so changes on this new sources field collectionCreate - GraphQL Admin will trigger the update webhook? Also this change deserves a better documentation. Especially “action required” section.
The admin UI launch is the key moment to watch: that’s when merchants can start creating multisource collections in Admin, and those won’t be compatible with the old API versions. We will be doing a gradual rollout.
To help with the migration, we’re working on a migration guide - if there are workflows or use cases you’d want covered, please share them here. We’ll also be opening up office hours to work through specific cases.
@Liam-Shopify I wonder why changes related to collections are constantly going unplanned. I’ve been here for more than five years, and this is a common pattern I’ve noticed: changes are made without notifying developers, and there’s no changelog at all. Please check this thread as well. Most-relevant sort order
So what is the point of having a changelog? Recent changes to Shopify’s platform
You don’t even care to document the changes you make in the developer changelog. Do you plan to add such an important change to the changelog? It’s frustrating, and for the first time, I feel like it might be time to leave this place. You’ve stopped following practices that you followed for years.
Please put yourself in our shoes and try to plan this from our perspective.
Diana wants us to move to 2026-07, even though it has not been released yet. If we decide to wait until it is released, Diana cannot give us any timeline for the rollout.
So how are we supposed to plan this properly?
To help with the migration, we’re working on a migration guide - if there are workflows or use cases you’d want covered, please share them here. We’ll also be opening up office hours to work through specific cases.
would be good to have a better connection with the Shopify team. Also better planning as it’s been my number one struggle when developing for Shopify. When we decide to develop a new feature we take a few factors into account such as:
- how many users will it help?
- how much development work is involved?
- etc..
and one of them is “will Shopify add features to make this easier to implement or native to the user?”, in other term, “will we waste our time time finding workaround because Shopify will do it in 2-6 months”, which is the most important one, but also the only one variable we have no control on and on which Shopify is less and less happy to provide.
The admin UI launch is the key moment to watch: that’s when merchants can start creating multisource collections in Admin
Does that mean that at release time there will be no updates in the admin UI, but we already have access to the API? What if an app create a multi source despite it’s not in the UI, it will already break other apps using the same collection despite not being in the UI.
Also could we have a rough schedule of the planed UI updates?
By the way I’m also sharing @Merchbees feelings on this. I started working on Shopify over 1 year ago - mentored by someone who has been working with Shopify for over a decade. He told me a lot of goods about Shopify, but since I started everything has slowly degraded and if I had to start again today I wouldn’t decide to work with Shopify.
You do not have to move to 2026-07 immediately. The last 4 versions of APIs are supported.
You already have access to the API (ahead of Admin and merchants). If an app creates a multisource collection, it will not break any other apps. As I mentioned, they will be filtered out on older API versions. New collection types will also be visible to merchants in their Admin but not editable.
Happy to chat through more details or walk through the flows during office hours.
The (multisource) collections created after rollout (in a few weeks) won’t be seen in older API versions.
The admin UI launch is the key moment to watch: that’s when merchants can start creating multisource collections in Admin, and those won’t be compatible with the old API versions
Unfortunately, changes related to Collections have been handled this way for a while.
In April, they created a new sort order MOST_RELEVANT, made it the default, and rolled it out to merchants without informing anyone. There was no changelog or communication at all. Now, the necessary changes are coming in 2026-07. Added MOST_RELEVANT value for CollectionSortOrder - Shopify developer changelog
I also remember many cases where they changed the core algorithms for Collections without proper communication.
This rollout feels like it’s breaking Shopify’s own API release schedule and best practices.
Shouldn’t this have been added to unstable first? Why is Shopify still iterating on a release candidate that is set to go GA in two weeks?
Also, can we PLEASE get back some formal release notes documentation for each API version? We’re told to rely on the changelog, yet these changes aren’t even documented there yet…
The issue is when you are deeply integrated with collection, it’s still unclear how it will work and interoperate between old and new ones.
From all updates I have been involved with it’s the biggest breaking change. It’s not a new entity, it’s not a new value in an enum, it’s not a new field. It’s a fundamental change in how an existing entity (collections) works.
It’s not something small, yet we have extremely short notice. That’s my biggest complaint about this release: the short notice and no way to see it coming ahead of time.
So if an app create a collection with multiple sources via the new api. If another app adds product manually to this collection via the old API, what will happen? Will it be arbitrary added to one of the sources?
Another one:
If an app is dealing with smart collection conditions using the old API, what if it fetches a multi source collection that was created with the new API? Will all the filters from both sources get merged into one?
Then, what if they add a smart-collection filter via the old API to the new multi source collection that has multiple sources, where will the new filter get added? Will it get added to one of the sources randomly?
Given that the new collection source system has more features than the old smart collection’s ones I’m not sure how it will be possible for the old API to keep working. For example when a collection has one source using “ANY” and another source using “ALL”, how will that work in the old API?
It’s likely that any app that is deeply integrating with collections (not just get/add/sort products) will have to upgrade to 2026-07 to keep working on day one.
Very few people on this thread so I suspected that many app developers haven’t even noticed this and apps will silently start breaking.
@Soufiane_Ghzal and @Merchbees - I see you both booked office hours and we can walk through those flows or your feedback in details.
