Nicolas Dabene

Posted on Mar 29 • Originally published at nicolas-dabene.fr

Complete Retrospective of PrestaShop Events 2025

#prestashop #ecommerce #ai

PrestaShop in 2025: A Landmark Year of Innovation, Growth, and Transformation

The year 2025 was truly exceptional for PrestaShop, marked by groundbreaking launches, significant technological innovations, and a vibrant mobilization of its global community. Join me for a comprehensive look back at all the pivotal events that shaped this remarkable period.

Live Updates: Nurturing a Connected Community

Throughout 2025, the PrestaShop project fostered continuous engagement with its developer community through regular monthly Live Updates. These sessions featured direct insights from the management team and project contributors.

The year kicked off on January 29, 2025, with the first Live Update, proudly announcing the official launch of PrestaShop 9 Beta 1 and the stable version 8.2.1¹. This event also unveiled the Targeted Contributions initiative, an innovative program designed to guide community contributors toward specific, identified project needs.

Following this, on March 5, 2025, the second Live Update provided crucial insights into the upcoming version 9.0. A key highlight was the detailed discussion on the redesign of the Discounts functionality, which was actively under development for PrestaShop 9.1². Developers received a sneak peek at visual changes and practical advice for adapting their modules and themes.

The April 23, 2025, Live Update showcased a live demonstration of Update Assistant v7, the revolutionary module set to replace the long-standing Auto Upgrade³. This presentation was invaluable for developers and merchants eager to understand the streamlined update process for PrestaShop 9.

One of the most memorable sessions arrived on July 30, 2025, with the highly anticipated introduction of One Page Checkout, a transformative feature slated for PrestaShop 9.1⁴. This July Live Update also covered the advancements of Hummingbird 2, the modern theme promising an even smoother development experience, and officially announced the PrestaShop Developer Conference 2025 scheduled for November.

FOP Days 2025: The Community's Grand Gathering

I had the privilege of attending FOP Days 2025 on March 26-27, 2025, held at Le Nida in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris. This marked the third edition of the event, which began in 2021⁵. This year's gathering embraced an enriched two-day format, including an exclusive evening reception, drawing over 180 expected attendees.

The agenda featured approximately 30 conferences and workshops, delving into the ecosystem's most pertinent topics. Sessions explored subjects like AI and automation, security and privacy (PCI DSS), advanced SEO strategies, and digital accessibility. Notable speakers, such as Patrick Valibus, shared expertise on managing large-scale e-commerce projects⁵. Supported by 12 quality sponsors, the event concluded with the FOP Awards, recognizing excellence in generative AI, security, and privacy protection. Unlike previous years, FOP Days 2025 intentionally omitted video recordings, encouraging active participation and fostering deeper, in-person discussions among professionals.

PrestaShop 9.0 Unleashed: A Core Technological Leap

June 6, 2025, marked one of the year's most pivotal moments: the official launch of PrestaShop 9.0, a major version anticipated for over two years⁶. This release represented a profound modernization of PrestaShop's underlying technology, integrating the latest web development advancements.

PrestaShop 9.0 now runs on Symfony 6.4 LTS and PHP 8.4, establishing a technical foundation that is more robust and contemporary than ever before⁷. This significant upgrade impacted over 250,000 online stores powered by PrestaShop, promising substantial enhancements in performance, security, and long-term maintainability.

Key innovations within PrestaShop 9.0 include a brand-new Admin API built on API Platform, facilitating cleaner integrations compliant with modern REST standards. Merchants also benefited from a new management interface design, completely reimagined for an improved user experience, and crucial native SEO improvements⁸. These SEO enhancements brought support for WebP and AVIF formats for product images, optimization of Core Web Vitals (particularly Largest Contentful Paint - LCP), and fully customizable URLs, even for faceted filters. The refined code of PrestaShop 9 delivers increased performance, with considerably reduced page load times – a significant competitive edge for merchants focused on boosting conversion rates.

PrestaShop Day 2025: The Premier Event for E-commerce Decision-Makers

On June 10, 2025, PrestaShop Day 2025 convened at 3 Mazarium in Paris, drawing an impressive crowd of over 300 merchants, 20 exhibitors, and featuring 14 key conferences⁹. This annual gathering centered around three fundamental pillars: the freedom of open source, the flexibility of omnichannel strategies, and achieving controlled profitability.

Discussions covered critical topics such as digital sovereignty, a particularly vital subject given the prevalence of proprietary, locked-in solutions; optimized logistics and delivery strategies; managing artificial intelligence in e-commerce; innovative payment solutions with partners like PayPal; and navigating new European regulatory challenges¹⁰. The program also facilitated over 100 business meetings between exhibitors and attendees. Participants also had the opportunity to explore PrestaShop Enterprise, the premium offering designed for ambitious stores generating millions in revenue¹¹.

PrestaShop 9 Maintenance: Solidifying the Foundation

October 13, 2025, saw the release of PrestaShop 9.0.1, the first maintenance version for the 9.x branch¹². This release delivered more than 60 bug fixes and integrated over 140 merged pull requests, with a particular focus on resolving installation issues in specific environments. PrestaShop 9.0.1 significantly enhanced deployment reliability and overall platform stability, ensuring a smoother experience for all users. This initial maintenance release underscored PrestaShop's commitment to rapidly stabilizing its new technological foundation.

