How do I migrate from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6?

You migrate from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6 by setting up a clean Shopware 6 installation, installing Shopware’s Migration Connector and Migration Assistant plugins, and running them to pull your products, customers, orders, and categories across. The data side is fairly mechanical once it’s set up. The harder part is everything the migration tool can’t touch: your theme has to be rebuilt from scratch in Shopware 6’s Twig templating system, since Shopware 5 ran on Smarty, and every plugin needs a Shopware 6 compatible replacement. Shopware 5 has been end of life since July 2024, so at this point this is closer to a mandatory infrastructure fix than a feature upgrade.

How long does a Shopware 5 to 6 migration take?

A straightforward migration with a near-default theme and a handful of plugins usually takes 4 to 8 weeks. A shop with a heavily customized theme, ten or more plugins, and custom checkout or B2B logic typically runs 3 to 6 months. The data migration itself is the fast part, it’s the theme rebuild and plugin replacement that stretch the timeline, which is why the audit in step one matters more than most people expect going in.

Shopware 5 vs Shopware 6 at a glance

What actually moves automatically, and what doesn’t

Shopware’s official Migration Assistant is built for structured commerce data, not design or code. Worth knowing the split before you scope a timeline.

• Moves across cleanly: products, product media, categories, customers, customer groups, orders, and order history.
• Needs manual rebuild: your theme. Shopware 5’s Smarty templates have no equivalent in Shopware 6’s Symfony and Twig frontend.
• Needs replacement, not migration: plugins. A Shopware 5 plugin will not run on Shopware 6. Check the Shopware Store for a Shopware 6 version of anything you rely on, and rebuild whatever doesn’t have one.
• Needs manual mapping: your SEO URLs. The Migration Assistant transfers SEO URLs where it can, but Shopware’s own migration guidance notes this doesn’t always map cleanly once category trees change, so plan for 301 redirects on anything that breaks.

The migration steps

1. Audit your Shopware 5 shop

List every active plugin, every theme customization, and any custom checkout, pricing, or shipping logic. This becomes your Shopware 6 rebuild scope, and it’s the single biggest factor in how long the project actually takes.

2. Set up a clean Shopware 6 installation

Install Shopware 6 fresh instead of trying to convert the Shopware 5 codebase in place. The two are architecturally different products under one brand, so there’s nothing to upgrade in the traditional sense.

3. Install the Migration Connector on Shopware 5

The Migration Connector plugin goes on your existing Shopware 5 shop. It exposes your shop’s data to the migration tool through an API connection, and you can leave it running if you want to do delta migrations later.

4. Install the Migration Assistant on Shopware 6

Install the Migration Assistant on the new Shopware 6 install, then connect it to Shopware 5 using the credentials the Migration Connector generates. From there you choose which data sets to pull across. Products first is usually the sensible order, since customer and order records reference product data.

5. Run the migration on staging first

Don’t run your first attempt against production. Run it on staging, spot check the product catalog, customer records, and order history against Shopware 5, and only plan a production run once that checks out.

6. Rebuild your theme

Rebuilding the theme is usually the largest single piece of work in a Shopware 5 to 6 migration, bigger than most people expect going in. Recreate your storefront design in Shopware 6’s Twig templates, since nothing from a Shopware 5 Smarty theme transfers automatically. If your Shopware 5 site ran on a heavily customized Bare theme or a fully custom build, treat this as its own frontend project with its own timeline, not something you slot in alongside the data migration.

7. Replace your plugins

Work through your plugin audit list and find a Shopware 6 version of each one. Some vendors have a direct like-for-like replacement in the Shopware Store. Others discontinued the Shopware 5 plugin without a Shopware 6 successor, which means finding an alternative or building the functionality yourself.

8. Map your redirects

Pull a full list of your indexed Shopware 5 URLs from Google Search Console before you migrate. The Migration Assistant carries over SEO URLs where it can, but renamed slugs and restructured categories often break that mapping. Set up 301 redirects for anything that doesn’t carry across cleanly. This is the step most migrations skip, and it’s the one most likely to cost you organic traffic if it’s missed.

9. Test, then run the final sync and go live

Test checkout, payment methods, shipping rules, and any custom logic on staging before cutover. Run a final delta migration to catch anything created after your first data pull, orders and new customer signups especially, then switch DNS and decommission Shopware 5.

What if something goes wrong during cutover

Keep the Shopware 5 shop live and untouched until the Shopware 6 site has been tested and confirmed working. Don’t decommission Shopware 5 as part of the cutover itself, treat it as a separate step you take once Shopware 6 has been live and verified for a few days. This gives you a fallback if checkout, payments, or order sync break in a way testing didn’t catch.

Should you migrate now?

Shopware 5 has been end of life since July 2024, so at this point this is closer to a mandatory infrastructure fix than a feature upgrade. That means no further security patches for the platform itself, no matter how stable the shop currently feels day to day. If you’re still on Shopware 5, the real question at this point isn’t whether to migrate, it’s how much rebuild work is hiding in your plugin list and theme customizations. In practice, that’s almost always bigger than the data migration itself for shops that have been live a few years.

Whether to run this in-house or bring in outside help usually comes down to three things: whether you have a developer who already knows Symfony and Twig, how large your plugin and theme rebuild list came out in step one, and how much runway you have before the security exposure becomes a real problem. A small shop with a near-default theme and five plugins is a reasonable DIY project for a competent developer. A shop with a heavily customized theme, ten or more plugins, and custom checkout logic is a multi-month project that benefits from a team that’s done this migration before.

If your Shopware 5 shop has meaningful custom functionality, get it audited before you commit to a launch date, not after.

The short version: the Migration Assistant moves your data, not your design, your plugins, or your URL structure. Plan those as separate work streams that need to land together, not sequential tasks, and test the whole thing on staging before your live Shopware 5 shop goes anywhere near decommissioning.