Shopify Rollouts: Schedule a Sale Banner, Theme, and Discounts

Shopify can switch on a sale banner, a sale theme, and the sale discounts at a set date and time, then switch them all off when the sale ends. Nobody has to be at a keyboard at midnight. The feature is called Rollouts, and it is in your Shopify admin under Markets > Rollouts. For a sale, create a rollout of the type Event: it publishes your changes at the start time and rolls them back at the end time.

Rollouts need no app and no code. The details below were checked against Shopify's Help Center and changelog on October 6, 2026.

What your plan includes

The Eligibility field in a rollout lists the markets it reaches and cannot be edited there. The markets come from the changes you add.

Theme changes in a rollout apply to your online store only. Vintage themes, built before Online Store 2.0, cannot use them.

Rollouts changed twice in the last few weeks. Shopify redesigned the setup screen on September 22, 2026, and added discounts on October 2, 2026. A tutorial written before those dates shows a different screen and leaves discounts out.

Launch, Event, or Experiment

The type decides what happens to your changes when the rollout ends. Choose it first, because one of the three cannot be reversed.

The type follows your settings. If you select Launch and then add an end date, Shopify changes the rollout to an Event. Read the type again before you save.

Example: a sale banner and discount that run themselves

Say your Black Friday sale runs from Friday at midnight to Monday at midnight. You want a homepage banner and a sitewide discount to start and stop together.

1. Create the discount first under Discounts, as you normally would. A rollout switches existing discounts on and off.
2. Go to Markets > Rollouts and click Create rollout.
3. Name it so you can find it later. Campaign, market, and year work well: Black Friday US 2026.
4. Select Event in the menu next to the name.
5. In the Scheduling section, set the start and end date and time. An Event cannot be saved without both. Under the dates, Shopify confirms what will happen: "Changes are temporarily shown to customers, then rolled back."
6. Click Save. Shopify requires a saved rollout before it opens the theme editor for it.
7. In the Changes section, click Add changes. Under Online store, click Edit theme. Add or change the banner in the theme editor and save. The edit is stored in the rollout, and your live storefront stays as it is.
8. Click Add changes again and choose Discounts. Each discount is listed with its status and dates. Select your sale discount, leave the menu beside it on Set to active, and click Apply.
9. In the Audience section, leave Traffic allocation at All eligible visitors, then save.

Each discount shows its own status and dates. This one is scheduled for 2027, so only the rollout switches it on.

The finished Event: one discount change, one theme change, and a start and end time.

The rollout now shows as Scheduled. It becomes Active at the start time and Ended at the end time. You can keep editing it while it is scheduled.

Three details decide whether this works as planned:

• Times use your store's time zone from Settings > General. Convert the start time if your customers are somewhere else.
• A discount keeps its own dates. It is active when either its own dates apply or the rollout activates it. If the discount's own dates already cover today, it is live now, whatever the rollout's start time says. Check the dates on each discount you add. Its customer eligibility rules also still apply.
• Check which version you are editing. To return to the banner later, go to Online Store, click Rollouts next to your main theme, and pick the rollout. The theme editor's menu bar names the rollout you are in, with a yellow label such as "Launches Nov 27, 2026". Your live theme is listed in the same menu as Active. Look at that label before each save, so a sale edit does not land on your live theme.

The yellow label shows you are editing the rollout. The theme marked Active is your live store.

Edit the current theme or replace it

A rollout holds one theme change, and that change is one of two kinds.

• Edit main theme, used in the example above. Parts of the theme you did not touch in the rollout stay in sync with your published theme, so everyday edits you make before the sale still carry through.
• Replace main theme. A different theme from your theme library takes the place of the published one. Add that theme to your store first. You can keep editing it after it is in the rollout.