PrestaShop Developer Conference 2025: A Phenomenal Global Gathering

November 19, 2025, hosted the PrestaShop Developer Conference 2025, the third edition of an event that has become a cornerstone of the PrestaShop calendar¹³. Notably, for the first time, the conference adopted a hybrid format, combining a physical presence in Paris (at Le Cyclone, in the 13th arrondissement) with a worldwide online broadcast. A major innovation was the implementation of automatic subtitles in 35 languages, making technically dense content accessible to a truly international audience. The event welcomed 28 speakers from over six different countries, including representatives from international organizations traveling from South America.

The conference agenda featured over 18 presentations spread across two main stages: the Main Stage, dedicated to executive presentations and major keynotes, and the Tech Room, offering in-depth technical sessions and practical workshops. The day's most significant announcement was the launch of the PrestaShop MCP Server, a revolutionary integration of the Model Context Protocol¹³¹⁴. This open standard allows PrestaShop stores to connect natively with leading AI agents in the market, such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Mistral. This announcement marked a strategic turning point in PrestaShop's vision for AI and automation.

The MCP Server: Pioneering AI Innovation

Unveiled on November 19, 2025, the PrestaShop MCP Server represents a decisive technological innovation for the e-commerce ecosystem¹⁵. This free, standardized connector, available for PrestaShop 8+ installations, establishes a secure bridge between PrestaShop stores and commercial AI agents. The MCP protocol enables these agents to intelligently recognize business objects like products, customers, and orders. It empowers them to automatically execute tasks based on natural language queries, transforming simple commands such as "show me my ten biggest customers this month" or "rewrite all product descriptions marked as 'declining'" into concrete back-office actions¹⁵. This approach not only preserves merchants' data sovereignty but also unlocks automation possibilities previously exclusive to large proprietary platforms.

The PrestaShop Acquisition: A Historic Junction

December 11, 2025, brought the announcement of an absolutely historic event for the PrestaShop ecosystem: CyberFolks and Sylius signed an agreement to acquire PrestaShop, one of the world's largest open-source e-commerce platforms¹⁶. This strategic acquisition marks a significant shift in the European e-commerce technology landscape.

The transaction, structured around CyberFolks' acquisition of 79% of cyber_Pixel (with the remaining 21% held by family foundations of Sylius founders), will enable cyber_Pixel to then acquire 100% of PrestaShop, 100% of Sylius, and 100% of BitBag¹⁷. The expected sale price for all PrestaShop shares totals 53.765 million euros.

This merger creates a European e-commerce powerhouse by combining three complementary models: the SaaS model represented by Shoper, the open-source model embodied by PrestaShop, and Sylius's headless architecture. The scale of this new entity is impressive: PrestaShop serves 230,000 active stores worldwide, generating 22 billion euros in GMV in 2024, while Sylius supports enterprise and mid-market projects accounting for approximately 7 billion euros in annual GMV¹⁸. Post-merger, the CyberFolks ecosystem is projected to reach approximately 35 billion euros in total GMV, positioning the group as Europe's most formidable e-commerce technology provider. PrestaShop's key markets include France, Spain, Italy, the USA, and the UK, complementing Sylius's focus on France, the USA, Italy, Poland, and Germany, thereby creating extensive and synergistic geographical coverage¹⁹.

Crucially, this acquisition ensures the long-term sustainability of the PrestaShop project while safeguarding its open-source character – a vital point for both the developer and merchant communities. It also paves the way for new innovation by blending PrestaShop's expertise in accessible e-commerce solutions with Sylius's enterprise capabilities and Shoper's SaaS approach, offering a comprehensive portfolio spanning all market segments.

Unifying Themes of 2025: AI, Sovereignty, and Modernization

The year 2025 was characterized by three overarching themes consistently present across all major events. Firstly, the ascension of artificial intelligence was evident through the unveiling of the MCP Server, discussions on business process automation, and explorations of AI agents in the payment ecosystem. Secondly, digital sovereignty emerged as a central concern at both PrestaShop Day and FOP Days, conveying a clear message to merchants: reclaim control over their data and technological infrastructure from siloed proprietary solutions. Thirdly, technological modernization became tangible with the launch of PrestaShop 9.0, the advent of Hummingbird 2.0, improvements to the update system, and the continuous evolution of the Admin API, steadily transforming PrestaShop into a truly modern platform equipped for contemporary e-commerce challenges.

In essence, 2025 was a pivotal year for PrestaShop. It saw the launch of a revolutionary major version, the announcement of a transformative AI integration, a historic acquisition by CyberFolks and Sylius, and the significant strengthening of its developer and merchant communities through impactful events. These achievements collectively position PrestaShop as a modern, sovereign, and future-proof e-commerce solution, fully capable of competing with the largest market players while upholding the core values of openness and flexibility inherent to the open-source ecosystem.

Sources

Authored on January 1, 2026, by Nicolas Dabène.

Enjoyed this deep dive into PrestaShop's incredible year? If you're passionate about e-commerce, open source, and cutting-edge tech, make sure to connect! You can find more of my insights and discussions on my YouTube channel and my LinkedIn profile. Let's continue the conversation about the future of digital commerce!

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