Shopify checkout upgrade 2026: what happened to Thank you and Order status pages, and what to do now

If you run a Shopify store, you have probably seen the notice: “Your Thank you and Order status pages must be upgraded.” That upgrade is no longer something to plan. The deadline for Shopify Plus stores was August 28, 2025, and for all other plans it was August 26, 2026. Shopify’s Help Center confirms that stores that weren’t upgraded by that date were upgraded automatically.

For many merchants, the automatic upgrade went unnoticed. For others, purchase tracking on the Thank you page stopped, a post-purchase survey disappeared or a custom message was gone. The cause is the same every time: checkout.liquid, Additional Scripts and script tags don’t run on the new pages.

This guide explains what changed, what the automatic upgrade means for your store, and what to do now to get tracking and customizations working again with checkout and Thank you page extensions, blocks and pixels. It covers both Plus and non-Plus stores.

Shopify checkout upgrade timeline: what happened when

The move away from checkout.liquid happened in stages. These are the dates that matter, based on Shopify’s own documentation:

The last two dates concern your online store rather than checkout, but they come from the same shift: Shopify is replacing loose scripts with extensions and pixels across the platform.

What the automatic upgrade means for your store

When your Thank you and Order status pages are upgraded, the old pages and every customization on them are replaced by the new versions. In practice:

• Additional Scripts no longer run. That includes tracking snippets for Google Ads, Meta or affiliate networks, and any HTML or JavaScript you used to show extra content. Once the pages are upgraded, you can’t switch those scripts back on.

• checkout.liquid customizations are gone. Layout changes, custom CSS and JavaScript from that file are not loaded on the new pages.

• Apps that relied on script tags stop working on these pages, unless the developer has released a version with blocks, UI extensions or web pixels.

• Branding comes from the checkout and accounts editor, not from your old code. If you never set your logo, colors and fonts there, the pages look close to Shopify’s default.

Two details are easy to miss. The Thank you page shows a confirmation number instead of an order number, and customizations per market aren’t supported on the Thank you and Order status pages. If an integration matched on order numbers, or you showed different content per country, check those first.

Why Shopify changed the checkout

Shopify’s move from checkout.liquid to extensions responds to what merchants, customers and payment regulations require. These are the main reasons.

1. Security and compliance

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) v4 sets stricter requirements for scripts on payment pages. Raw JavaScript injected through checkout.liquid and Additional Scripts made those requirements hard to meet and opened the door to malicious code. Pixels and blocks run in a controlled environment instead, so a customization can’t read or change what it shouldn’t.

2. Performance and speed

Every second counts in checkout. Custom scripts and workarounds often slowed checkout.liquid down or introduced bugs. The new checkout is maintained by Shopify, and features like one-page checkout are designed to reduce friction.

3. Less maintenance for merchants

With checkout.liquid, you had to keep every customization working after each Shopify update. Now Shopify handles updates, bug fixes and security patches for the checkout itself. Your customizations sit on top as blocks, extensions and pixels; Shopify describes this foundation as upgrade-safe.

4. More ways to customize

Checkout extensions, web pixels and Shopify Functions let you customize checkout in ways checkout.liquid couldn’t do reliably. For example:

• Checkout branding: logo, colors, fonts and background, set in the checkout and accounts editor.

• Checkout extensions: trust badges, upsells, surveys or FAQ content at specific points in checkout and on the Thank you page.

• Custom logic: Shopify Functions to change discounts, payment options and delivery options.

5. A base for what comes next

Because customizations no longer depend on how the checkout is built underneath, Shopify can keep changing checkout without breaking stores. The same approach is now being applied to script tags on the storefront.

Key changes: from checkout.liquid to Shopify Extensions in Checkout

Shopify used to call the new model Checkout Extensibility. Its developer documentation now calls it Shopify Extensions in Checkout, and in your admin you work in the checkout and accounts editor. The principles are the same:

• No raw JavaScript: you can no longer inject your own scripts into checkout, the Thank you page or the Order status page.

• Pixels for tracking: customer events such as checkout_started and checkout_completed are captured by app pixels or custom pixels, which you manage under Settings > Customer events.

• Blocks for content: apps add content to checkout and the post-purchase pages through blocks that you place in the editor.

What’s available on which plan

Shopify’s Help Center lists which types of checkout apps work on which plan:

Plus stores also get access to the Checkout Branding API for more detailed styling.

What to do now: step by step

Whether your store was upgraded automatically or you still see an upgrade notice, the work is the same: find out what you had, rebuild what you still need, and test it.

Step 1: Check which version you’re on

Go to Settings > Checkout and look at the Configurations section. If a notice to upgrade your Thank you and Order status pages is still there, you’re on the old versions: click Review in the notice to open your personalized upgrade guide. If there’s no notice, your pages have been upgraded, by you or by Shopify.

Step 2: List what you used to run

You can’t rebuild what you don’t know you had. Collect:

• Your old Additional Scripts. This field has been view-only since August 28, 2025. If it’s still visible in your checkout settings, copy the contents as a reference.