Also, fixed a visibility issue with the changelog on our side. @Kyle_W thanks for flagging.
@diana_cheptene Thank you for opening the office hours and answering the questions. It helped a lot to be able to ask everything directly.
The most important outcome from the discussion: The API will keep working as usually for existing collections and collections that don’t use the new features. But apps using the old API may not have access to all of the information if a collection is using some of the new features. Also the new multi source system will make things easier for apps to publish products to a collection without conflicting with other apps (for example an ads-related app can publish all products that are part of a campaign in its own source that the merchant can reuse in multiple collections). However it might create complexity for apps that work at a deeper level with the collections.
@Liam-Shopify fyi - as an app developer that was something very useful, I hope Shopify will keep going in this direction in order to have a good collaboration between partners and Shopify.
@diana_cheptene There is a question I forgot to ask. It’s about limits.
- Will there be a limit in the number of sources that an app can create per store?
- Will there be a limit in the number of sources that a collection can have?
- Will it be possible to have collection sources that don’t belong to any collection (i.e. for archiving them and reusing later)?
Is the Shopify collection admin going to change too? Do you have a timeline?
Also, I would like to see how the variant-specific collection looks using liquid. My app outputs the products in a collection on a page with liquid. Is there any related change to liquid?
@diana_cheptene another question: one of the new features makes it possible to add variants to a collection. Is there a way to find all variants that are in a collection?
With the collection query we can fetch products that are in a collection: collection - GraphQL Admin see products ProductConnection! non-null
But I don’t see anything for variants?
These are simple questions but we’re not getting any feedback in this thread, I would like to avoid booking another office hour for such simple questions, but I’m booking one as we’d like to have answers quickly.
Thanks
Hi Benny, we are redesigning the new Collections admin as well. Rollout will start in the next few weeks.
No liquid changes, but like I mentioned in a thread above: a variants collection only surfaces the included variants with their respective swatches, price ranges, and filters scoped to those variants.
Our feedback and questions @diana_cheptene @Liam-Shopify
Collections can change and never show as updated
Product changes update the last updated timestamp for the collections they are in, variant level changes don’t. On checking, this hasn’t changed with 2026-07.
So, for a collection targeting specific variants, if those variants were to later change (and the collection adds/removes products), the last updated timestamp never changes (and no webhook is triggered). We poll recent collection changes based on that last updated timestamp, so there’s no way of knowing when products are added/removed for those collection.
Other questions on the last updated timestamp
- Does updating a source a collection uses update this last updated timestamp?
- How about updating the products in a subcollection’s source collection, do the subcollections have an updated timestamp?
Query which variants are included
It’s been asked above, using the API how are we to know which variants are and are not surfaced in a variant source collection?
This one is super important for us. We adjust collection sort order based on the product data, if that data is to change based on what variants are/are not surfaced for a collection, then we’ll need to know those variants. With this update, a product could be OOS in one collection but not another?
We bulk query and DB store all products in collections and use that data in app (which already is extremely extensive). Will we need to bulk query and store every surfaced variant ID of all products in collections (a single collection of just 1,000 products could be 2 million variant IDs to query and store).
Variant specific collections are not yet available on the storefront, correct? As we can still see filters for all variants on display for a variant specific collection when testing.
collectionRemoveProducts replacement
In our app, we offer a way to remove products from collections.
- Is the expected way to remove products from a collection now to create a new source with a list of product IDs to exclude?
- Do exclusions take precedence over inclusions?
- Instead of creating new sources, should we be finding an already existing productID selection exclusion source and updating it? Otherwise, I’d expect a messy huge list of sources, each with a list of IDs
- Can an exclusion/inclusion source created by an app be edited by a different app/the admin? If not, how do we add/remove products from that collection when another app is determining what is/isn’t in there?
- For older API versions, when this change is live, does collectionRemoveProducts work/fail for collections built prior and post this change?
Misc
- When testing, we have instances where a collection has multiple sources of manually selected productIDs. However, products are not being added to the collection (other than the first source). Possible bug?
- There are some known outstanding issues with collections (e.g. productCount being incorrect intermittently, long running collectionReorderJobs). Does this update include any other bug fixes not documented?
Also just wanted to reiterate the above concern of the timeline for this. A couple of weeks to support this is pretty challenging, especially as some questions remain. I remember the variant increase change being much longer with what felt like more support.
We’re also booking an office hours to hopefully get answers on these qu’s.
Hi @BeefyNachos I had a chance to exchange with Diana earlier. For variants - I mentioned the absence of a collection.variants or a collection.hasVariant (we do have them for products, see collection - GraphQL Admin).
However later I found that the ProductVariant has a query.collection which I haven’t tested but seems to workaround the absence of a collection.variants connection.
Variant can belong to a collection via the connection source. A connection source is either for products, or for variants, and a collection can have multiple sources which means a collection can simultaneously have variants and products attached to it if you use two sources (one for the products and one for the variants). Variant will show on theme as if they were regular products, just scoped to only the matching variant, so it seems that no themes changes is required. I havent tested them yet, but I understand that they will be available on the storefront.
I hope it answers your questions about variants