How to Create a Collection on Shopify (and Subcategories)

October 1, 2026

To create a collection on Shopify, go to Products > Collections in your Shopify admin and click Add collection. Give it a title and a description, then add products: pick them by hand, or set conditions (a tag, a product type, a price) so matching products join on their own. Choose a sort order, click Save, and add a link to the collection in your store’s menu so shoppers can reach it. That is the whole job for one collection. The rest of this guide covers which way of adding products to choose, the condition rules that trip people up, how to build “subcategories” when Shopify has no such field, and how to keep collections filling themselves as your catalogue grows.

Every Shopify behaviour and limit below comes from Shopify’s own help centre, as of October 2026. Shopify is moving stores to a new collections model, so the screens you see depend on whether your admin has switched yet. Both versions are covered.

Before you start: plan and model

Collections are a paid-plan feature. Shopify’s help centre says that the Starter plan doesn’t support grouping products into collections, so you need Basic or a higher plan.

The second thing to check is which collections model your admin runs. Shopify describes it this way:

A new collections model is replacing the legacy manual and smart collections model. If the new collections model is available in your Shopify admin, then all your previous collections have been automatically converted to the new type.

You can tell which one you have from the create screen. The legacy screen asks you to pick a Collection type (Manual or Automated) up front. The new screen gives every collection one or more sources instead, and each source can mix hand-picked products with conditions.

How to create a collection on Shopify, step by step

These are the steps for the new model, from a desktop browser.

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Products > Collections.
2. Click Add collection.
3. Click Add title and type the collection’s name. Use the words a shopper would use: “Ceramic Mugs” rather than “Collection 4”.
4. Click Add description and write two or three sentences about what is in the collection. Collection pages are pages Google can index, so this text matters.
5. Add a featured image if your theme shows one on collection pages.
6. Add products. New collections start with an empty Products source. Either click Add products to pick items by hand, or click Add condition to let products join automatically (the next section covers both).
7. Set the sort order, which decides how products are arranged on the collection page by default.
8. Optional: choose the sales channels the collection appears on, and edit the search engine listing so the page has its own title and meta description in search results.
9. Click Save.
10. Go to Content > Menus and add a link to the new collection, or nobody browsing your store will find it.

You can also start from the other end. Open any product, find the Collections section on its details page, tick one or more existing collections and save. That is the quickest way to place a single new product.

On the legacy model

If your admin still shows Collection type, the steps are close. Click Add collection, enter the title and description, then pick Manual or Automated. For Manual, save and then search for or browse to the products you want. For Automated, add your conditions before saving. Shopify notes you cannot change an automated collection into a manual one later. You would create a new manual collection and add the products to it.

Manual or automated: which way to add products

The choice comes down to whether a rule can describe the collection.

• Add products by hand when the collection is a curated set: “Staff picks”, “Gift guide under $40”, the six items in a seasonal window display. Shopify’s help centre says manually added products stay in the collection until you remove them.
• Use conditions when a property of the product defines membership: every product tagged “wedding”, every product of type “Mugs”, everything under $25. New products that match join without you touching the collection.
• Mix both (new model only) when a rule covers most of it and a few exceptions need adding or excluding by hand.

For a shop that adds products every week, conditions are what keep collections accurate. A manual collection is only as current as the last time somebody remembered to update it.

Collection conditions that actually work

A condition is a product field, a comparison and a value. Shopify lets you match on product title, variant title, product type, vendor, product category, tags, product status, price, compare-at price, weight, inventory stock and metafields.

When you add more than one condition, you choose Match all conditions or Match any condition. “All” narrows the collection: tag includes “mug” AND price is less than 30. “Any” widens it: tag includes “mug” OR tag includes “cup”.