Code edits do not go into the rollout. Shopify's requirements page states that you can't change Liquid templates as part of a rollout. We tested what that means on a Horizon theme on October 6, 2026: with the rollout open in the theme editor, Edit code still opens, and a change saved to a Liquid file appeared on the live storefront straight away. Nothing stops you, and nothing warns you. Keep a rollout edit to what the theme editor itself can change: sections, blocks, settings, text, and images. If your sale needs code changes, prepare them in a separate theme and use a replacement.

A replacement theme goes live exactly as it is. Any custom code, app embed, or tracking setup that exists in your published theme and is missing from the replacement will be missing from your storefront for the length of the sale. If the sale theme started as an older copy, compare it with the live theme first. Our guide to customizations lost between theme versions shows where those differences usually sit.

Know what cannot be undone

• A Launch is permanent. Its changes merge into your store at the scheduled time and cannot be reverted afterward. For anything temporary, use an Event.
• Code edits go live immediately. A change made through Edit code while you work on a rollout is saved to your live theme and is outside the rollout's schedule, as described above.
• Ending early gives you two choices. When you end an active rollout by hand, you either roll the changes back or apply them permanently. Applied changes cannot be reverted.
• Archiving deletes the rollout's theme changes. An archived rollout cannot be restored or restarted.
• Publishing a new theme forces that archive. While a draft, scheduled, paused, or active rollout holds theme changes, Shopify asks you to archive it before you can publish a different theme. If you plan a theme update in the same weeks as a sale, finish the update first and build the rollout afterward.
• Overlapping rollouts share traffic. Two rollouts that change the same resource over the same dates split your visitors between them, even when each is set to 100%. Shopify shows a conflict message before you save. Read it.

You can pause an active rollout and resume it later. Pausing is the safe first move when something looks wrong during a sale, because it leaves both choices open.

Release a change to part of your traffic

Traffic allocation below 100% shows your changes to a share of visitors. Shopify requires a start date and an end date for it. For a redesign, this lets you find problems while few visitors can see them. A cautious sequence is a small share first to catch errors, then about half, then everyone.

Keep price changes at 100%. A rollout can also switch a product catalog on or off, and a partial rollout applies that change to your online store only. Your Google and Meta product feeds, ads, and listings keep the prices they already had. Shopify warns that channels can delist products or suspend an account when an ad and its landing page disagree.

Test a change with an Experiment

An Experiment splits eligible visitors between a control, which is your store as it is, and a treatment, which is your store with the rollout's changes. A new Experiment defaults to a 50/50 split and an end date 90 days after it starts. The split applies inside the traffic allocation: 50% allocation with a 50/50 split puts 25% of your visitors in the treatment.

For a theme Experiment, Shopify reports conversion rate over time, bounce rate, add to cart rate, and reached checkout rate for each group. The decision stays with you: when you end the Experiment, you choose whether to roll the changes back or apply them.

Since October 2, 2026 an Experiment can also include a discount, with the control group keeping your current offer. Our guide to A/B testing a discount with Rollouts covers the setup and how to read the results. Change one thing per Experiment, and let it run through at least one full week so weekday and weekend shoppers are both counted. Run it well before a sale or after it. During the sale itself, an Event at 100% is the simpler choice.

Check the rollout before its start time

• Preview the sale version. Open the theme editor and select the rollout in the menu bar to see your store as it will look during the sale. Check it at phone and desktop widths: homepage, a collection, a product page, and the cart.
• Check app features on those pages. A rollout has no change type for apps. Confirm that reviews, bundles, and popups still display correctly in the sale layout.
• Test how the sale discount stacks with your other discounts, using the checks in our BFCM checklist.
• Check staff access. A staff member needs the Markets > Rollouts permission plus the permission for each kind of change, such as Themes and Edit code for theme changes or Discounts for discount changes.
• Be online at the start time. Open the storefront in a private window and confirm the sale version is showing. Do the same at the end time.

Rollouts can also replace your checkout and customer account configuration, which follows the same three types. Shopify's Rollouts documentation covers that setup.