- 02Adam Ellington CCO, Overdose
- 03Vanessa Nugent Founder & CEO, Allure Commerce
Wednesday · July 22
Day two: meet the builders.
Main stage
Tobi, Harley, and the Build Awards
Tobias Lütke and Harley Finkelstein discussed what is driving Shopify forward, followed by recognition for the partners whose work moved the ecosystem.
The working sessions
Agents met the real platform
Sessions connected agentic checkout to Shopify Functions, explored the Catalog API and UCP, put Sidekick extensions into developers’ hands, and went deep on the unglamorous primitives behind inventory, operations, and secure apps.
These were session themes; individual capabilities are only described as shipped where Shopify’s documentation confirms them.
Princes’ Boulevard
DotDev met all of Shopify
Programming closed at 5 PM and flowed into the first Block Party with Shopify Summit—an outdoor finale running until 10 PM. Attendee posts described festival-scale crowds, stages, dance battles, live painting, DJs, food trucks, and very heavy networking.
The schedule and hours are official. Descriptions of the scale and atmosphere are attributed attendee reporting collected in the supplied Grok research.
Day 2 / Build Awards
Good work.
Committed.
Four categories, eight recipient groups, seven countries—and a shared habit of getting close to merchants and going deep on a problem worth solving.
Official video · ShopifyDevs
Shopify Build Awards
Shopify Build Awards
DotDev 2026
The official player is ready—press play, then meet every published winner below.
Open on YouTube ↗Smile
Mike Rossi
A loyalty platform that stayed close to merchants while building an ecosystem other developers can extend.
Discount Kit
Dave Spanton & Sammy Isseyegh
Battle-tested promotion logic built deeply and natively on Shopify Functions.
Easyteam
Harel Ishay
Workforce management made native to Shopify POS and the realities of physical retail.
Human NYC
Michael Ray & Rachael Yaeger
Brand, story, motion, and commerce brought together in an editorial storefront for Wendywin.
Commerce UI
Simon Wesierski & Michael Klim
A Shopify-native Liquid build for Lupine, obsessing over performance, interaction, and detail.
Unlikely
Simon Corompt & Maxime Berthelot
A mobile-first custom storefront for Ysé that pushes the web toward an app-like experience.
Emili Horncastle
Zapiet
The first Community winner, recognized for freely connecting and strengthening Shopify’s partner ecosystem.
Elephant Room
+ Prosper Digital
Adam Sharon & Jacob Osborne
The first joint award: complementary agencies collaborating to transform and scale Lioness.
Strategic signal / Interview excerpt
Merit
> budget.
“Agentic commerce is here, and it’s merit-based.”
Harley Finkelstein, speaking with Ecomm Cowboy live at DotDev
Harley’s argument is that agentic discovery can reward the product and merchant that best answer a buyer’s intent—not simply the company with the longest history or largest acquisition budget.
What this changes
Open excerpt on X ↗
Structured, trustworthy product data and genuinely differentiated merchant value become distribution work. The technical surface and the commercial story are converging.
This is attributed commentary from the interview, not a platform availability claim.
+ Developer preview / Liquid July ’26
Liquid: back
to the future.
New block and partial tags bring reusable composition and targeted updates directly into readable Liquid templates.
- 01
{% block %}Compose reusable, merchant-editable blocks from a template with named inputs and body content.
- 02
{% partial %}Mark server-rendered HTML regions that JavaScript can refresh without reloading the page.
- 03Additive preview
Existing themes, sections, settings, and JSON templates continue to work; this is not a required rewrite.
+ Shipped / July 21 / API 2026-10
App analytics,
full stack.
Apps can now model, query, embed, and enrich analytics inside Shopify instead of maintaining a separate data and charting stack.
- 01Model
Make metafields queryable in analytics and bring custom App Events into ShopifyQL through early access.
- 02Query + embed
Use the documented ShopifyQL API and native metric-card, metrics-bar, and date-picker web components.
- 03Enrich
Add attributed annotations and programmable Metric Targets directly to merchant charts.
Shipped, previewed, demonstrated
The platform
change index.
The developer-facing changes introduced around DotDev, separated by availability so a shipped API does not read like a workshop direction—or vice versa.
Full-stack app analytics
Apps can model custom data, query it with ShopifyQL, embed native analytics components, and enrich charts without maintaining a separate warehouse, ETL pipeline, or charting stack.
What changed
Analytics-queryable metafields, App Events in Analytics early access, the documented ShopifyQL API, analytics web components, attributed chart annotations, and programmable Metric Targets now form one app-facing stack.
