Diamond takes
$500M of GMV
and only 25 shops.

Shopify published its new partner tiers on November 4, 2026, and they take effect on January 1. Select, Premier and Plus are retired. In their place are Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond, and every tier now needs two numbers at once: attributed GMV and attributed shops (Shopify Partners blog, November 2026).

Earlier this year, in my long read on the Shopify Partner Program in 2026, I told partners to assume the tiers would change again. The current model dates to January 2025, so this is the second tier system in two years. I helped build and scale the Partner Program as an early Shopify employee, and I still read every change to it closely. This one is worth running through the math.

What are the new
Shopify partner tiers?

As of January 1, 2027, there are four tiers above Registered, and each one needs an attributed GMV target and an attributed shop count, whatever plan those merchants are on. Silver is measured over the last 365 days. Gold, Platinum and Diamond are measured over four years.

The dates matter if you want to check anything before it locks in. Your projected tier and progress have been in Dev Dashboard since November 4, under Organization settings > Partner program. The refreshed Partner Directory relaunches on November 9 with current tiers. On January 1 the new requirements apply, every partner moves to the tier it qualifies for, and promotions start running daily.

What does each tier
ask of a single client?

Divide each tier's GMV floor by its shop floor and you get the average GMV each client has to carry if you have exactly the minimum number of shops. On Shopify's November 2026 requirements, that is $1M per client at Gold, $2.5M at Platinum and $20M at Diamond, over four years.

More shops lower the average, but the GMV floor still has to be met. From Gold to Platinum both numbers rise together: 10x the GMV and 4x the shops. From Platinum to Diamond, GMV rises 10x again while shops go from 20 to 25. An agency with 200 small stores can sit at Platinum indefinitely. Diamond takes a book of clients each doing millions a year.

That is a deliberate design choice, and I think it is the right one. Shop count alone rewards launch volume. GMV alone lets one giant client carry an agency. Asking for both, with the GMV bar rising far faster than the shop bar, ranks partners by the size of the merchants they keep.

Which shops count
toward your tier?

Shopify's rule is one line: if a shop earns you revenue share, it counts toward your tier. The four-year window for Gold and up matches the partner earning model that took effect on August 10, 2026, which pays 20% of the subscription fee and 0.1% of eligible online GMV for four years on new merchants (Shopify Partners blog, July 2026).

So the shops that pay you revenue share now also set your rank. That has a practical edge for agencies. If you do ongoing work for a merchant that another partner brought to Shopify, check whether that shop shows up in your Dev Dashboard count before you plan around it. Shopify's post does not cover that case directly.

Silver is easy.
Gold is where the
badge means something.

Silver takes one shop and $25K of GMV in a year, and from January 1 the Partner Directory lists partners from Silver up, with a tier badge. Most agencies doing any client work will qualify, so a Silver badge tells a merchant very little on its own.

Gold is the first tier with co-marketing funds, and the funds grow at each tier above it. Partner management scales the same way: advisory support from Silver, strategic from Platinum, embedded at Diamond. If you are trying to stand out in the directory, the useful target is Gold, and the per-client math in Fig. 02 tells you how many $1M-plus clients that takes. For what partners actually earn at each level, see Shopify partner earnings in 2026.

What should partners
check before January 1?

Start with Dev Dashboard. Your projected tier is there now, two months before it applies, which is the window to find a missing shop or a client you assumed would count. Two questions are worth raising with Shopify while you can: whether the four-year window is rolling, and how shops that another partner referred are treated. Shopify's post answers neither.

Two smaller changes help with planning. Promotions now happen daily instead of quarterly, so there is no reason to time launches around a quarter-end. And once you earn a tier, you keep it for at least six months, with room to move up during that time.

My one complaint is the cadence. In that same 2026 piece I argued that the most useful thing Shopify could do for partners is hold the tier criteria still for two years. This design is better than the last one, and the next eighteen months will show whether it gets the time to prove it.

I'd also push on the six-month hold. Shopify wants bigger merchants, and the partners who serve them work on long cycles. Selling a large brand on Shopify can take several quarters. Then comes the transition and migration plan, then the build itself. Partners doing that work are usually selective about how many clients they take on at once, so their numbers arrive in lumps. That's why I'd like to see an earned tier held for two years, or eligibility averaged across the trailing (or projected) 36 months.

Shopify should put itself in a position where its own success is tied to the success of its merchants and partners. This ecosystem thrives when the structure is mutually beneficial and everyone in it can support one another.

Common questions
about the new tiers.

If you run an agency or build apps on Shopify and want a second read on how your client mix lines up against these tiers, the Shopify app and partner advisory page explains how I work. The form takes two minutes: start the conversation.

Free tools: Model the app side with the app revenue share calculator, or price a Plus move with the Shopify Plus cost calculator.