ShopTalk Spring 2026 opens next week at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and the scale of this year’s event reflects the scale of the questions facing the industry. More than 180 speakers across 50-plus sessions. Over 10,000 attendees, with one in three holding a C-suite title. The official theme, “Retail in the Age of AI,” is broad by design, but the programming reveals a more specific set of tensions that retail leaders are grappling with right now. Here are the five storylines I will be tracking on the ground.
1. The Agentic Commerce Reckoning
If NRF 2026 in January was where the industry acknowledged that AI is real, ShopTalk is where it will have to prove it. The most anticipated session of the week is Bret Taylor’s keynote, “Sorting Agentic Hype from Reality.” Taylor is the CEO of Sierra and Chairman of the Board at OpenAI, and his perspective on where AI agents are actually delivering value in commerce, versus where they remain aspirational, will set the tone for the entire conference.
The debate session “AI Agents Will / Will Not Transform Retail,” featuring e.l.f. Beauty’s CDO Ekta Chopra and EMARKETER’s Sarah Marzano, promises genuine disagreement rather than the consensus panels that dominate most conference agendas. The question is no longer whether AI will change retail. It is which categories will be disrupted first, how quickly consumers will trust bots to shop on their behalf, and what happens to the brands that are not ready. At NRF, I saw the infrastructure being built. At ShopTalk, I expect to see the first real case studies of what that infrastructure produces.
2. Retail Media Enters Its Accountability Phase
Retail media has been the growth story of the past three years, but the honeymoon is ending. Every major retailer now operates an ad platform, and the conversation is shifting from “how do we launch one” to “how do we prove it works.” The Home Depot’s Orange Apron Media team is presenting retailer-brand case studies that should offer a window into what mature retail media operations actually look like at scale.
I will be watching closely for signals on measurement standardization, incrementality testing, and whether retailers are willing to share the kind of performance data that brands need to justify their spend. The IAB’s Collin Colburn is on the agenda to discuss commerce and retail media, and the presence of independent analysts like Andrew Lipsman suggests the conversation will be more candid than the typical vendor-sponsored panel. Retail media is a $50 billion-plus market. The question this week is whether it can sustain that trajectory without better transparency.
3. The Human-Centered Counterweight
For all the AI programming, ShopTalk’s agenda reveals a parallel track that is equally important: the role of physical experience, community, and emotional connection in a retail landscape that is becoming increasingly algorithmic. Michaels Stores president Heather Bennett and Glossier’s GM of Retail Emily Lewis are both speaking about what physical retail looks like when the goal is not just transactions but belonging.
This tension between automation and intimacy is the defining strategic question for the next five years. The retailers who figure out how to deploy AI in the back office while preserving human connection on the floor will win. The ones who let technology flatten the customer experience will lose to whoever still feels like a place worth visiting. I expect this theme to surface repeatedly in the hallway conversations, even if it gets less stage time than the AI sessions.
4. The C-Suite Lineup Tells a Story
The speaker roster this year is worth reading as a strategic document in its own right. Victoria’s Secret CEO Hillary Super is keynoting during a period of significant brand reinvention. Wayfair’s Niraj Shah is speaking as the company navigates a challenging home furnishings market. New Balance’s Joe Preston will discuss how the brand has maintained cultural relevance while scaling globally. Each of these leaders is managing through complexity, and the specifics of how they are doing it will be more instructive than any trend report.
The presence of Sephora’s Global Chief Digital Officer Anca Marola alongside OpenAI’s Mahak Sharma in a joint session on “Building a Next Generation Shopping Experience” signals something important: the most forward-thinking retailers are not just buying AI tools. They are co-developing with the platforms. That kind of partnership, where a beauty retailer and an AI company are building together in real time, is where the real competitive advantages are being forged.
5. The Marketplace Question Nobody Wants to Answer
Temu is not on the ShopTalk mainstage, but its shadow is over nearly every marketplace and pricing conversation. EMARKETER analysts are presenting new research on consumer attitudes and behaviors, and the subtext is clear: cross-border marketplaces have fundamentally changed consumer expectations around price, speed, and selection. The question for established retailers is not how to compete with Temu on price. It is how to articulate a value proposition that justifies a premium in a market where consumers have been trained to expect everything for less.
The session on new consumer research from Alvarez & Marsal, Euromonitor, and ECDB should provide hard data on where consumer spending is actually shifting. Combined with the K-shaped economic dynamics we tracked at NRF, this will be one of the most important data points of the week for anyone making portfolio or pricing decisions.
What I Will Be Looking For
The best conferences are not defined by their keynotes. They are defined by the conversations that happen between sessions, in the hallways and over coffee, where executives drop the talking points and share what is actually keeping them up at night. ShopTalk’s scale makes it the industry’s largest annual gathering, but its programming this year suggests a conference that is trying to be more than a trade show. The dedicated AI Stage, the debate formats, and the emphasis on practitioner-led sessions all point toward a more substantive event.
I will be on the ground at Mandalay Bay from March 24 through 26, covering the sessions, conducting interviews, and publishing real-time analysis. If the industry is truly entering the “Age of AI,” ShopTalk 2026 is where we will find out what that actually means for the people building, buying, and selling in retail today.
BMH Retail Media Advisory provides independent editorial coverage of the retail industry’s most important events. For media inquiries or on-site interview requests at ShopTalk 2026, contact [email protected].