Enhanced Events
Events provide field-level triggers and shaped GraphQL payloads, reducing the need to receive broad resource updates and diff them inside an app.
What changed
New Order, Collection, InventoryItem, InventoryShipment, and Location topics; targeted metafield triggers across key resources; and payloads containing fields_changed, query variables, and only the requested data. Use Events alongside webhooks where topics are not yet supported.
Liquid block and partial tags
Theme templates can compose reusable blocks directly and mark server-rendered regions that JavaScript refreshes independently.
What changed
{% block %} adds structured composition with inputs and body content. {% partial %} adds named, independently refreshable HTML regions. Both coexist with existing sections, JSON templates, settings, and Theme Check.
Physical inventory APIs
The GraphQL Admin API gained early access to the stockroom primitives behind warehouse and ERP workflows: bins, stateful counts, and purchase orders.
What changed
Apps can create and update named bins, read quantities by bin, set on-hand inventory counts, and read purchase orders with line items and suppliers. The preview must be enabled on a development store.
Sidekick app extensions
Apps can expose searchable data and safe, scoped actions so merchants reach app value from inside Shopify’s assistant.
What changed
Declare the app’s capabilities with extensions_summary in shopify.app.toml, define focused tools in extension configuration, and return links into the right app workflow. Sidekick suggests; the merchant remains in control of changes.
Static app architecture
A focused app can use Shopify-hosted App Home, app configuration, and metaobjects without immediately adding a custom server, auth layer, or external database.
Where it fits
The workshop demonstrated the pattern with a small configuration experience. It is an architectural option for narrow use cases, with a path to external hosting when product requirements outgrow Shopify-hosted primitives.
Market-driven shipping
Merchant-owned shipping configuration is moving from legacy delivery profiles into Markets, where shipping options can vary by market, product, and location conditions.
Migration signal
Apps that read or write merchant shipping settings must validate their upgrade path. App-owned delivery profiles continue to use the DeliveryProfile API, while merchant configuration moves to Markets APIs.
Catalog API and UCP
Catalog, product data, checkout, and Shopify Functions were presented as one path for products to be discovered and purchased inside AI agents and chats.
Why it matters
The buyer journey can begin outside a traditional storefront while completed orders still land in Shopify Admin. Apps and storefronts need structured product data and functionality that survives this new entry point.
Composable collection sources
Collections can combine manual selections, typed conditions, sub-collections, variant targeting, exclusions, and shareable app-owned sources.
What changed
The old smart-versus-custom split becomes a union of sources. Apps can contribute reusable signals as first-class collection inputs, while developers adopting the new features must account for versioning and legacy API compatibility.
Extensions and commerce surfaces kept moving
POS UI Extensions, customer-account upgrades, complex discounts with Functions, B2B and Collective, Hydrogen deployment options, app pricing, security, and App Store requirements all featured in the wider program.
Availability note
This card summarizes several separate releases and sessions. Confirm each capability, API version, rollout, and requirement against its current Shopify documentation before implementation.
X / July 21–23
Media
wall.
Release explanations, session reactions, award energy, and Block Party footage from the event feed.
01
Official & Shopify leadership
The DotDev 2026 keynote
The builders recognized in 2026
Meet the 2026 Build Award winners
Harley’s fireside highlights with Tobi
02
Ecomm Cowboy live interviews
The room, the stage, and the event energy
The full Harley interview from DotDev
Agentic commerce after the keynote
Inside the Universal Commerce Protocol
Liquid, theme architecture, and AI
What is next for retail and POS
How Sidekick app extensions work
03
Attendees, partners & event energy
A field report from inside DotDev
A thank-you from Shopify Partnerships
Sidekick extensions with Jonathan Zazove
The extended Sidekick conversation
Partners singing at the end of DotDev
The crowd and venue in motion
Separating the fever dream from reality
The best week of the year
A full-scale festival beyond expectations
Receipts, not vibes
How this
was assembled.
01Official DotDev siteEvent structure, venue, schedule highlights
02Official lineupSessions, speakers, product-floor themes
03Theme developer previewLiquid templates, blocks, partials, compatibility, and setup
04Full-stack app analyticsMetafields, App Events, ShopifyQL, web components, annotations, and targets
05Enhanced EventsNew topics, metafield triggers, payload shape, and preview status
06Physical inventory previewBins, stateful counts, purchase orders, and unstable API access
07Sidekick app extensionsApp data, safe actions, tools, and extension summaries
08Market-driven shippingMarkets APIs, delivery-profile changes, and migration timeline
09Composable collectionsSources, selections, conditions, sub-collections, and app-owned signals
10Build Award winnersCategories, people, and recognized work
Unfortunately could not attend
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