Five rules from Shopify’s help centre save a lot of head-scratching:

• A “contains” value needs at least 3 characters, and it cannot start or end with a space.
• Special characters in tags are treated as the same. A condition on the tag red-new also catches products tagged red_new, red+new and red&new.
• A product with variants matches if any one variant matches. A condition of inventory greater than 0 keeps a product in the collection while even one size is in stock.
• Archiving a product does not take it out of collections. It stays listed in your admin but hidden from shoppers. Add a “Product status is not equal to Archived” condition if you want the list clean.
• Conditions never remove products you added by hand. Remove those manually.

Every one of these rules depends on the product data being consistent. A collection built on “type is equal to Mugs” silently misses the mug somebody typed as “Mug” or “Coffee mug”. That is where most “my collection is missing products” problems start, and it is worth fixing before you build twenty collections on top of it. Our guide on how to add a product on Shopify walks through the type, vendor and tags fields one at a time.

How to create subcategories in Shopify

Shopify has no “subcategory” setting on a collection. Shoppers see subcategories when you combine two things: collections for each level, and a menu that nests them.

Step 1: build the collections for each level

Make one collection per subcategory first, for example Teapots, Steepers and Infusers. On the new model you can then make the parent collection, Teaware, by adding a Collection source and choosing those three. The parent fills itself from its children, so a new teapot shows up in both places.

On the legacy model there is no Collection source. Build the parent with a condition that covers all the children instead, such as tag includes “teaware”, and tag every child product with it.

If you use Shopify’s standard product categories, a Product category condition with Include subcategories does the same job from the taxonomy side: one condition on “Toys & Games” also matches Puzzles, Card Games and the other categories under it.

Step 2: nest them in a drop-down menu

1. Go to Content > Menus and open your main menu.
2. Add a menu item for the parent (“Teaware”) or pick an existing one. If the parent should not link anywhere, enter # as its link.
3. Click Add menu item for each subcategory and link it to that collection.
4. Drag each subcategory item under the parent to nest it.
5. Click Save menu.

Shopify allows up to two levels of nesting below a top-level item, so Home & Kitchen > Teaware > Teapots is as deep as a menu goes. Shopify notes footer menus show only top-level items, and that older themes may need updating to show all three levels.

Limits to know before you build dozens

The one most shops hit first is the 50 parent collections. If your subcategory tree needs more parents than that, build the extra parents from a shared tag instead of a Collection source.

The faster way: get the product data right when you list

Automated collections are only as good as the type, tags and vendor on every product. Writing those consistently by hand across a large catalogue is the slow part, and it is where a tool can help.

ListingBrief AI writes the Shopify fields for a product from a few rough notes: the title, SEO title, meta description, product type, vendor, options and variants, plus a list of suggested collection names the product fits. Because the product type and tags come out in the same shape every time, collections built on those fields keep matching. You still create the collections in Shopify yourself; ListingBrief suggests which ones a product belongs in, and it does not create them in your store. Its CSV export fills the Type and Tags columns for bulk import (our Shopify product CSV template guide explains the one-off Collection column you can add by hand). Five generations a day are free, and you can try the Shopify description generator without signing up.

When the manual way is enough

You do not need automation for every store.

• Under about 30 products you can see your whole catalogue on one screen, and a manual collection takes a minute to update.
• Curated collections (gift guides, staff picks, a launch) are manual by nature. No rule describes “the eight things we love this month”.
• Stores that rarely add products gain little from conditions, because the list barely changes.

Switch to conditions when you notice products missing from collections they belong in, or when updating collections becomes a weekly chore. If you are about to change tags or types across many products to make that switch, the Shopify bulk editor is the place to do it.

Quick answers

Why is my new collection not showing in my store? Check that it is published to the Online Store sales channel and that a menu links to it. A collection with no menu link exists, but nobody browsing will find it.

Can a product be in more than one collection? Yes. A mug can sit in “Ceramic Mugs”, “Gifts Under $30” and “New Arrivals” at once, and if two sources in one collection both add it, Shopify shows it only once.

Do collections help SEO? Each published collection is its own page with a title, description and search engine listing you can edit. A collection with a clear name and a real description gives search engines a category page to rank, which is the same reasoning behind the advice in our Shopify SEO for beginners guide.