NRF 2026: Agentic AI, UCP, and the New Rules of Machine-Readable Commerce

NRF: Where the Next Retail Standards Take Shape

NRF’26: Retail’s Big Show, held annually in New York, remains one of the most influential events for organizations looking to anticipate the future of commerce. Beyond announcements, it is above all a convergence point for technology, operations, customer experience, and growth strategy. For eCommerce leaders and digital teams, NRF acts as both a thermometer and a radar: a place to assess what is already being deployed at scale and to spot what is on the verge of becoming a standard.

This year, one reality stood out with particular clarity: artificial intelligence is no longer a topic for demonstration, it has become a matter of execution. As noted by Thavy Khamtan, VP Unified Commerce and Strategic Alliances at Novatize: “NRF brings together more than 40,000 professionals, over 1,000 exhibitors, and more than 170 sessions.” At this scale, the dominant trends are not anecdotal; they reveal deep structural shifts and real investment decisions already underway.

The Strong Signal from NRF’26: Moving from Generative AI to Agentic AI

While AI has dominated the media landscape over the past two years, NRF’26 marks a clear turning point: the focus is shifting from content generation to the ability to take action. Agentic AI goes beyond answering questions, summarizing text, or recommending products. Its purpose is to orchestrate a sequence of actions across multiple systems, driven by an objective-based logic. In commerce, this means an agent can support decision-making, prepare a transaction, execute it, and then manage part of the follow-up, within a framework defined by the organization and accepted by customers. Thavy Khamtan summarizes this shift clearly:

It is precisely this move, from conversational to executable, that explains why NRF’26 placed such strong emphasis on standards, architecture, and data.

From Conversational to Agentic: The Transaction Becomes an Orchestration

For retailers, the impact is concrete. Digital journeys have long been structured around exploration, navigation, and conversion rate optimization on a website. Agentic AI introduces a different dynamic: commerce becomes more intent-driven and less interface-dependent. The objective is no longer solely to bring customers to a product page, but to make the offer understandable, evaluable, and actionable by an agent.

This opens the door to a new channel that complements existing ones. It does not replace the website, marketplaces, media campaigns, or traditional search, it layers on top of them. Organizations that position themselves early can gain a competitive edge, particularly with customers more inclined to adopt new purchasing models and within segments where cart complexity, catalog depth, or business rules make agentic assistance especially valuable.

The Defining Announcement: Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and the Acceleration of Commerce Agents

Among the standout announcements, the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) emerged as a clear move toward standardization. The core idea is straightforward: if agents are expected to truly execute transactional actions, they need a common language to interact with merchant ecosystems. UCP fits squarely into this logic by aiming to standardize how an agent can discover a merchant’s capabilities, query essential information, build a cart, initiate payment, and then track an order.

In a context where multiple technology players are investing heavily in agentic AI, this type of protocol becomes a powerful catalyst. It reduces fragmentation and accelerates adoption. For eCommerce merchants, this is a signal that should be taken seriously. When standards emerge, they inevitably influence distribution models, customer expectations, and the minimum technical requirements needed to remain competitive.

This observation clearly captures the transformation ahead. Accessibility will no longer be defined solely by the quality of the human UX, but also by how well an offer is represented, structured, and interpretable for an agent.

What This Changes for Consumers: A Concrete Example

Imagine a parent who needs to buy a rain jacket for their child’s farm field trip in two days, with specific constraints: size, acceptable color, waterproof performance, budget, and either nearby in-store availability or express delivery. In today’s journey, this person opens a search engine, compares multiple sites, filters categories, reads sometimes incomplete product descriptions, checks availability, starts over elsewhere if the size is missing, and finally completes the purchase after several back-and-forth steps. In an agentic journey via Gemini, the intent is expressed once and the agent orchestrates everything that follows. It understands the constraints, queries compatible merchant catalogs, checks real-time size availability, presents two or three options that can genuinely be delivered within the required timeframe, then prepares the cart and initiates the transaction with final validation at checkout. The difference is not just speed, it’s a shift in the journey itself, moving from manual navigation to automated orchestration, where performance depends directly on the quality, structure, and readability of merchant data.

What This Changes for Retailers: Machine Readability Becomes a Growth Requirement

The strategic focus is gradually shifting toward a merchant’s ability to be accurately interpreted by automated systems. This impacts how product information is structured, the consistency of the catalog, the accuracy of pricing and inventory signals, and the clarity of business rules. In an agentic world, an agent cannot “guess”, it must be able to read, verify, compare, and act. Data quality therefore becomes a commercial asset, not just a technical concern.

This transformation also requires a rethink of governance. When a transaction can be initiated by an agent, it becomes critical to clearly define what is authorized, what requires confirmation, and how exceptions are handled. The organizations that will succeed are not those that simply add an AI layer on top of existing systems, but those that align data, architecture, and operations to support more automated, faster, and more frequent interactions.

Key Takeaways from NRF’26

NRF’26 confirms a clear underlying shift: AI is moving from narrative to execution, and agentic AI is becoming the most structurally significant force in digital commerce. The emergence of standards such as UCP is accelerating this transition by enabling interoperability between agents, platforms, and transactional systems. In this context, the question is no longer whether agents will play a role in commerce, but how each organization will become compatible, credible, and competitive in this new environment.

To dive deeper into the practical implications of agentic AI in commerce and its impact on architecture and operations, watch the Novatize x Shopify webinar, available on demand.

Would you like to discuss this with a Novatize specialist?

Pierre-Olivier Brassard

Vice President - Products and Technology, Partner

contact@novatize.com+1 844 932-6682

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