I would like to ask whether anyone else has had the same experience.
We have been using the option to customize our theme content separately for different markets for a long time. In the theme editor, it used to be possible to switch between Store default and specific markets, such as North America, and customize the theme differently for each market.
Now this market switcher has completely disappeared from the theme editor.
At the same time, in Markets I can still see that there are existing customizations for some markets. When I try to access them, I get a permissions error. I also found that according to the current Shopify documentation, customize themes for each market is available only on Advanced and Plus, while on Basic all markets are supposed to share the same theme customization.
Honestly, this feels like a very problematic change because:
we used this feature
for years in normal store operations
existing
market customizations
are still visible in the system
but managing them is suddenly no longer available
Shopify is making it much harder to manage localized storefront content
For example, I need to have different shipping information content for different markets, or show certain elements only in a specific market such as the USA. If this is now locked behind a higher plan, I find that very frustrating.
Can anyone confirm:
whether this feature used to be available on a lower plan?
when exactly this changed?
whether there is any reasonable workaround without upgrading to
Advanced
?
and what happens to previously created market-specific customizations?
I would appreciate any factual experience from other merchants.
Your reading of the docs matches what I have seen. The part that moved up a plan is the market switcher inside the theme editor, not markets themselves.
Before you change anything, one thing is worth checking. Open your live store with the country selector set to North America and see whether the old market specific content still renders. If it does, you are locked out of editing it while customers still see it, which is a very different situation from it having quietly fallen back to store default. Those two need different responses and the theme editor will not tell you which one you have.
For going forward on Basic, the gate is on the editor, not on Liquid. The localization object gives you the current market in any theme, with handle, id and metafields on it. Liquid objects: market
So a block you used to swap in the editor becomes something like
and it runs on your current plan because it is theme code rather than a gated editor feature. To keep it editable by whoever writes your copy, add two schema settings for the same block, one per market, and let the condition pick which one renders. They both stay clickable in the theme editor.
The honest downside is that it is now duplicated markup and someone has to remember it exists. How many markets are you actually customising? Two or three is a small bit of Liquid. If it is closer to ten I would spend the energy on getting Shopify to explain the change instead, since your customisations predate the gate.
@lumine Even when I click on the country/market switcher in the theme editor, it tells me that I don’t have permission to make any changes there.
I have to say, Shopify has really annoyed me with this change. It also occurred to me that this could probably be handled with code, as you described, but that makes something that used to be very straightforward considerably more complicated.
I’d actually like to put some effort into finding out why Shopify made this change as well, because to me this feels like quite a fundamental, basic feature of Markets rather than something that should suddenly require a higher plan, especially when we were already using it before the restriction was introduced.
Do you know what the best way would be to contact Shopify about this and get a proper explanation? And is there perhaps any way to get around this restriction while staying on Basic, but without using custom code or an app?
Market-specific theme edits are gated to Advanced and Plus plans. All markets and submarkets on Basic now share the same theme customizations in the editor. There might be a grandfather clause for those who are still seeing it, but it’s not in the docs.
As of February 2, 2026, the linked Shopify Support article contained the following grandfathering clause. The clause has since been removed from the article.
Merchants who qualified for grandfathered access should continue to have access to the per-market theme customizer. However, according to Shopify Support, this access is permanently removed if the merchant changes their Starter, Basic, or Grow plan.
Existing Shopify merchants that had any active product publishing, pricing, or theme customizations per market on April 25, 2025 will retain access to the catalog and theme customization capabilities.
Yes — what you’re seeing matches Shopify’s current plan gate: per-market theme-editor customization now requires Advanced or Plus; on Basic, markets share one theme customization. Shopify’s public docs don’t give a change date, so I wouldn’t guess when it changed.
For your examples, separate layout from content:
If you only need different wording or images by market (for example, US-specific shipping information), Translate & Adapt can create custom content for a market, including markets that share the same language.
If you need different section visibility, order, or layout per market inside the theme editor, that remains an Advanced-or-higher feature.
Before changing the plan or theme, duplicate the published theme and document the existing overrides. I would also ask Support in writing whether upgrading restores the saved overrides that are still visible in Markets.
On Basic, the lowest-risk workaround is to keep the shipping message in one localizable content resource (such as a page, metafield, or theme text) and adapt that content per market. If you need to show or hide an entire theme block, that may need a small theme-logic change rather than recreating every market override.
Which specific element is blocked — only the shipping text, or a whole section/block? That determines whether Translate & Adapt is enough.
@Lenkajbc One thing I’d verify is whether the market-specific content that was already configured is still what customers actually receive, even though the editing controls have changed.
If you share one product URL plus the affected country, I can run that customer-market path through Drishq MarketCheck and report the observed storefront result with evidence.
unfortunatelly
It also occurred to me that this could probably be handled with code, as you described, but that makes something that used to be very straightforward considerably more complicated.