What to Expect at Shoptalk 2026: Five Things Worth Watching

In three weeks, more than 10,000 people will converge on Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for Shoptalk Spring 2026, the retail industry's marquee conference. One in three attendees holds a C-suite title. The speaker list runs past 180 names. And the theme the organizers chose this year says everything about where the industry thinks it's headed: Retail in the Age of AI.

Shoptalk has always been the place where retail's biggest shifts get named and debated before they hit earnings calls. Last year's event was defined by conversations around retail media and the resurgence of physical stores. This year, AI has consumed the entire agenda — not as a side track, but as the connective tissue between every session, keynote, and hallway conversation.

Here's what Fin is watching, and why it matters if you're a merchant trying to make sense of where e-commerce goes next.

Source: Shoptalk Spring 2026 Official Agenda

1. The AI Agents Debate — Hype or Real?

The session that might generate the most heat is scheduled for the AI Stage: "Debate: AI Agents Will / Will Not Transform Retail." If you've been following our coverage of the AI Checkout Wars, you know the big tech companies are already building infrastructure for agents that browse, compare, and buy on behalf of consumers. But there's a growing camp of retail operators who think the timeline is overblown — that consumers aren't ready to hand over their purchasing decisions to a chatbot.

This debate matters because it gets at a real strategic fork. If agents take off quickly, merchants need to start optimizing for AI-readable product data now — not SEO for humans, but structured information that an agent can parse, compare, and act on. If agents stall, the focus stays on traditional conversion funnels and the fight for attention stays where it is.

Expect the OpenAI team in particular to push the bull case. They have speakers on the agenda and a lot riding on merchant adoption of ChatGPT's new shopping features.

2. Retail Media Grows Up

Retail media — the practice of brands paying to advertise on retailer-owned platforms — has been the hottest revenue stream in retail for two years running. But the conversation at Shoptalk 2026 is shifting. The question is no longer "should we launch a retail media network?" It's "how do we actually make it work?"

The Marketing & Media Stage has dedicated sessions including "Retail Media Innovation: Retailer+Brand Case Studies" and "Brands Unfiltered on Retail Media," which promise frank assessments from the brand side of the equation — the people actually spending the money.

What Fin is watching for: whether the discussion moves past impressions and ROAS and into more structural questions. Where does retail media sit organizationally? How does it connect to creative? And, critically, can smaller merchants participate in retail media ecosystems that were built for enterprise brands?

3. Physical and Digital Finally Merge

Unified commerce has been a buzzword for years, but it's showing up at Shoptalk 2026 as an operational reality rather than a vision statement. Sessions on the agenda cover "Physical and Digital in an Era of Unified Commerce" and strengthening omnichannel fulfillment for speed and cost reduction.

This is especially relevant because the speakers backing this theme come from companies that actually run stores at scale. Macy's Chief Stores Officer Barbie Cameron is on the agenda, as are senior leaders from Simon Property Group (one of the largest mall operators in the U.S.), Gap Inc., and Victoria's Secret.

The through-line: the store is no longer a separate channel. It's a fulfillment node, a media surface, a data collection point, and a brand experience — all at once. The merchants who figure out the tech stack that actually connects all of those will have a meaningful advantage.

Source: Shoptalk Spring 2026 Agenda; BusinessWire Speaker Announcement

4. AI-Powered Personalization Gets Specific

Every retail conference talks about personalization. What makes this year different is the how. The AI Stage features a track keynote called "Using AI to Amp Up Personalization" alongside sessions on leveraging AI for product detail pages (PDPs) and using customer data for merchandising.

What Fin expects to hear: less "we used AI to recommend products" and more "we used AI to rewrite 50,000 product descriptions dynamically" or "we used AI to change the homepage experience per cohort in real-time." The shift is from AI as a recommendation engine to AI as the merchandising team — reshaping what customers see, when they see it, and how it's presented.

Ekta Chopra, CDO of e.l.f. Beauty, is one of the speakers to watch here. e.l.f. has been one of the most aggressive beauty brands on digital transformation, and their approach to AI-driven personalization has been noted across the industry.

5. Brand Building in an AI-First World

Amid all the technical sessions, Shoptalk 2026 is dedicating significant stage time to something more human: emotional connections, community, and loyalty. Sessions cover cultivating community, fostering loyalty, and building brands that survive the shift to algorithmic discovery.

This might be the sleeper theme of the whole conference. As AI agents begin to mediate more purchasing decisions, brand affinity — the kind that makes a customer ask for your product by name even when an AI suggests an alternative — becomes the most valuable asset a merchant can hold.

New Balance has a featured keynote on long-term brand building ("Built for the Long Run: How New Balance Sets a Global Pace"), while speakers from Reddit, Dutch Bros, and Reformation will likely speak to community-driven growth — a strategy that doesn't get disrupted when a chatbot enters the checkout flow.

Who's Speaking

The speaker roster reads like a cross-section of the industry's biggest strategic bets. Beyond the names mentioned above, confirmed speakers include senior executives from Wayfair, Meta, Walmart, Brooklinen, Crocs, Michaels, SHEIN, and KHAITE — from fast fashion to luxury, DTC to marketplace.

The breadth of the speaker list reflects where Shoptalk sees itself: not just a tech conference, but the place where retail strategy gets set for the year. And with AI as the through-line, the strategic questions cut across every category and business model.

Source: BusinessWire — Shoptalk Initial Speaker Announcement, Feb 4 2026

What to Watch After the Event

Fin will be covering the biggest announcements and takeaways from Shoptalk 2026 after the event wraps on March 26. If something lands that changes the game for merchants — a new platform feature, a surprising partnership, or a strategic shift from one of the majors — you'll see it here first.