Shopify releases API version 2026-10 on October 1, 2026, and version 2025-10 stops being accessible on October 16. What falling forward means for custom apps and integrations, what changes in 2026-10, and a check to finish before your holiday code freeze.
Shopify releases a new version of its APIs every three months, at 5pm UTC on the first day of each quarter. The next one, 2026-10, becomes stable on October 1, 2026. A fortnight later, at 15:00 UTC on October 16, version 2025-10 stops being accessible. If any app or integration on your store still asks for 2025-10, or for anything older, Shopify will answer it with a newer version instead.
For most stores this happens without anyone noticing. For stores that run a custom app, a private integration with an ERP, warehouse or accounting system, or a headless storefront, it is worth checking now, because the change lands six weeks before Black Friday.
How Shopify API versions work
Every stable version is supported for at least twelve months, with at least nine months of overlap between consecutive versions. Apps name the version they want in every request. When a version is retired, Shopify does not reject requests that ask for it. It falls forward, and serves them with the oldest version that is still accessible.
- 2025-10: accessible until October 16, 2026, at 15:00 UTC.
- 2026-01: accessible until January 16, 2027.
- 2026-04: accessible until April 16, 2027.
- 2026-07: the latest stable version until October 1, accessible until July 16, 2027.
- 2026-10: stable from October 1, 2026, and accessible until October 16, 2027.
So from October 16, a request for 2025-10, or for any version already retired, is served as 2026-01. Webhooks follow the same rule: their payloads are versioned too, and fall forward in the same way.
Why falling forward can still break things
Falling forward keeps the lights on, but the app receives answers shaped by a version it was not written for. Anything that changed between the version it asks for and 2026-01 applies to it at once, without anyone having tested it. Shopify's notes for 2026-01 flag changes that need code updates around bulk operations, tax handling, payment customisations and cart discount behaviour.
Bulk operations show how quiet these changes can be. Bulk queries now return their results without grouping related objects together by default, which matters to any integration that exports products or orders in bulk and expects each record's children to arrive alongside it. Nothing errors. The file simply comes back in a different shape.
None of this is dramatic on its own. The risk is that nobody notices a stock sync or an order export behaving slightly differently until the week it matters most.
What changes in 2026-10
Shopify describes 2026-10 as focused on order, metafield, customer account, tax, analytics and Storefront API changes. The items it marks as needing action, or that change behaviour an integration may rely on, include these.
- Orders: changing the shipping address on an unfulfilled order through the API now recalculates its taxes for the new destination. An order that was already paid can be left with a balance to collect or refund, so integrations should read back the updated taxes and totals.
- Discounts: the legacy PriceRule object is removed from the public schema, along with a draft order warning field that referred to it. Integrations still built on price rules need to move to Shopify's current discount APIs.
- Fulfilment status: orders with nothing left to fulfil can now report that fulfilment is not required, instead of showing as unfulfilled.
- Metafield filters: a query that filters by a metafield that cannot be filtered now returns an error, instead of the filter being silently ignored.
- Shipping: creating a carrier service now registers only the service, and no longer adds its rates to the General shipping profile, so rates have to be set up in a shipping profile to appear at checkout.
- Customer Account API: the field for a customer's last incomplete checkout is removed, with no replacement.
- Tax apps: tax calculation requests and tax summary webhooks now identify records with Shopify's global IDs.
Most stores touch only a few of these, and a developer can tell you in an hour which ones affect your integrations. Shopify's release notes on its developer site list each change in full.
A two-week check before your code freeze
- 1List every custom app and integration connected to your store: apps you commissioned, apps created in your own admin, and services that sync with your store, such as an ERP, warehouse or accounting system.
- 2Ask whoever maintains each one which API version it calls, including the version set for its webhooks.
- 3If the answer is 2025-10 or older, ask them to move it to the latest stable version and test it on a development store before October 16.
- 4Have them confirm the version from Shopify's own responses. Every API response carries a header naming the version that actually served it, and a mismatch means the app is out of date.
- 5Put the next check in your calendar. Shopify releases a version every quarter and each lasts about a year, so a regular habit keeps you ahead of the retirements.
Where this sits in the holiday calendar
October 16 is six weeks before Black Friday, which falls on November 27 this year. That leaves time to upgrade and test, but not much room if a problem is found late. We would treat it as part of the same October clean-up as the script tag change arriving on October 1.
Our own app, SellRank, calls version 2026-04, which Shopify keeps accessible until April 16, 2027. Keeping an app on a supported version is routine maintenance for a product team, and it is the same work we do on the custom apps we build and look after for stores.