• The upgrade guide, if your store still shows one. It sorts your scripts by purpose, such as tracking and analytics or page customizations, and suggests compatible apps.

• The conversion tags in your ad platforms and your Google Tag Manager container: which of them fired on the Thank you page?

• Apps that added content to the Thank you or Order status page.

Step 3: Rebuild tracking with pixels

The Thank you page supports app pixels and custom pixels, not scripts. Shopify recommends app pixels, because the app developer keeps them up to date.

1. For Google Analytics and Google Ads, install the Google & YouTube app and set up its pixels. Shopify recommends this over a custom Google Tag Manager setup.

2. For other platforms, look for an app with an app pixel in the Shopify App Store.

3. Use a custom pixel only if no app does what you need. If you run Google Tag Manager through a custom pixel, check that the code subscribes to the checkout_completed event, or purchases on the new Thank you page won’t be tracked.

4. Test with the Shopify Pixel Helper and confirm that events arrive in the ad or analytics platform itself. Google Tag Assistant doesn’t work with custom pixels.

5. If your store hasn’t been upgraded yet, deactivate each Additional Script as soon as its pixel works, so conversions aren’t counted twice.

Technical note: the subtotal in pixel events

Since April 30, 2025, the value event.data.checkout.subtotalPrice.amount on the new Thank you page and in checkout events includes both product-level and order-level discounts. Before that, it only included product-level discounts. Shopify’s changelog lists the affected events:

• checkout_completed (on the new Thank you page)

• checkout_started

• checkout_address_info_submitted

• checkout_shipping_info_submitted

• checkout_contact_info_submitted

• payment_info_submitted

If you report revenue based on this field, make sure your setup expects both types of discount.

Step 4: Rebuild page content with blocks and extensions

For content on the Thank you and Order status pages, Shopify lists three routes. Work through them in this order:

• Built-in features. The Order status page has a Buy again button and self-serve returns, and your store policies show up as footer links automatically.

• Apps with blocks. Look for apps that offer blocks for these pages, or use Shopify’s free Checkout Blocks app to add text, links or images to the header and footer of the Thank you page.

• Custom apps. Developers can build checkout UI extensions for the Thank you page and customer account UI extensions for the Order status page: a post-purchase survey, a review request, download links for digital products or an upsell through order editing.

The Order status page is now a customer account page. With the new customer accounts, customers can sign in there to see their order details and move on to other account pages.

Step 5: Check your branding

Open the checkout and accounts editor and set your logo, colors, fonts and background. These settings apply to checkout, the Thank you page and the Order status page, and some of them carry over to your customer account pages. On Shopify Plus, your developer can go further with the Checkout Branding API.

Step 6: Clean up incompatible apps

Apps that haven’t been updated show up in the upgrade guide as apps that require an update from the developer. Contact the developer or replace the app. If you install an app that still relies on script tags for the Order status page, Shopify shows a warning banner during installation.

Extra for Plus stores

On Shopify Plus you can also customize the Information, Shipping and Payment steps with UI extensions, and run custom apps built with Shopify Functions, for example for your own discount, payment or delivery rules. If you replaced checkout.liquid logic with a quick fix during the 2024 and 2025 deadlines, now is a good moment to rebuild it properly.

Tracking checklist after the upgrade

• Place a test order and check that the purchase shows up in Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta and any other platform you advertise on.

• Compare conversions per channel before and after your upgrade date. A sudden drop around August 28, 2025 (Plus) or August 26, 2026 (other plans) usually means a script was never moved to a pixel.

• Look for doubled conversions if scripts and pixels ran side by side for a while.

• Check order values against Shopify, keeping the subtotal change from April 2025 in mind.

• Check that your cookie consent setup still applies to every pixel you added.

What’s next: script tags on the storefront

The same change is now reaching your online store. According to Shopify, apps can no longer create or update storefront script tags from October 1, 2026, and Shopify stops loading them on March 1, 2027. Apps have to move to theme app extensions or web pixels. If your theme or apps still depend on script tags, ask your developers and app vendors about their plans now, so the Thank you page scramble doesn’t repeat itself on your storefront.

Conclusion and next steps

The Shopify checkout upgrade is done, whether you did it yourself or Shopify did it for you. What’s left is making sure nothing important was lost: tracking that records every purchase, Thank you page content that helps your customer, and branding that matches your store.

1. Check your version under Settings > Checkout.

2. Rebuild tracking with app pixels or a custom pixel, and test it.

3. Recreate the content you still need with blocks or extensions.

4. Get help where you need it. A Shopify Platinum Partner can audit your checkout and tracking in a few days.

Checkout and tracking audits are among the most common projects our Shopify agency runs for merchants after this upgrade.

Flatline Agency is a Shopify Platinum Partner based in Amsterdam. Get in touch if you want us to check what your store lost in the upgrade and rebuild it properly.